After I have been living in my home for over 30 years without a clothes dryer, this morning Lowe’s delivered a new dryer for Kathy and me. The gas installation company could not make it out today to install the dryer. But promised they would be out first thing on Monday morning. They contemplated for a time coming out on Saturday, but key employees had made personal plans for tomorrow. Like I told Shawn, Sr. at the company, I have waited over 30 years--a few more days won’t hurt. Actually though, as soon as it was delivered I wanted it installed. When Shawn first suggested it might be done on Saturday, I said to myself “Yes!” I am suddenly impatient to have an operating dryer. But now that I must wait till Monday, I have accepted it reluctantly and have resigned myself tomorrow to hanging up clothes in the garage. This reluctant resignation (joined with fresh anticipation of change) brings to mind Reinhold Niebuhr’s Serenity Prayer (conceived in a little stone cottage in Heath, Massachusetts). In its original form:
"God, Give us the grace to accept with serenity
the things that cannot be changed, Courage
to change the things which should be changed,
And the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other."
(http://www.aahistory.com/prayer.html)
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