“God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”
I love the serenity prayer. It says so much in so few words. The more I draw closer to God in my recovery and in my life in general, the more I seem to be gaining that wisdom to know when I am able to change something and when I can’t. In my relationship with my sister and her husband, there are plenty of things I continue to have to accept that I cannot change.
It’s no secret that my sister’s husband is actively carrying a bunch of resentments towards me. He has made it openly known so and also indicated he’s not ready to let them go. Just the other day, a situation arose between my sister and I that was due to her desire to avoid conflict with him over my upcoming trip with my partner to their new home. She had just realized that my trip was going to land on Father’s Day weekend and wanted to see if my partner and I would be willing to take one of their cars on Father’s Day and go do some sightseeing for a few hours while they did their own thing. Ironically, I can’t say that I was surprised that she made this request given her fear of the many arguments that have occurred between them over me.
I don’t exactly know why he still doesn’t like me. For years I did live pretty selfishly and I know I affected them at times because of it. But through my recovery and closer relationship with God, I have made amends with them and been doing what I can for quite awhile now to show I’m a much healthier person. Unfortunately, that hasn’t equated to him forgiving me and letting go of his own resentments. The only thing that continues to be apparent is that he really doesn’t like me being around and has limited the time my sister and my nephews are allowed to see me. Even worse, during much of those times I am allowed to come around, he often bullies me or points out things he still feels I’m doing wrong in his mind. Quite often, I feel like I am walking on egg shells around him and have to prove myself. I have made many attempts to try to reconcile further with him because of this but he has turned down each of those requests. So in the meantime, I have come to accept what little time I get with my only remaining family and do my best to avoid conflict with him while I’m around them.
My sister has grown very weary of her perception that she’s caught in the middle. The downside for her is that she is deathly afraid of all the arguing, fighting, and control that seems to come from him when it deals with me. More than not, she has caved in to him and I have often believed that’s because she has to live with him and not me. The result of this is generally less and less time I’m able to be around her or the kids. And in the case of this upcoming trip, it was once again starting to look that way as I carried on the conversation with her.
Initially I was taken aback at what she was suggesting but somehow I should have known it was coming. By the time that weekend arrives for my visit there, it will have been about four months that I haven’t seen her or the kids since they moved from Massachusetts to Tennessee. Prior to their move, I had been allowed to visit them on the average a few hours at least once a month and if I was lucky, maybe twice a month. Since the move, my contact with her and the kids has been through Skype and limited by her to no more than an hour a week. I have made the best of it and looked forward with great anticipation to each one of those minutes I get to see them all online. When the invitation was extended by them for my partner and I to come that weekend with the plan of celebrating everyone’s birthdays together, I was ecstatic. I told her the only condition I had for us to come there was to spend all of that weekend with them. Neither my partner nor I have ever had any desire to visit Tennessee to sightsee and the only purpose of our trip there would be to spend it with them. She understood and we promptly bought the plane tickets. Unbeknownst to all of us though, Father’s Day was on the third day of that upcoming trip. Given my sister’s husband’s great distaste for me and the resentments he continues to carry towards me, I can only imagine how he might feel having to spend any part of it with me on that day. I’m sure my sister was thinking the same thing when she discovered the oversight hence how the situation arose in the first place between us.
I have compassion for her in this situation. I really do. But I also have the other side of this serenity prayer to follow. I have the courage now to change the things I can. A long time ago, I gave in to everyone and everything. I allowed myself to get less than what I deserved all the time. Essentially, I was often like a dog taking the scraps from someone’s dinner that fell to the floor. Over the past year, that has changed tremendously for me. I essentially have three full days to see my sister and my nephews and get my fill of what little family I have left. When that trip ends, it will most likely be another four months or more before I am allowed to come see them again. So the fact that my sister was suggesting taking a few of those precious hours away for her husband to have time without my partner and I, frankly hurt quite a bit since they have every other day of the year to be together and we don’t.
Sometimes I wish my sister could see some of this insanity that comes in certain parts of her relationship with her husband. In a healthy relationship, a husband would love to have his wife’s family come celebrate Father’s Day with him or possibly even have it honored on a day where there were no out of town guests coming in. In a healthy relationship, a wife wouldn’t have to keep alienating her brother because of her fears of her husband’s dislike of that brother. In a healthy relationship, a husband would accept his wife’s brother’s amends and want to create peace and harmony in his home by letting it all go and forgiving any past transgressions. But sadly, it’s not a healthy relationship for them when it comes to certain things like me and until it becomes so, I have to accept that I can’t change either of them on any level. The only thing I can change is me and in this case, that meant setting boundaries and keeping to them.
When the conversation between my sister and I ended, I set one of those boundaries by telling her she could keep to her agreement of us having the full three days with her family or she could refund my partner the money he paid for the airline tickets and we wouldn’t come. I pray to God that I made the best decision in this situation for my spiritual growth. I love my sister and I love my nephews, and truthfully, I even love her husband even though he doesn’t seem to love me. I hope someday he might. Until then, I accept he has more work to do when it comes to me of which I have no control over. I also accept that my sister has more work to do when it comes to developing her own inner voice of which I have no control over either.
Thankfully, I have the wisdom now to know what I can and cannot change more than I ever used to, and while I can’t change them, I can change the fact that I never used to stand up for myself to them or anyone else for that matter. It’s not easy for me to do that having been bullied on every level for most of my life. But through a closer relationship with God today, I’m actually doing that quite successfully a lot more of now and have gained serenity because of it.
Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson