This thing called Recovery

Recovery is an odd term — one that I resisted because it didn’t seem to suit me.  It seemed unfamiliar and abstract, like I couldn’t wrap my mind around it.  As my husband began his journey into recovery seven years ago, I supported him.  But it wasn’t my journey.  He is an addict — and I wasn’t sure that recovery was relevant to me.

Back then we took a mediocre walk in recovery. It was barely beginning, like dipping our toes in the water and calling it a swim.  But it was all we knew at the time.  He went to meetings once a week, unless a family event for one of our kids took priority. As for me, I really had no understanding of what recovery meant.

I tend to think long, deep, and slow.  It takes awhile for something to sink in for me to get it.  It comes in layers.  It starts off in a distant abstract thought, and then it hones in to something I can make sense of.  Recovery for me was like that.

Today I’m drawn to recovery for what it means to me.  Realizing that my old self was unhealthy, it is living into something new. This process of growth takes time.  Often we don’t even know what is unhealthy if it is all we ever knew.  The old ways don’t work and I finally see that.

Recovery is honesty.  It is allowing myself to feel my feelings and embrace my humanity.

Recovery is self awareness.  It is moving away from denial and avoidance, into reality.

Recovery is self affirming instead of self negating.  It is healthy self care and setting boundaries.

Recovery is about connection instead of isolation.  It is cultivating safe and supportive relationships for our growth.

Recovery is one day at a time living.  It is cherishing today and investing my life well.

Recovery gives me a path toward healing and growth.  It gives me steps to take to ground my footing.  It brings me to a new place where I can thrive.  I can flourish.  Fully alive.

Daily Steps

I continually wrestle and battle with grace.  My humanity comes to the surface, longing for acceptance and welcome.  My shame batters it and beats it down.  Pressure comes as a familiar foe.

I have to intentionally plant my heart in hope.  I’m surrounded by distress and anxiety, fears that tempt to encroach me.  One by one, I have to set them aside. Choose Hope.  Life.  Healing. Growth.

Recovery comes in the moments.  The daily steps.  The choices we make in how to frame the opportunity before us.

Perhaps the ongoing trauma feels so heavy, so life threatening, that we just want out. Internal stress pile up.  No end in sight and endurance chokes.  Who can survive?

I go back, again and again.  Daily.  In those moments,  I get grounded in truth and light and perspective.  Solid footing.  Without it, the storm would destroy me.

Julia Cameron writes of the grace that needs to accompany our journey.

…it is necessary to go gently and slowly.  What we are after here is the healing of old wounds — not the creation of new ones…. Progress not perfection…

Too far, too fast, and we can undo ourselves.

Grace beckons me to come and rest.  Be still here.

Allow the calm to soothe my spirit.  There is purpose in timing.

Accept that where I am is okay. This step. This one small step is significant.

Slow down.  Live just this moment, and live it well.

 

Tender Mercies

I’m just coming through a difficult week.  Things of the heart that were hitting me, one after the other, repeatedly.

I’m grateful for the tender mercies that soothe a hurting heart.  God is tenderhearted with our pain.  He is compassionate with our suffering.  He is comforting with our weariness.

I’m grateful for the tool box of things I’m learning from recovery.  Things in my healing that keep me taking the next step, paying attention to what I’m feeling and what I need.

I’m learning to nurture myself and my children well.  Life is harsh enough.  We need a safe refuge, a place to come home to, embraced with warmth and welcome.

Before you know it, a sense of God’s wholeness, everything coming together for good, will come and settle you down….

God knows our hearts and God understands our healing needs. God understands the good that is waiting around the corner for us, the good that we can’t see yet…

Later…I see the wisdom. I see the big plan, the one not limited by my vision. Then I thank God, truly thank God for the way things worked out. Often I thank God for not letting things work out the way I wanted. We do not know the whole picture, not yet.

Soothed by healing.  Inspired by growth. Refreshed by gratitude.

Growing in Grace

The words don’t fall easily off my fingertips.  I am bewildered.  My heart is heavy in pain.

