I was sitting in a women’s recovery meeting last Monday morning. I turned around to look outside at the noise happening. Not eight-feet away, was a large excavator in the process of demolishing the condemned portable building right next to us.
It was loud, but necessary for a new, replacement building we are planning for the future. Tearing down walls, crushing mold-filled ceilings, clearing out the wreckage, stripping it down to the foundation.
My friend leaned over and said, “Heidi, I can hear your brain writing your blog for this week!”
I giggled because she was not wrong.
I couldn’t help but see the metaphor with recovery. There I was in the room next to all of this destruction, sitting in the safety of a recovery meeting. The comparison was undeniable. I remember walking into the first meeting ever 6,905 days ago feeling fear, but so ready to change and start over.
Yes, it took courage to walk through those doors the first time, but not half as much courage as it takes to do the work of sobriety—The demolition of old ways was required, the process of recovery, then restoration.
Demolition. Recovery. Restoration.
All necessary what was going on outside my window—and necessary for the room that I was in, too. Recovery from any addiction requires the demolition of old behaviors, ways of thinking and ideas we have about how we live in the world. The tearing down of walls. Looking inside and discovering moldy patterns that don’t serve us. Clearing the wreckage of our past, right down to the foundation.
Hard and painful work. I found this work was impossible to do alone. If I had been able to get sober on my own power, I would have done so. It’s why I continue to sit in the rooms of recovery meetings. To listen to how others face the hard and painful things and find a way through—together. Also impossible for me without God. I didn’t see a way through the mess until I admitted I was powerless and surrendered the wreckage to God. I asked Him to show me the way. Day by day—one messy-step-at-a-time.
Then, with God’s help, I was able to start the process of recovery, building from the foundation back up to restoration.
• The 12-steps are the concrete tools for reconstruction.
• Our sponsor is the general contractor, guiding our rebuild process.
• Other people in recovery in the rooms are the construction workers next to us wearing their own construction safety vests and hard hats.
• God is the shield for our hearts in prayer.
I love this life-long recovery process.
It takes work, but it’s worth it.
Won’t you join me?
“Come, let us return to the Lord. He has torn us to pieces but he will heal us; he has injured us but he will bind up our wounds.”
Hosea 6:1
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