It’s a huge question, right? Our alumni group has gotten together and come up with answers based on our own experience through treatment and recovery. Most of us in the group have been to multiple treatment facilities, with Manna being our last. Manna is the only treatment facility that we’ve been to that has connected God with trauma and recovery. Through our experience, we believe God is essential in recovery and we want to share what we’ve learned.
Identity: God gives us identity as children of THE Holy God. That means we are made on purpose; loved and cherished. We matter because we matter to Him. We are capable because he equips us. He equips us with courage, creativity, working minds, friends, ect. And our gratitude outflows when we embrace our identity as God’s children. We know that God cares about our recovery because He tells us that we are not to have any other God but Him (Exodus 20:2-3), and addiction gets in the way of that. God tells us that our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in us, whom we have received from God (1 Corinthians 6:19). Therefore, we can feel good about honoring our body by nourishing it, speaking well of it, and treating it well.
Dependence: We don’t have to be scared about our circumstances because God has already said that he will work everything out for good (reference Romans: 8:28). We can surrender expectations of what we thought our life ought to look like and we can make peace with the fact that life maybe didn’t go the way we think it should have. God is trustworthy. He knows our needs even better than we do and whatever he provides will be enough. Satan on the other hand is a liar. His desire is to steal, kill, and destroy. He can’t touch God, but he can attack what God loves – which is us. Satan creates pain intentionally and uses people who are in pain to hurt other people. But God has already created a solution for our pain. We must dig and be intentional in doing the work of allowing ourselves to feel the pain so it can move through us. Recovery is seeing our pain and moving through it to get to God because he will use it to grow us.
Grace: Pain that’s not dealt with can be very destructive. It can manifest as eating disorders, self-harm behaviors, substance abuse, and lashing out at others. Through Christ’s example of how he treats people in the bible, we learn how to treat ourselves with that same grace. If we mess up, we don’t have to take it out on ourselves. If we hurt someone, we aren’t to hurt ourselves in return- that’s not what God wants. God knows we will make mistakes and he has made a solution for that too.
Repentance: Repentance is asking forgiveness and changing our minds about how we think about something. Repentance not only pleases God, it also brings us closer to God. If we slip up and act out in a disordered behavior, we are not failures, and all is not lost. We can show ourselves the same grace Jesus shows his disciples when they constantly get it wrong. We can pick ourselves up and do the next right thing, eat the next meal and snack, and start over fresh the next day.
Forgiveness: Forgiveness is where we, as a recovering group, saw God most in our recovery. It seems to come later in the journey. It’s not as simple as “not thinking about the offense” – that’s avoidance. It’s not “not feeling anything”- that’s numbness. Forgiveness is evidence of God’s work because it is a true change of heart- and who else can change a heart other than God? Some examples from our group of what that looked like for us was: worshipping beside the abuser and hoping the best for her, caring for the abuser as he was dying, understanding (not excusing) that the abuser was also hurting and that everyone has their own narrative. Forgiveness is where the freedom is. And freedom brings peace. That is why it is so powerful.
In closing, we have been able to see God’s work in our lives through our recovery. Looking back at our journey we see where God was taking care of us all along. We can think differently now, therefore we act differently. When we share our stories, it encourages others. Knowing that someone else might benefit from what we’ve been through and learned helps give our journey purpose. Through treatment our recovery has brought us closer to God, made us stronger, and increased our ability to show love and compassion to ourselves and others. Therefore, we believe God has EVERYTHING to do with recovery.
-Manna Alumni