Oh how a battle stirs my soul….. I’m being tossed about with the weight, the pressure and anxiety, and continually trying to hone it back into serenity, peace, firm footing, getting grounded, gathering hope …..  candle lit, music in my headphones, writing some quotes in my serenity journal — and I can still hear life’s noise in the background, ongoing disruptions.

My heart is churning about so many things it is hard to write.  But I’m here.  Willing.

God is teaching me to wait. To wait on Him. To wait for His timing. To trust what He is teaching us, and what He is leading us to, and preparing us for.

And yet, my heart bleeds.  It cries out for the redemption that is promised.  For rescue.

Praise be to the Lord, the God of Israel, because he has come to his people and redeemed them. He has set them free. He has raised up a mighty savior for us — he has established for us a saving power in the house of his servant David just as he promised! Luke 1:68-70

My heart cries out.  Enough, Lord!  Mercy!  I’m ready for you to redeem this mess.

But I’m sitting with it.  I’m acknowledging my heartfelt needs.  My confusion and wrestling and churning.  I’m giving it to him.  I’m pouring out my soul with safe hearts that can hear me.

This is real life.  Real faith.  Triumph in adversity.

For as much as life has stormed hard, a hurricane of the soul, here we are.  Living, growing, being.  In the midst of it.

“growing in grace through the very adversity that was meant to harm you.”

No matter what harm festers and storms around me, God brings it for good.  Scripture teaches us all things….  All things, all circumstances, all fears and frustrations, can be worked together for good.  God can take it all and use it all.

I am not in denial.  I’m not avoiding or pretending.  I’m not medicating the pain with addiction.

Sometimes life feels raw, and anxiety doesn’t just disappear because I trust God or recite scripture.  I can’t belittle my experience or make it hurt less. But I can know God is here.  With me.

God comes.  He enters in.

He is not put off by the mess.  He touches pain.

 

Gather Hope

How do we live into hope?  How do we unpack such a thing in our hearts?

It is something we are reaching for that hasn’t come yet.  It is looking, watching, and waiting.

It is not knowing when, or how.  Keeping our hearts expectant, alive, and fresh with wonder.  Even when some days it hurts to lift our head.

It is living with more ambiguity than answers.  Accepting uncomfortable, because that’s the reality of where we are.  Planting our faith in this moment, to see God here.

It is courage to know this story hasn’t been fully written.  There is more to come.  I have yet to see, but it is coming.

How do we hold onto this longing in our hearts — this thing that keeps us walking forward — when our storm hasn’t passed and our spirit wears thin?  Because for anyone willing to admit it, life can be really, really hard.  And if you’re walking that, it’s painful.

I’ve lived enough trauma, walked enough healing, to have some idea of how to go through.  There are no simple formulas, but I’m grateful for this journey: while it has been seasoned with pain, it has also grown wisdom.

I want to offer one glimmer of inspiration that God has given me over many seasons and years of pain.  Gather hope.

You actually have to gather it.  Just like the Israelites had to leave their tent each morning to pick up the manna God provided for that day.  Gather hope.  Surround yourself with encouragement and truth.

I gather quotes, scriptures, songs, and reread them over and over until they sink down deep into my soul.  I gather clippings from emails, books I’m reading, facebook and twitter.  I make playlists with songs that encourage me for that season.  I light candles, turn on lamps, and constantly bring myself back to hope.

Things will resolve and unfold over time.  But as we wrestled with how hard it is to wait in recent posts, we have to cultivate hope:

God’s wait is so purposeful.  He is accomplishing transformation in our hearts that we can’t yet fully see.  He is orchestrating details for what will unfold next. But we’ve got to give him time.

It’s a one step at a time kind of progress.  Perhaps slow at times, but I’m realizing slow isn’t a bad thing.  It is the time you give to something of quality.  Something that matters.  Something deep. And how you get there is just one moment, or one day, at a time…  and then the next.

What is hope if you already have the answer and the clarity?  Where is the wrestling and growth in that?  We hurt, we stretch, we get uncomfortable….but our lives are transformed there.

We will come through different than when we began.  Stronger.  Healthier.  Deeper.  More whole.  If we invest well.

