THE PATH TO RECOVERY

Stepping onto the path to recovery begins with surrender, but it does not end there. It requires honesty, acceptance, forgiveness, and perseverance. It’s a process; a journey we will be on for the rest of our lives.

The path to recovery begins with surrender. 

First, we have to surrender. We can’t begin our journey if we don’t.

To begin healing, we have to first let go of the control we think we have. Alcoholism, addiction, and eating disorders are not things we control. They are in fact, controlling us. 

When we’re adrift in our addiction, everything revolves around us. Unfortunately, that also means it revolves around our addiction too. We constantly feed it. The next drink, the next hit, and the next interaction with food is always at the forefront of our minds. We’re enslaved by it. Because of that, all the other areas of our lives, including our relationships, fall by the wayside. 

We leave a lot of damage in our wake. And for the most part, we’re either blissfully unaware of it, or we simply ignore it because our compulsions and desires override everything else.

The lie we continually tell ourselves is that we can stop anytime. We can’t. What’s more, we won’t, not until we surrender.

Contrary to what the world says, surrendering is not giving up, rather it’s letting go. 

When we surrender, we let go of everything. 

In letting go, we open ourselves to the vulnerability we’ve been so afraid of. We open ourselves to letting go of the stories we’ve clung to that perpetuate the cycle and allow us to justify our behavior. 

We’re afraid of that because it means letting go of our control over the narrative. Without all my pain who am I? Our greatest fear is that we are nothing. That’s the biggest lie of all.

By surrendering, we also open ourselves to healing. Without surrender, we cannot step on the path to recovery and hope to heal.

How do we know when it’s time to surrender? 

I can’t answer that for anyone but myself. For me, it was the moment I truly believed that anything was better than the hell I was living in, even death. I was so tired. It was a soul-crushing, spirit-draining, bone-deep weariness. I had nothing left. 

It was the moment I hit bottom. I’d heard that phrase many times before. Now, I knew exactly what it meant. And it was terrifying. There was nowhere for me to go. I’d burned every bridge and broken every promise. I existed in isolation and darkness.

It was the moment I went to my knees. Finally. That’s where God found me. I felt Him. I grabbed onto His presence within me and let go of everything else. I had no other choice. His was the only light I could see.

That’s what surrender is. It’s letting go. 

Letting go because we finally know that someone so much greater than ourselves is holding us. A power greater than our addictions. And greater than the shame, guilt, and darkness that has ruled our lives because of them. 

There is only one greater power, and that is God. And when I surrendered myself, my past, present, and future to His keeping, the change was immediate. It was both that hard and that easy. 

Surrender sets us on the path to recovery. We have to work to stay there. And that requires complete honesty.

As we move down the path to recovery, honesty is vital. It’s also humbling. 

Without an earnest desire to move forward with honesty, we sabotage our path to recovery before we’ve even begun. 

Once the fog we’ve been existing in begins to clear, we have to take a long, hard, and brutally honest look at ourselves. It’s not pretty, but it’s necessary. Let’s face it, we have not been honest with ourselves or with others for a long time, if ever. 

When I saw myself clearly for the first time, I didn’t like what I saw. Not one bit. In the stark light of day, without the haze of alcohol, I finally saw what others had been seeing for a long time. I was a hollow, broken, shell. There was nothing remotely healthy about me. I didn’t recognize the woman looking back at me in the mirror.

What’s more, I didn’t know her either. I was covered in so many layers of the facade I’d constructed for the better part of my life. Peeling off the layers was painful, but God was beside me increasing my strength and upholding me when I faltered.

The moment I surrendered, I asked God to show me the way. He did. 

He showed me the fallacy of my thoughts and the destruction in my choices, my actions, and my sins.

For so long, I’d blamed everyone and everything around me for my misery. What’s more, I’d crafted all of it as an excuse to absolve me of any responsibility for it. With the new perspective God provided me came a pathway out of the darkness. I could be free from the vicious cycle of alcoholism and my eating disorder. I could heal. But only through honesty and trust in God. 

Each day I prayed for enlightenment. I prayed for wisdom. Mostly, I prayed for the courage to continue. It was a moment-to-moment thing. Many times, I wanted to retreat into the fog. No one likes to see themselves, really see themselves, in all their broken ugliness. It’s raw and overwhelming. It makes us vulnerable. But we have to do it.

In the beginning, I was like a small child, learning to walk. I fell more than I advanced. But I continued through the pain of discovering myself, warts and all. 

