Once you've realized that you've got
emotional wounds left over from your childhood and where they came
from, where do you go? I go to the Cross. In terms of the specific
problems that arise from the particular emotional wounds that govern
the way my flesh tends to act, I show myself responsible to God and
others using the framework of the Twelve Steps – the only viable
hope of healing that I have to offer anyone.
My Journey of Acceptance
As part of my training as a nurse, and
through classes that focused on the primary health problems of
adults, I spent time observing care in the clinical settings of drug
and alcohol rehab facilities. At the tender age of 19 and 20, this
experience taught me a some vital and very moving lessons about my
own nature and myself. One day, I was in South Philadelphia
observing a group therapy session with addicted teens, and as I
listened to their stories, I had a very dramatic epiphany. At the
end of the session, I asked the therapist if I could address the
group, and he graciously complied. I explained to those teens at an
inpatient detox ward that the only real difference that I could see
between us was that rather than turn to drugs or alcohol to deal with
my own pain, I turned to other things. I turned, primarily, to
performance (through work and school) and to religion.
It felt important for me to verbalize
that to the group, because I recognized that I was no different than
any of them. I'd suffered feelings and family issues and
disappointments and circumstances that were in some real way
identical to their own. I had an important epiphany about the nature
of my own development, and I think that God graciously allowed me to
have that experience so that I could feel comfortable finding help
later. The therapy session ended, and I was in the center of a mass
of weeping and hugging from those kids, and I knew that I'd learned a
very important life lesson that day. It put me in mind of the old
saying from The
Shadow: “Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?”
I certainly shared the same pain and what seemed to me at the time
like too many uncanny common experiences with these
young addicts. I had non-chemical addictions. Today, I am so
grateful to God for putting that powerful and defining moment into my
life, because I was quite ready and willing to admit the
similarities.
Jump forward with me a bit to the
weeks before my wedding. I vividly remember being told as a
five year old child that my wedding was the one day in my life that I
could do whatever and could have whatever I wanted. For reasons
related to my own dysfunction (!), I spent a long time looking
forward to that promised day, only to realize that it wasn't going to
turn out as I'd always hoped. My mother waged a war of control
against what seemed like my every effort and disapproved of so much,
even though I paid for all of the expenses myself (and even elements
of that became a struggle with her). I ended up weeping on the phone
to the wife of the minister who was coming into town to perform a
part of the ceremony, overwhelmed with the pain that was resulting
from what I thought was supposed to be the happiest time of my life.
She suggested a couple of books, and asked me if I could approach my
mother to ask her for her blessing. Gary
Smalley's books were quite popular at the time, and The
Blessing was one of his themes. When I expressed that this
was almost unthinkable, the pastor's wife and dear friend asked me if
I'd ever read or would consider reading Love
is a Choice. I didn't. I didn't want to think about being
one of those crazies on a talk show, whining and whimpering, and I
felt a great deal of disgust at the prospect of anything like that.
Jump again with me to my early
twenties and my first official experience as an assistant
nurse manager (so I could be on day shift with limited weekends!!!),
but a job that I learned later chewed up numbers of people and spit
them out, before I got there and after I left. After three weeks, I
wanted to resign and melted into a puddle of brokenness in my
supervisor's office, brutally aware of how limited I really was, at
the end of myself and in the face of so much human need. Long story
short, I went straight away to read Love
is a Choice at her
recommendation. Shortly thereafter, I read Stoop's
transforming book, but I also learned through
another book that like the majority of people who work in helping
professions, more than 90% of nurses classified as “dysfunctional”
(as it was associated with addiction) and also had high degrees of
obsessive-compulsive disorder. I did qualify for a spot on a talk
show couch at that point, and I could not deny it. Not with hard
research in front of me, and especially not without discounting the
precious wisdom of that pastor's wife and the powerful experiences
I'd had training as a nurse. The puzzle pieces started coming
together, and though difficult, I saw answers to the problems that I
struggled with so desperately for so long. I didn't like the
picture, but the fact that there was a workable picture filled me
with hope and freed me from condemnation.
At this same time, I still felt very
uncomfortable when people devalued my religious ideas, believing
wrongly that their reactions made more of a statement about them that
they did about me. (This is no longer the case, but I lived it
then.) I was also very uncomfortable with the anti-religion bias
held by many in the field of mental health, and I struggled with this
material as I completed my training in nursing. Trying to figure out
how my religious beliefs fit into the practical needs of patients
with mental health disorders challenged that very dogmatic position
that I learned while growing up in an uptight and easily intimidated
quadrant of evangelical Christianity. This was, of course,
compounded by my own emotional developmental deficits, the subject of
this series of posts. I lived as a “victim of circumstance” by
an external locus of control, gauging my worth and peace based on the
opinions of others.