So as we wait, as our hearts long for something yet unseen, let’s hold onto the gifts God gives us along the way. Gather them up.  It will sustain us to walk another day.

(If you want to follow me on twitter or facebook, I attempt to post words that bring life, faith, and hope.  I’d be honored for you to join me in that journey.)

A Willing Sacrifice

I’ve been wrestling with time.  I cannot master it.  It is a gift given in the moments, but I cannot control it and make it go faster or slower. I can only commit to living it well.  Protect it by blocking out distractions.  Being present with now, for what God has for me here.

It is so hard to give something to God when it ultimately makes us uncomfortable.  Can we willingly give up and surrender things that we don’t like…..specifically, God’s timing?

Can we live in places that are for our benefit, our healing, or our growth, if we would prefer not to be there?  Maybe this place stirs up pain, or unresolved places without answers, or brings us work to do within ourselves.  “Outside our comfort zones” is an understatement.  It stretches us far beyond ourselves.

We have past the point of the year mark where Todd last had a job.  The only clarity I found in prayer was that healing had to come first, then the job.  That became the only path we knew to follow.

God has led us forward, one step at a time, to spacious places of healing.  It has involved rehab, therapy, marriage counseling, and more therapy.  It has connected us with support groups, recovery, studying countless books, and dealing with our stuff.  It has taken us deeper with God and deeper with ourselves.

You would think that we could have the open door that I’ve prayed for unceasingly.

But God has said, not yet.

I’ve been willing to share our story for the greater good of those who might need someone who understands their journey.  For God to be glorified in our mess.  For hurting hearts to be reached.

A friend shared with me about a woman deeply struggling in her marriage.  I felt God give me this post for her, and for others.  I thought about the ones who are new at the two different support groups I attend.  I see the pain in their eyes and I feel it in my own heart.

Just newly raw, starting out on the journey of recovery.  My heart is deeply tender and compassionate for them.  My own story is still so fresh.

I wonder if I could open my own journey and show you the hope that Jesus has put there.  It doesn’t come from shallow platitudes, easy answers, or distant indifference.  It comes from my journey through the pain.

My heart is overflowing with hope.  Sometimes — and I remember the feeling well — we have to borrow hope from others.  We need them to believe for us.  We need them to help us hang on, because on our own we are too overwhelmed.

The surroundings I am in are critical to get this.  Coming from a place where my own prayers are still waiting.  Where my circumstances are uncomfortable, and still painful at times.  And even here, even now, there is hope.

God’s wait is so purposeful.  He is accomplishing transformation in our hearts that we can’t yet fully see.  He is orchestrating details for what will unfold next. But we’ve got to give him time.

There is hope.  Wait it out.  Give him time.

We can’t skip today’s work because it prepares us for tomorrow.  We want to rush out of the pain, rush past the work, but we will miss something crucial.

Perhaps your answer hasn’t come yet.  Your marriage hasn’t fully healed.  Neither has mine.  But I can live today, and give God my willing sacrifice.  Yielding my timing for his.

He has given me just a taste of the joy that’s coming.  Enough to know that there is greater joy ahead than any pain or trial we’ve had to walk.  We don’t have to walk alone.  We can do this.  We can do hard.

 

 

 

Honest Humanity

I have had incredible joy in the past few days.  So much so, that it just bubbled over in me as I arrived at my support group on Thursday night.  I was so elated, it was overflowing.  One of the women asked me to share my story of what brought me such joy.

I didn’t even realize it at first.  In fact, I was caught off guard and speechless.  How could I even pin point it?  It wasn’t until I started sharing that it became so clear.  Something in this day was different.

A very familiar situation had happened earlier that day.  An invitation to test if I was going to respond the same old way.  Enter onto the scene a marked step of growth:  a firm boundary set.  A completely different outcome.  Not in the situation, but in me.

I am being made new.

It’s a one step at a time kind of progress.  Perhaps slow at times, but I’m realizing slow isn’t a bad thing.  It is the time you give to something of quality.  Something that matters.  Something deep.  And how you get there is just one moment, or one day, at a time…  and then the next.