JN Fenwick

What God planted within me was the desire to succeed. 

I knew the only way to do that was to move through the darkness. I could no longer afford complacency or ignorance. I had to approach each step with honesty and earnestness. I had to keep my heart and eyes wide open and focused above me. I had no other choice.

Without surrender, we are lost. Without honesty, we will continue to be enslaved by our weaknesses. We will continue to blame others for our pain. Most of all, we will continue to use it as an excuse to remain in darkness.

Once we see ourselves, really see ourselves, in the honest light of day, we can acknowledge our pain and our role in creating and perpetuating it. We are then ready to continue down the path to recovery toward acceptance.

Without acceptance, there can be no change.

The path to recovery often feels like moving through the stages of grief. Some of the steps seem familiar. Acceptance is one of them. 

For so long we’ve been struggling in darkness. Fighting demons. Resisting change. Refusing help. We’ve been shackled to our addiction and all the anger, torment, and pain that comes with it. At times we fight it tooth and nail, but it always wins. We don’t know peace because we haven’t experienced the power of acceptance.

Acceptance is the opposite of resistance. Rather than continuing to push against a brick wall we cannot hope to move, we simply stop. We relinquish our need to move the wall. Instead, we accept its existence. We accept our limitation: we cannot go through it. Only then do we finally move around it.

It’s the same with the circumstances that make up our lives. Some will be good, others will be hard. That’s the nature of life and the balance. We can choose to fight against it, or we can choose to accept it. Only one of those leads to peace.

When we accept what is rather than resisting it, we move into a state of peace. A place where we can finally breathe. 

That’s the beauty and the power of acceptance. It immediately transforms our perspective. It places us in a mindset where we can let go of our expectations and acknowledge our limitations. We are then able to acknowledge the repercussions of our choices and our behaviors without judgment. 

We see all the ugly, but we don’t judge it. We simply accept it for what it is. 

And what is it? It’s everything it took to bring us here. When we accept that, the darkness loses its power over us and we begin to heal.

Serenity comes from acceptance. 

The moment I surrendered I stopped fighting. With honesty came a clear perspective. With acceptance came serenity.

It wasn’t easy letting go of my story; my identity. After all, everything, both good and bad, that happened in my life, was me. At least that’s what I’d believed.

What I’d failed to understand was that by holding so tightly to my story I’d locked myself in a doorless cage. Inside with me were all the pain, anger, resentment, guilt, shame, and animosity I couldn’t let go of. I was the victim and every choice I made was because of that. Worse, my story justified those choices. And I’d made horrible ones.

By choosing to hold so tightly to that identity, I was also choosing pain and suffering. I was choosing addiction. I was choosing to carry it all. Once my eyes and heart were opened, the truth became clear. I had to accept my past because I could not change it. 

Those choices had already been made. Those deeds had already been done. Those years were already lived. There was absolutely nothing I could do to change that.

What I could change were my choices moving forward.

This realization was profound, and freeing. I began praying for the courage to choose the right as God revealed it to me.

That’s the second part of the Serenity Prayer, asking for “the courage to change the things we can.”

We can’t change the past or the choices we’ve already made. We can’t take back the hurts we’ve inflicted or the ones inflicted upon us. We can’t change other people. There’s so much we cannot change.

Through acceptance, we learn what we can change. The list is not a long one. It’s very short. The only thing we have the power to change is ourselves. Throughout my journey down the path to recovery, knowing that has made the biggest difference.

John 8:32 tells us, “And you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” It does. Because when we know the truth, lies become so much easier to recognize. Especially the ones we’ve been telling ourselves. 

The final part of the Serenity Prayer is a petition for wisdom; “the wisdom to know the difference.”

At this point in my journey, I became fully aware that God had always been there. I could look back and see all the times He’d reached for me. 

My trials were not punishments. Nor were they meant to destroy me. They were meant to draw me closer to Him. They were opportunities to seek Him and grow in faith. I missed those opportunities because I could not get out of my way. Because of that not only did I suffer, but I was also a source of suffering for others.

Praying for wisdom is part of growing in strength and moving forward with conviction.

It’s the trials we’ve endured that have opened us to the opportunity to gain wisdom. From those trials, we finally recognize the lessons we were meant to learn. 

That’s when we’re able to make the distinction between what we can and cannot control. That is wisdom. And we have to continually seek it and apply it to our lives and recovery. 

