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Is This for Me?

Yes, yes, and absolutely yes!  Addiction can come in many forms, some forms more obvious than others.  When your life becomes unmanageable because of the actions and behaviors of another,  you are living co-dependently.  This was a very hard concept for me to accept.  I was always a very independent-minded person. I put myself through college working full time, earned my Master’s degree.  I was responsible, I was articulate, I was capable (I am still all of those things).  How could I be co-dependent?  That was nonsense! Truthfully, I was a strong and confident person on the outside.  To the outside world, my life was fine, average.  Not perfect, but fine.  Privately, my life was a painful and chaotic mess.  At a young age I learned not to rock the boat.  This served me well as I became a very good secret keeper.  To the world, I dealt quietly with pain.  I told no one of anything personal that went on in my life.  I saw it as a betrayal to those involved, I never wanted anyone to dislike those whom I loved.  Privately, things were anything but quiet.  I harbored a lot of anger and hatred, and I let those who hurt me know.  I did not have healthy ways of communicating this.  I justified my actions and behaviors by their actions and behaviors; even though deep within I hated what I was doing.  I didn’t know any different way.  What I didn’t realize was my own role in my pain and hardship.  The simple idea that I was responsible for any of the chaos only angered me more.  Obviously, the others were responsible, just look at what they were doing!  That’s where the co-dependent meets the addict.  All eyes are on the addict, rightfully so they are screaming for help.  No eyes are on the co-dependent, and chances are, if eyes are on you, you are not listening and beginning to distance yourself from them.  Accepting I was co-dependent was something I fought for a long time.  I did not share most co-dependent ‘behavior’.  Two books helped me see myself differently.  My co-dependency began at an early age and was a part of who I was in all relationships.  Family addiction counseling helped me to learn about my role in the addiction cycle.  I was eternally hopeful, but my hope was not based or footed in reality.  My ability to keep secrets kept our secrets private.  That privacy nearly killed me.  This secrecy blinded me to truth, it crippled my ability to see and seek truth, and to hold truth as a standard in my relationships.  Christ is truth and when we can not seek it because of shame and hurt in our lives, we do not seek Him.  When we cannot seek Him, we are consumed by the depravity of our condition and situation.  God is the only one who can make our suffering purposeful.  Our prayer is that you seek God first.  He will guide and direct your ways.  We hope you find His strength, and hope, and encouragement through the pages of this site.  May the Lord bless you and keep you!

Ten Talents

Have you read the Parable of the Ten Talents?  

Matthew 25: 14-30 ESV - The Parable of the Talents - “For it - Bible Gateway

If you are human, you have faced some type of hardship; if you are human you are in need of help.  As Christians we believe good and righteous help begins and comes from God.  However, there is also deceitful, self-righteous help (which usually isn’t helpful in the long term), and that is not from God.  Discerning the two, especially when walking in the midst of devastation, especially if your understanding of God is minimal, can be difficult.  If we look at pain, suffering, and hardships as opportunities of refinement and opportunities to call on our helper and draw closer to Jesus, then we can also see that the lessons we have learned along the way are opportunities to grow God’s Kingdom.  The lessons and experiences become our “talents” that have been entrusted to us to then invest in others who are suffering in similar ways.  We can take our experiences and lessons and bury them.  What then was the purpose for experiencing them? Rather, we can use the opportunities and invest them in others, loving our neighbors, and point them to the God who makes all suffering purposeful. As you read of encouragement, strength, and hope through the pages of this site, consider our shared experiences as an investment. The Lord has entrusted us with specific experiences, whether they be trials or joys, let us be His light to others, let us grow an investment on the talent our Master has entrusted to us.

Why Redeeming the Ruins?

When I look back over the last 40+ years, I have the choice of looking back through two different perspectives. I can look back and see the despair, pain, abuse, and suffering; the ruined dreams. I can long for and covet all that I feel I would or should have had. Or I can see each suffering through the eyes of refinement. Why? is a question, as Christians, we come to understand we may never know the answer to. I know that God has wept with me at some of the losses in my life, I know that some of what I have suffered has been because we live in a broken and sinful world, not because of any fault in God. I can chose to be bitter and enraged with what I have lost in my life, but then I am in bondage to my own sin, fear, bitterness and unforgiveness. Or I chose to see that through all the loss and pain I have grown closer to God, He has grown my faith. With out the hope of Christ, addiction utterly guts all those in its path. My life looks completely different than what I envisioned and there are many days I am sad for that. Yet I am a stronger person with an unwavering faith. God did not save me from suffering, scripture tells us we will experience much suffering in life, but he as freed me from the bondage of my sin. He has redeemed the ruins of my life and given my suffering purpose.