My friend said she hoped I bring the joy back next week.  I laughed and said “no promises, but I can give you this:  I will be honest.”

This morning I saw a precious friend in church who was glad for my writing.  She said it was honest.  Then she said, “People don’t like honest.  Keep doing it.”  I smiled.  So true that honesty can make people uncomfortable.  But we need more of it.  And I have the most respect for people who speak the hard truth.

Anyone who hasn’t faced their own honest humanity will always be uncomfortable when they are confronted by it.

So let me set a boundary and say this.  I promise to be honest.  Being uncomfortable isn’t a bad thing.  It is an opportunity to explore growth.  In fact, if something stirs us up inside, it is worth exploring.

I have been stirred up, trying to sort through and untangle some difficult things.  I felt tripped up.  Stuck. And then suddenly, it shifts.

I have been utterly amazed at how it unfolds like an epiphany.  Sudden freedom.  Relief.  Growth.

Seeing the power of boundaries was like that.  Hard work paying off.  Progress.  The pieces of my puzzle coming together, solidifying what I’m learning, and taking me to a better place.

 

Small Steps

I am recovering perfectionist.

I’ve learned enough about myself to know I wasn’t attempting to put on appearances, although I had been raised to do so.  It was more about calming my environment, so that I could ultimately soothe my inner world.  It gave me something to delight in, having things in order and done with gusto and fine attention to detail.

The problem was, it was killing me.

I have come to realize that I had an enormous pile up of pressure.  Decades of demands I have pushed on myself.  Endlessly, tirelessly, expecting more from myself.  Until I couldn’t do anymore.

Suddenly what my soul hungered for was Grace.  Humanity.  Limits.  Recovery.

When you are that desperate, that starved, something has got to change.  And praise God, it has.  An entire shift in my thinking.  A welcome embrace of my own humanity.  Learning less pressure and more grace.  And moving into this new reality, this recovery, I just might be able to live and not die.

I’ve learned it comes in small steps.  One decision, one moment at a time.  A shift in thinking that I don’t have to push harder.  If I kept up the pressure, I’d either explode or collapse.  No longer.  Instead, every small thing I do helps.

Out with the old, in with the new.  We took some Christmas money and I redecorated our kitchen with the smallest touches.

This isn’t where I hung them, but these are the simple daily affirmations that greet me.  I have a few fresh containers for napkins and cooking utensils, a new five dollar rug for under the kitchen sink, a place for fresh fruit.  You would think I have a whole new house, it  feels so good.

Sometimes we feel bound up in fear.  Things feel so desperately hopeless that we get stuck.  If you have battled depression, as I have, it can be empowering to hear how much a small step can help forward motion.

“Over time these small steps lead toward recovery.”

No matter how hard the task may seem, no matter how much you hope to accomplish….or for me — how many books I hope to read and study and sit with (for more hours in the day than what I’m given)….you can do something.

As Jon Allen writes, “You still have some energy and some motivation — at least some of the time.  

We must distinguish between difficult and impossible.  Hope lies in the difference.”

I learned many powerful things through The Meadows this past year.  My husband spent ten weeks in rehab there, and I was deeply blessed to support him through family week.  I spent an additional week working on trauma at Survivors Week.  I highly recommend this place.  God has profoundly used The Meadows to change our lives.

One thing that my therapist at The Meadows taught me was about moderation.  Recovery is a life of balance and moderation.  To be healthy, to have balance, to live in moderation, you often only need to take a few steps toward the middle.  Maybe your life has been out of kilter, on some unhealthy extreme.  Healing is not in moving completely in the opposite direction, or you would be off balance again.

Just take a few steps towards health.

It dawned on me in a life changing way.  Even a few steps of redirection can be the moderation and adjustment I need.  Reflecting on each adjustment, each step, I realized the power it holds.  This very process will lead to transformation.

Alcoholics Anonymous has a saying: Progress not perfection.  Take the next right step.  (Ahhh.  I sit back and smile.)  And to think we don’t have to kill ourselves with the pressure, and our life can really change.

Progress.  That’s something I can live into.