The Miracle of Serenity

I’ve been a L’il Miss Crabby-Pants lately. It’s not a mindset I enjoy, but sometimes when I get there I’m not sure how to find my way out the other side.

This morning I was looking online for a picture to illustrate a point I was making to a friend. I came across this image at the Wicked Moon site:

It took my breath away.  This young girl is sitting so patiently, so serenely.

Patience is not one of my stronger virtues.  And serenity – well, I have a long history with that word.

Back when I was at Inner Visions, we had a quality that we were meant to actively work with.  For the first year I worked with the quality FAITH.  My second year – having found a new relationship with a Higher Spirit but still not feeling an easiness in my soul – I chose SERENITY.

My faculty adviser at the time said to me, “Why not peace?  Doesn’t that say the same thing?”

To me it didn’t.  Serenity goes further and deeper than peace.  To me, peace is a state of the soul.  Serenity is a state of the soul AND a quieting of the crazy mind.  I have a picture of a friend from childhood who always seemed so deeply calm, so unattached to the craziness around her, so completely at one with everything around her.  She looked like a picture of serenity to me.  I always picture when I think of how I’d like to show up in my world.

For the last four years I have been working with the quality SERENITY.  How often do I forget that?  Often.

Today I was reminded – I have the ability to choose L’il Miss Crabby Pants or Serenity.  Sometimes in the midst of chaos and drama it’s hard to see how to make that choice.  Sometimes when nothing is wrong it can be oddly easy to manufacture a mindset that says “nothing is right.”  It’s a bizarre little mind trick.

But where I am right now – with nothing really wrong, just the fluctuation of hormones in my system and the leftovers from last weekend’s meltdown – I can absolutely choose serenity.

Today I made that choice.  I flipped the switch.  It is nothing more than where I choose to focus my attention and my energy.  As with so many other things, it’s the decision to do it.  Sometimes it’s just hard to remember that the decision is ours to make.

Overcoming “crazy” might take a few minutes of work, but today I realized that I can overcome “cranky” with a moment of attention.  Thank goodness!  What a miracle.  🙂