Rescue from Relapse

Relapse is without a doubt the most difficult part of recovery.    The pain it causes not only to yourself, but to those who love you, is torturous.   It’s like ripping a scab off of a wound which seemed to be healing nicely.   The shame, guilt and self-hatred which accompany a relapse is suffocating and nearly impossible to silence.

I know this feeling well, and regrettably, all too recently.   If you are anything like me, after a relapse you want to just crawl into a hole and die.   The sense of profound failure is crippling.  It’s impossible to look anyone in the eye.   Edgar Allen Poe’s infamous, incessant, beating heart beneath the floor boards gets louder and louder in my ears and I’m convinced everyone sees me as not just a failure, but a murderer of all that is good and holy.   It’s how I see myself in days and weeks following a relapse.  It’s how I all too easily assume God sees me, too.

That last bit is the worse, and potentially the most debilitating.   In my experience, how we understand God’s relation to ourselves in our highs and our lows, our recovery and our relapses, makes all the difference in how quickly or how slowly (or if ever) we get back on the horse and the road to sanity.

Understanding God as One who is for you, not against you; who is immovable and unconditional in his love towards you, is essential, in my opinion, to rebound from any relapse.   Holding on to this fundamental understanding of God is difficult to do, however, when the accuser of our souls is working overtime to bury us in shame and despair.   Sometimes this accuser’s voice comes through people we’d least expect, those who hold trusted positions in our lives such as family members, pastors, counselors, and friends.    It might sound something like this text I received from a family member just weeks after she learned of my relapse:

My thoughts today are that you should just be done with God.  Obviously he cannot help you.  He is powerless to set you free so why bother with him?  You cannot serve flesh and God simultaneously and you always choose the flesh! So denounce God and then you can continue your life without guilt. Without the struggle.  Seriously.  Your life is a testimony that God is unable to set the captive free so stop the struggle and just give in.

Yuck.  Even typing that out makes me feel like I need a bath.   The accuser, scripture tells us, will often masquerade as an angel of light.   Sometimes we will hear these lies from people we think should know better.   It’s bad enough that these lies are replaying themselves in our heads like a tape on repeat when we relapse.  It’s almost unbearable when they come at us from people we love and who claim to love God and us.

The best way I know how to defeat the enemy is expose it to light.   If you are hearing the voice of the accuser in the midst of relapse – or any struggle – talk about it.   Share your thoughts with trusted friends in recovery.   I am so grateful for my brothers in recovery who heard these words and graciously spoke truth and love over me.   They helped me start the process of letting go of resentment towards those who know no better and speak from their own places of pain and humanity (still working on this!).  They also reminded me that my higher power is not in those words and to seek out what it is he has to say about me.   Words such as these:

Do not gloat over me, my enemies! For though I fall, I will rise again. Though I sit in darkness, the LORD will be my light (Micah 7:8).

for though a righteous man falls seven times, he will rise again (Prov 24:16).

The LORD directs the steps of the godly. He delights in every detail of their lives. Though they stumble, they will never fall, for the LORD holds them by the hand (Psalm 37:23-24)

The LORD helps the fallen and lifts those bent beneath their loads. The eyes of all look to you in hope; you give them their food as they need it. When you open your hand, you satisfy the hunger and thirst of every living thing (Psalm 145:14-16).

“Say to them, ‘This is what the LORD says: “‘When people fall down, do they not get up? When someone turns away, do they not return? (Jer. 8:4)

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls” (Matt. 11:28-29).

There are countless more truths found in Scripture which reveal a God who does not abandon us in our weakness but who, paradoxically, is made strong through them (2 Cor. 12:9-11).

A relapse is never the result of God’s weakness or inability to save us.  It is always a result of our own frailty and powerlessness, revealing wounds we’ve yet to allow the Healer to touch.  It’s an opportunity for us to learn and grow in our walk not just in recovery but in Christ, and an opportunity for saints around us to practice the art of gentle restoration (Gal. 6:1).

I hope someone reading this finds hope in the midst of relapse.  Know that any voice that sounds like condemnation is not from your Father in heaven.   Run to the One who while we were yet sinners – enemies of God – laid down his life for us that we might walk out of our pit and into the light.  He is always ready and willing to help the downtrodden and the poor in spirit.   He does not grow weary in doing good towards us and his thoughts towards you and I today and always are bountiful, infinitely rooted in love, peace, and hope.

Grace and peace,

Chad

I feel so ashamed…

A friend in recovery, who was, like me, once in a professional ministry position, shared with me today how he’s struggling with some feelings of guilt and shame over letting people down whom he once worked with.   I could certainly relate.

If you have ever been a spiritual leader of any sort, the shame that follows a relapse is immense in and of itself.   Add to that the loss of that job, that position, that “calling,” and the knowledge that you’ve disappointed and even hurt so many, and that shame becomes crushing.

As he was speaking an image filled my spirit which I believe was from God.   It was a picture of Jesus’ disciples huddled together in a dark, locked room following his crucifixion.    During these dark days they all fled from the side of their friend.   I could feel their pain and shame over their hiding.   I could hear them saying to each other and to themselves a number of things, such as

• How could I desert him like that?
• Was all that time spent with him for nothing?
• Just weeks ago I felt on top of the world, like my life had purpose and meaning, but now…?
• I failed miserably.  I’m obviously not meant to be part of anything important in the way Jesus was.
• He picked the wrong person to be his friend
• I’m a bad person

I’ve felt all of these things over the past few years.   These feelings still creep up on me from time to time, as they did my friend this morning.    Perhaps you feel them, too.

But do you remember what happens in that room full of doubt and fear and shame?   Jesus appears to these huddled together and his first words to them all are

Peace be with you.