On my very first day working as a
volunteer at a Crisis Pregnancy Center (after I left my few months at
that nurse-devouring, impossible job!), the husband of the
woman training me came in, and pretty much took over that day. (CPC
work was my alternative to the then very active Randall
Terry who was in the throws of getting thrown in jail for his
abortion clinic protesting.) I sat back and watched this woman's
husband talk with a couple of high school girls who wandered in after
school. He was a resident, a physician, in the psychiatry program at
a local hospital, and I struck up a conversation with him. I
approached the topic with my discomfort in tow, and as a Christian,
this man dramatically changed my outlook. When I asked how he could
cope with the anti-Christian bias and the evolutionary premise in
that particular area of medicine, he rocked my world. He said that
he focused on the Christian message of the Twelve Steps, and from
that vantage, he found a powerful place to not only make sense of
things, but found a platform for Christian ministry within the
profession. Here again was another puzzle piece that fit right into
my picture. The Christian texts on the subject of recovery and
codependency all boil down to a central message of hope based on a
quote from a written prayer of Reinhold
Neibuhr:
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 difference the one from the other.
Living one day at a time, enjoying one moment at a time, accepting hardship as the pathway to peace. Taking, as Jesus did, this sinful world as it is – not as I would have it. Trusting that You will make all things right, if I surrender to your will. So that I might be reasonably happy in this life, and supremely happy with you forever in the next.
Amen
Ever hear of the duck test? If it
walks like a duck, talks like a duck, and looks like one, then it's a
duck. I could not deny that I was unavoidably dysfunctional, a
message that my life repeated and repeated, in grace and love. Who
knows what dysfunction lurks in the hearts of men? I saw or at least
began to accept myself in this way, just as I think that Paul saw
himself as the chief of sinners. And my work of healing was
definitely not yet complete.
The Hope of All Healing
I could try to reinvent the wheel,
writing a history of the development of the Twelve Steps, but I will
let you do some of that exploration on your own. (I've already
listed many resources.) I could also go into a defense of the Twelve
Steps, because I understand that some Christians say that they are
flawed because they recommend starting from where you are – coming
to God as you understand Him. They are offended that in order to
help people start from where they are, they refer to God as a
less-defined “Higher Power.” I hear that some claim that this is
blasphemy, because we should meet God where He is – that we must go
to Him, addressing Him in the most appropriate way (though many who
start the journey are very unacquainted with Him, even by name). Not
everyone has that knowledge, so they are encouraged to start the
journey honestly from where they find themselves. (I'm no longer too
uptight or overly concerned with how other people put things into
perspective when it comes to starting the journey in this sense. I'm
too overwhelmed with my own limitations, shall we say.)
All I can tell you is that I believe
and know that He pulled me out of the miry clay, and I don't think
that I am at all capable of getting to Him without his loving
kindness and intervention. But I believe that I know who He is, and
I a responsible for myself and focus on my own approach. I do that
through the approach laid out in the Bible.
That is really the core of all that I
have to offer to anyone as a message of hope, when you strip away the
details. God is God, and we are not. And as I understand God from
my vantage, He is pretty specific about His Name, identity, and
character. We must acknowledge our limitations and ascribe to God
the power that is only His, and I believe that this is not fully
possible without believing in and confessing faith in Jesus the
Messiah. I am powerless and weak, but in Him and through His help, I
become whole and strong. And I am on a lifelong journey of desire to
know Him in ways most clear, starting from where I am and how I
understand Him. Along the way and through that devotion, He
transforms me into His image, day by day. My life has been a process
of knowing Him better, developing the right opinion of Him and of all
things about Him, starting from where I am. Only He can deliver us
from shame and only He can fill us.
Shame of Sin
Essentially, the message of dysfunction
boils down to original sin, and we must acknowledge that we are not
God and that He is. All of our shame ultimately traces back to our
shame that we are not like Him but desire to be. Isn't that the
condition of everyone? Doesn't that make us all "dysfunctional?"
If you happen to be reading here and
are an atheist or have huge problems with God and how you fit with
the concept of a “Higher Power,” you'll have to figure out how to
put that into perspective. I offer what I have to encourage people,
and this is the only meaning that I find remotely satisfying that
helps me make sense of things in my life. I don't offer this message
as one of condemnation – I offer it because it is all I have to
give. Everyone has to find the glue that holds their lives together
in a meaningful way, allowing them to live a meaningful life. I hope
that all at least find a way to live a meaningful life, and that is
the work of every individual. This is message is the fruit of mine.
As mentioned in previous posts, the
National Association for
Christian Recovery offers much wisdom on this topic, in addition
to other
resources presented here. Their site features a very
user-friendly search engine, and near the bottom right hand of their
home page in the right hand sidebar, they also list links to other
Christian organizations (Ministry Partners) that also present the
message of recovery. Between the resource list and these links, you
can find more help and guidance than I could ever begin to provide.
I hope that all these things will be a help to you on your journey.
The Twelve Steps of
Recovery
- We admitted we were powerless over our separation from God—that our lives had become unmanageable. (Romans 7:18)
- We came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. (Philippians 2:13)
- We made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God, as we understood Him. (Romans 12:1)
- We made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves. (Lamentations 3:40)
- We admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs. (James 5:16)
- We were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character. (James 4:10)
- We humbly asked him to remove our shortcomings. (I John 1:9)
- We made a list of all persons we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all. (Luke 6:31)
- We made direct amends to such people whenever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others. (Matthew 5:23-24)
- We continued to take personal inventory when we were wrong and promptly admitted it. (1 Corinthians 10:12)
- We sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will and for the power to carry that out. (Colossians 3:16)
- Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to others, and to practice these principles in all our affairs. (Galatians 6:1)
