Recovery from addiction

Back in 2012 I kept seeing this image and I wrote it down back then. Im publishing it now.

I pray that you can read this image and see your own journey into addiction along the red line and then imagine your own recovery from addiction along the green line. I will describe the process more, but for now just click on the image to view it full screen and have a look at it.

The bottom line is this… it was “bad love”  that hurt us, and it is “good love” that helps us recover.

Recovery from addiction: how we got hurt and how we recover

The underlying command from Jesus Christ is that we love one another as He loved us.

If we were born into a world where there was good healthy love in place, no one would have got hurt and there would be no isolation, no hard hearts and no addiction.

But sadly, this is not Heaven. We were designed to live in Heaven, in unbroken community with God, in His Presence… but we are not. We are here, in this world. We were born to human parents who were broken and who also lived in a broken world.

We need to take Jesus Christ’s words of advice seriously and put them into action:

A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. – John 13:34

Look at how Jesus Christ taught us not to be doormats, but to value ourselves, our time and words

If anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, shake the dust off your feet when you leave that home or town. – Matt 10:14

If the home is deserving, let your peace rest on it; if it is not, let your peace return to you. – Matt 10:13

Even the dust of your town that sticks to our feet we wipe off against you. – Luke 10:11

So they shook the dust from their feet in protest against them and went to Iconium. – Acts 13:51

He didn’t train us to be doormats or to put up with nonsense, did He?

That’s the truth, isn’t it? He tells you to stand up for yourself and to find deserving friends to hang out with

And into whatever town or village you go, inquire who in it is deserving, and stay there [at his house] until you leave [that vicinity]. – Matt 10:11

A major step in recovery is to break with fantasy thinking and to become grounded and start telling the truth, start defending yourself from unsafe people and start opening yourself up to love from safe people.

When we grow up in an unhealthy society (sex on the billboards, on tv, in movies) or an unhealthy family (emotional or physical abuse) then we learn a whole bunch of wrong message about ourselves and we think we understand the way this world works.

But in recovery we learn that “hurt people, hurt people”. By learning the wrong lessons we fail to understand life.

Life is like a flower. It is delicate and it needs protection to grow. It can be easily crushed. if you are born into a healthy family, your parents and even your brothers or sisters, will give you that protection.

But what if you did not grow up in a protective family? Then you have to provide that protection for yourself.

This process is called re-parenting. You have to learn what you didn’t learn and protect yourself and value yourself..

The moment my life changed was when I decided to walk by faith. God literally sat me down