A Journey of Repentance
One of my favorite television shows wrapped up its final episode this past month on CBS after eight seasons. Mom, which I will be lamenting over for some time, highlighted a group of women supporting one another through sobriety, one step one day at a time. The cast brought a heavy, needed dose of humor and humanity to the real-life struggles that come with shadowboxing the demons of addiction, facing consequences, and slogging toward creating a new life. It was a masterful show that I felt a deep kinship with. Having spent more than ten years in my own recovery, I could relate well to the ladies on the show. They spoke my language. While living in Western Michigan in recent years, I was privileged to be a member of and contributor to a Celebrate Recovery gathering. The 12-Step, Christ Centered recovery program spans the globe as a resource and community that does not focus solely on those battling the standard fare that comes to mind when many people think of addictions. It isn’t all about rock bottoms or clinical interventions, but instead serves as an open invitation for whosoever is committed to addressing their “stuff” or, what we in CR define as, their “hurts, habits, and hang-ups.”
Leslie Johnson describes in The Recovering: Intoxication and Its Aftermath putting a down payment on the kind of life she wanted to live. Similarly, I learned the hard way that re-imaging and re-prioritizing life to better reflect my identity, who I am and what God created me for, though needed, was not an overnight, instant pot project. It remains a tedious battle with competing internal voices and resistance than external expectations. My life embodies many contradictions amidst desires that can be as inconsistent as they are harsh or harmful. I want to fill my heart with glee, on the one hand, yet often am ensnared in self-inflicted, needless distress. I cherish the idea of being married for 60 years, on the one hand, but struggle with a selfish streak that makes coupling with my husband tough. Sober-mindedness and truth are keys to peace, and I know that, yet at times still cast wisdom aside, gravitating towards excess and no-holds-barred living.
Redemption and recovery, however, are about divesting myself of delusions. I am not above God’s Word and the leadership of the Holy Spirit, nor am I am exception, some anomaly as a super strong woman who can endure well without needing anyone for anything. This means I must remain in the practice of letting go of the things that I would rather cling to in my flesh or deny outright despite the clear evidence before me. Paul’s personal confession in Romans 7: 14-25 signifies the sin problem we all share. He relishes in God’s law and is disgusted with his own sin, and that’s a good thing—to be increasingly conscious of and repulsed by the stench of the isms and idols, fighting against being consumed by what feels good that is not good, assaulted with feelings, always lusting after something or someone. One lesson I am still learning is that while sometimes someone else’s grass is greener, it ain’t your grass and you can only water, plow, and tend to whatever patch of grass the Lord has seen fit to entrust you with. To shun that responsibility invites judgement.
Without meeting God on the road to Damascus, Paul would’ve continued killing Christians instead of becoming a missionary to the nations. Without Jesus meeting the Samaritan woman at the well, who knows how many more empty, loveless relationships she would have endured. Without surrendering to God and admitting that I was powerless over my addictions and compulsive ways (step one), my life would still be riotous, decaying with anarchy that the world says is fun. God met me in my darkest hour, which finall —thank God—let me start the healing process. God’s plan to remedy the ills of the old creation, our broken inheritance, has been realized in Jesus Christ alone. Though the atonement of sin is a done deal, my imperfect existence requires daily infusions of grace and reoccurring life-changing encounters with Him to confront moments of doubt, old habits, the spirit of comparison, and insecurity that pop-up. This is why Alcoholics Anonymous and other recovery programs offer over multiple meetings at widely varying times of the day and night, and in different locations so many places around the world.
Akin to what Bonnie Plunkett (played by Allison Janney), my favorite character, says in the last minute of Mom’s finale, I am thankful for the broken road, full of bumps and bruises, that has brought me securely back into the arms of my Heavenly Father.