Peace.  God comes to them, and to you and I and my friend this morning, and says “Peace.”   He knows very well all they and we have done and his greatest desire for us at the time of our greatest distress and shame is that we know peace.

And then, because he knows we may have misheard or misunderstood or mistrust his intent, he says it again.   But he adds something just as extraordinary:

Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you.

What’s that, Jesus?   I’m sitting here in a dark room, locked away from the outside, ashamed of myself and my behavior, fearful that others will find me and expose me for the fraud I am, and fully aware of how at your greatest hour of need I scattered to save myself, and you still want me on your team?   You still see me as part of your Father’s plan?

I can’t comprehend the lavishness and indiscriminate grace of God most of the time but I am making progress when I can rest in it or be reminded of it some of the time.    This morning, because of a friend sharing his shame with me over the phone, I got a glimpse of it again and wanted to write it down.

Peace be with you.

 

 

The Walking Dead and Step Ten

I came to The Walking Dead late in the game but became a fan almost immediately.  Beyond the zombie lore there is a story consisting of compelling characters struggling against good and evil in both the new world around them and the one within them.  Rick, the main character, is the leader of a group of survivors who for five seasons have been battling it out against both the walking dead (zombies) and the living who are in some ways even more deadly, all while trying to maintain some sense of decency and connection to the values by which they were once governed.

By the time we get to the current season five, the group is battle hardened.  They have been tested at every turn and have grown wise to the ways of this new world.  In episode 12 of this season they arrive at a camp called Alexandria which from all appearances looks like an oasis, nearly untouched by the death around it.  Walls protect a town of citizens who have running water and electricity and a budding form of government.  The people of Alexandria have jobs and they throw house parties and they discuss what sort of food they should bake for their new neighbors.  It’s a very different world than the one Rick and his gang have known for the past few years.   It’s one they longed to find for themselves, but now that they are in it, the question posed to us viewers is how well can they adapt and live normal lives after being part of so much death?

At the end of episode 12, Carol, Rick and Daryl look out from the porch of their new home and bring voice to their growing concern about this seeming paradise:  What if we grow weak here?  What if we drop our guard?  It’s at this point that my recovery antenna began beeping and I was willing Rick to quote the scripture passage that corresponds with Step Ten:

Therefore, let anyone who thinks that they stand take heed lest they fall (1 Cor. 10:12).

He didn’t. Instead, he assured the others that they would not grow soft, that they had been through too much to go back.  If by this Rick means that they will rely on what they have learned thus far and practice the tools which have kept them alive, I couldn’t agree more.   But if he means what far too many of us in recovery often think, that they will never grow soft merely because they have been through so much already, then they, like every addict in recovery, are setting themselves up for a great fall.

Step 10 says that we “continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.”  Combined with it’s scriptural component, quoted above, it is the step we must never skip nor cease stepping.  It encourages us to stay vigilant, to always keep watch, and to never forget that sin, like the walking dead, is always crouching at the door with a burning desire to consume us, and we must learn to master it (Gen. 4:7).

Every person who has ever been sober for a good length of time and then relapsed will no doubt testify that the days and weeks leading up to their relapse were less than vigilant.  The routine that had gotten them sober was somehow disrupted.  The fellowship between they and God was somehow strained.   Devotion time and prayer time waned.   If you have ever relapsed think back on the days leading up to it.  Had you grown comfortable in your sobriety?   Maybe you started letting things in which before you had cut off?

When we grow comfortable in our new found paradise called Sobriety we open ourselves to the walking dead who haven’t stopped being hungry. 

12Steps.org has this to say about Step 10:

Step 10 begins laying the foundation for the rest of my life. It is a pledge to continually monitor my life with honesty and humility. It requires me to be vigilant against my addictive behavior and against the triggers for my addictive behavior. It requires me to be humble before my God who can keep me from my addictive behavior if I have the right attitude. It requires me to deal with my defects promptly when they arise and not to let them linger in my life.

How can we practice Step 10 in our lives?  Here are a few suggestions:

• Practice what got you here.   Continue the daily disciplines that you did when you were first getting sober.  If you have stopped these at some point pick them up again.  If you feel it’s time to alter them in any way, talk it over with a sponsor or mentor first.
• Begin every day with prayer.  Turn your will and your life over to the care of God for today.   It doesn’t matter that you did this yesterday.  Jesus said we need to take up our cross daily.  We need to daily put to death our willful selves and surrender each morning to the life God wants to work in us.  We can’t do even one day alone.
• End each day by examining where you were dishonest, what secrets you may be keeping, what wrongs you have committed.   Who were you unkind to or where did you puff yourself up or look at others as less significant than yourself?  Ask God to bring to light anything that you need to bring under the blood of Jesus and go to bed with a pure heart and clear conscious.
• Clean house.   When you first got sober you no doubt cleaned yourself and your environment of your drug of choice.  If porn and sex is your thing, you probably limited your cable TV (or better yet, cut it out completely), monitored your music, kept clear of certain hot spots, installed filters and accountability software on all your devices, unsubscribed to any magazines or books which have suggestive material in them, etc.  Beware of creep.  Creep is when these things which you once were convinced needed to go begin to creep back into your life.   It’s human nature to think we are doing great so now we can slack off and watch a show or two which before we would never consider.   Remember, sin is crouching at the door!  The Walking Dead are still hungry.

These are just a few suggestions based on personal experience.   Please add your own suggestions in the comments.

I don’t know what is in store for Rick and his group in Alexandria but I do know that unless they, and we, remain vigilant and keep walking the walls to ensure there hasn’t been a breach, we are setting ourselves up for relapse.  So to the question, what if we grow soft and let our guard down?  May we be resolved to answer like Rick:  We aren’t going to let that happen.

Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour (1 Peter 5:8).