Prayer reminds: Focus on changing what you can change
I am a “Baby Boomer.” For Boomer children, there were historical expectations by our parents, our culture and our church. We grew up in American where there were “Blue Laws,” the draft, home radios and black-and-white televisions.
People asked me what I wanted to do when I grew up. Sometimes I was asked what did I want to be when I grew up. Both questions are important — but they are not the same questions. The first was about vocation and the second was about relationships.
My parents expected me to be a teacher. They did not expect me to be a priest. No one in our family’s history had ever been a priest — period.
I might have a healthier retirement fund if I had a dollar every time someone said to me, “I wanted to be a priest, but my parents said no. They wanted me to be just like them.”
A prayer written by Reinhold Niebuhr begins: “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; the courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference.”
This can be a challenging prayer when we face change and our belief that change can’t be OK because “we never did it that way before.”
My nephew’s oldest daughter married, and later she and her husband decided to start a family. They named their first daughter “River Mae.” It is a combination of their generation and a family name. When they announced another baby girl was on the way, the pressure ascended on them to use only family names. (Had my parents experienced such pressure, I would have been named “Pearl” after my uncle.)
They named their second baby girl “Wylder June.” The older the baby became, the more they were concerned with their choice for a name. They thought they were stuck with their decision. However, they went online and discovered that their county clerk had all the necessary name-changing forms. They completed the forms, paid the fee, had a court hearing and their baby girl’s name is now “Lyla June.”
“Pregnancy” magazine learned what they did and published a story about “the courage to change the things they could.” There was an overwhelming response from couples that also believed they couldn’t change their naming mistake(s).
We again live in unsettling times. It will take all our God-given wisdom and courage to see through — at all levels and parties — political smoke screens, name calling, alternate facts and fear mongering, and be what God is calling us to be and to do what God’s calling us to do.
Baby Boomer’s heard Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., an American with an achievable nonviolent dream for our nation. It was a dream that courageously demanded the change to equality, security and justice for all living in this great land of “We the people.” We were and still can be a welcoming sanctuary for all of God’s children. We still can celebrate what’s morally and ethically right. We still believe “In God we trust.”
•••