Without the wisdom to know the difference, we’ll never take responsibility for our choices or our actions. Taking responsibility for them means accepting them, understanding we cannot change them, but being willing to seek forgiveness anyway. 

If we can’t do that, we’ll never be able to forgive. Not ourselves. Not others. And without forgiveness, we’ll never be free.

Forgiveness opens the door to freedom.

For so long we’ve been locked in a cage without a door. We’ve been holding tightly to the identity we’ve created. This also means that all the pain, anger, and fear that make up our story is stuck inside with us. 

To break free of that cage we have to forgive. Forgiveness is not about others. It’s about ourselves. When we move into a state of forgiveness we can free ourselves from the cage. We are then able to truly relinquish the identity that has kept us there.

We see the fallacy of our thinking and we understand the imperative in Matthew 6:14, “For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.” 

That includes forgiving ourselves. Because truly, it is we who persecute ourselves more than anyone else ever could. 

We cannot begin to forgive ourselves until we truly forgive those who have hurt us, whether real or perceived. That’s a hard thing for us because it requires that we once again relinquish control of our narrative. 

We can no longer afford to hold on to our anger. If we do, we’ll remain in that doorless cage. Whether the individuals who’ve hurt us ever know it or not, we have to forgive them. With our whole hearts. Only then can we begin to forgive ourselves. Moreover, it’s only then that we can seek forgiveness from those we have wronged.

Once I finally understood that my desire to continue down the path to recovery grew stronger. 

There were so many people locked in my doorless cage with me. Going back to my childhood. I’d coveted those wrongs because they served me. In serving me, they served my addiction. 

I held tightly to them because without them I feared I was nothing. There’s that lie again, the one that keeps us locked in that cage and that feeds our addiction.

The truth is, I was never nothing. I had just covered myself, my true self, the one I was created to be, with so many destructive layers. My facade was my identity. And up until the moment I’d surrendered, everything I did was in service to maintaining it.

With forgiveness came relinquishing. Peeling off all those layers. With every discarded layer emerged the person I was created to be. I was open to God’s word and to His plan for my life, rather than my own. I was filled with His light rather than darkness. I was able to trust in His purpose for me. I was able to forgive and accept forgiveness. 

It was then that I experienced freedom for the first time. It was powerful and beautiful. I never wanted to be confined in that cage again. From that moment on, I prayed for perseverance.

Praying for perseverance and the strength to not only endure but to act, is something we’ll continually do.

If we’re faithful and obedient to God’s will, we’ll remain on the path to recovery for the rest of our lives.

Let’s face it, we’ll never be able to drink or use again. At first, that seems unimaginable. In reality, it’s not. It’s necessary.

Once I fully accepted this as fact, the path before me became so clear. I couldn’t escape the trials and tribulations that are part of this life, but I could choose not to give in to my fears and weakness. Instead, I could choose to accept them when they came, persevere through them, learn from them, and grow in faith and strength. 

The choice was mine.

 My first test came mere months into my recovery journey. And it was a doozy.

My home was hit by a powerful category 5 hurricane. Chaos and destruction were all around me. The most basic comforts, electricity, water, and connection with the outside world were gone. 

The urge to escape was a powerful one. 

Instead, I chose to trust in God rather than lean on my feeble understanding. Each time the urge overtook me, I prayed for the strength to endure. As He had promised, God provided it. He guided me through the storm and the aftermath. He protected my sobriety. He strengthened my desire to firmly remain on my path to recovery. 

In choosing trust and leaning on faith, I continued to heal despite the turmoil happening all around me. Moreover, my broken relationships slowly began to heal as well. My loved ones could see the change in me. 

They witnessed through my actions, rather than through my words, which meant little by this time, that the change was real. 

Recovery isn’t a destination, it’s a journey. 

When we finally step onto the path to recovery, with God’s help, we’ll remain on it for the rest of our lives. Time and again we’ll be asked to choose between:

• Surrender and control.
• Honesty and ignorance.
• Acceptance and resistance.
• Forgiveness and resentment.
• Perseverance and escape.

Because we will be tested. We will continue to experience pain and grief in this life. However, we do not have to hold on to our trials or turn them into more suffering. We can instead, lean on faith rather than giving into fear.  

We can relinquish it to God. In doing so, we can be certain of this: On the journey, God will fight for us and guide us. He will strengthen and protect us. He will show us the way. And through Him, we can and will endure. What’s more, we will thrive.

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© JN Fenwick | mothjournal14 | Image from Adobe Stock Images and licensed for use