Christ in Recovery

Recovery must lead you to Christ.  If you do not find yourself clinging to Christ you have not recovered. Bold? Yes.   And true.  In my late twenties and throughout my thirties I lived recovery.  Always thinking there was an end of the road, that I would finally be recovered of the trauma in my life.  There is no ‘end’ of the road.  The final destination must be Christ.  I did not realize that for a long time.  I did not see the process that was unfolding in my life, real time. I spent hundreds of hours in therapy (find yourself a good Biblical Christian counselor), working with five different counselors. I returned to the one who helped me to see Christ in my recovery and in my trauma.   I spent hundreds of hours in ALANON, poured over daily readers to make it through the day.  This was necessary, it taught me things about letting go, the role of anger, expectations, and how to understand my part in a traumatic cycle.  All of this was needed in my life, however, all of this would eventually be meaningless if these concepts did not lead me to Christ. In Christ we are born anew.  When we learn to shed our old behaviors and turn from them we are living out the redemption bought for us on the cross by Christ’s blood. He purchased my redemption.  What does this mean?  It took years for me to understand this, to have the capacity to understand the depth of what this meant. The depth and yet the simplicity.  I ‘white knuckled’ my way through most of my years working through recovery.  Everything seemed deep and heavy, nothing seemed simple.  The love of Christ is simple, HIS burden is light. Not until my divorce did I recognize the restorative work God had done in me over the years.  It was in this moment, while reading 1 Peter, that I realized I had a choice.  I had the free will to return to my old ways, the ‘passions of my former ignorance’, or to be holy, as the one who called me.  It was in that moment I understood that God had been working all those years, I was too.  But he was doing the work of the restoration.  How could I turn back?  A few verses down in the same passage Peter reminds us we were ransomed from our futile ways by the blood of Christ.  I was ransomed, my life was purchased.  I was free to be free of my trauma as a new creation in Christ, or I was free to return to those futile ways.  The way to Christ is hard, it is ugly at times, yet it is beautiful.  Recovery is the restoration that must lead you to Christ.  Many books, quotes, poems, songs, ect can feel restorative for a time.  Podcast episodes can send me down a rabbit whole quite quickly.  Unless the work we are doing is moving us closer in relationship to Christ, it is not restorative.  We are told, in scripture, that we will face trials, adversity, hardships.  My divorce carried a heavy burden that felt like death.  My kids felt it too.  It is in the facing of this burden that I was faced with the choice to abandon my faith that God is in control of a greater reality than I understood or continue to believe and hold faith in my loving Father, the Creator, God, and decide to not return to the passions of my former self.  Some days that was the only thing I could choose; to not return to my former self.

Hope and Step 1

ALANON is a 12 Step program that helps us work through the process of change when our lives have become unmanagble. I still remember my first meeting. I hid the secrets of our home. I did not tell anyone the events of my life. I kept my personal home life separate from every other part of my life. This isolation helped me survive. In some way I learned that silence equaled control and strength. Eventually those walls of isolation crack and it all crashes down. By the time I went to my first meeting I was ready for something different. I knew enough that if I went to ALANON and kept the same distance from everyone there as I had in the other areas of my life it wasn’t going to work. So, my very first meeting I made myself talk. I had no idea what to share, I know I did not stay on topic. I gave my name, shared my qualifier (the alcoholic in my life) and just let everything come out. The tears and raw emotion that followed I had never let myself feel. In my mind I could not believe I was sharing this with a room full of strangers. Oddly, this room full of strangers felt more like home than home did. Someone handed me a tissue box, many cried with me, all stayed silent (because there is not cross talking). Some leaned over and put their hands on my shoulder. While I shared a lengthy share filled with sobs some came and sat next to me and held my hand. They did not know me, had never met me. But they knew my story, the depth of my pain and my sorrow and they met me in it. I thank God for that meeting. I began to hope that day. God is the God of hope and I thought I was a very hopeful person, I did not give up easily because I hoped everything could work out. I learned through a family addiction meeting that there is healthy hope and unhealthy hope. Only healthy hope is based on reality, on truth. Unhealthy hope was part of the family addiction cycle. The things I hoped for were genuine and pure, but they were not realistic. My unhealthy hope kept me blind to the reality of my situation. This notion was mind boggling to me and it opened the door to a new understanding. Jesus is truth! All of my hope needed to rest in him not in those around me. Hope rooted in truth is healthy. What is the truth as the bottom of your hopes? When I began to read scripture it was for very selfish reasons. I wanted to feel better and I wanted the words in the Bible to make that happen. I desperately wanted healing from all the pain. In reality this is a long process, but a good one. God knows exactly where you are and has a purpose for you in it. When I began to understand this, I began to read scripture to learn about the God who loves me and who gave me the ability to hope. Open your bible and learn of the Jesus who loves you and who gives purpose to what you are going through. He will teach you how to hope rightly. Keep your feet rooted in scripture. Perhaps you start with the Gospels. I had a friend going through something similar. Her understanding of Jesus had been manipulated and twisted. She decided to read the Gospels and highlight everything Jesus said, she wanted to get to know the Jesus of the Bible, not the Jesus of the latest podcast or blogspot. I’ve spent a lot of time in Psalms and the Epistles reading and rereading. I have also participated in various groups aimed at reading the bible in a year. Be flexible, if you miss a day then you miss a day. Just get into the Word and stay there. If you fall out fall-back in. Your hope rests in the Jesus you find in scripture, meet him there. He is bigger than all that you are going through, I pray you find comfort in that.