God Grant Me The Serenity

Life in a bottle isn’t fun when you’re always on the run from someone or something that you can’t understand. That’s what I learned when I watched her deteriorate from a kind, gentle, loving friend, to an alcoholic, drug addicted animal that she became. When it started to happen to me too, that’s when I realized that it could happen to anybody.

She crashed her car, she got DUI, she had to go to rehab for withdrawals. I stood by her the whole time, never, ever thinking that I would have to turn my back on her, for my sake as well as hers.

Then one day, I got a phone call. She was in rehab again and she uttered two words I won’t soon forget, “I’m pregnant.”
“Oh,” I said. I had no better response. I knew that this was it. It was all over now. The party was over. The cup was empty. The bottle had been passed.

“I just really wanted to talk to you,” she said.

And there it is again. This was my part to play the sympathetic, male friend with no interest or sexual feelings at all to give advice to this young, sexually active woman who is now pregnant probably because she and her boyfriend were stoned and didn’t use protection.
Instead, I say, “I gotta go,” and hang up the phone.

That was the turning point; no longer a fly caught in a spider’s web; just a man out to create something for himself, while minimizing the damage. I love her, and probably always will, and not just as a friend. But this is where the roads part. I had a choice between serenity and insanity. I chose serenity, even though it requires hard work. She has been choosing insanity, but maybe someday she’ll choose a different road. Until then, I am forever, unconditionally, a humble servant of God. She too has a God. I am not Him.

God is only real if you choose to believe in Him.