Christian 12 Steps and Tools for Healing

 I was in the hospital in a group therapy session.  The therapist simply asked each of us to close our eyes and think back to our earliest childhood memory. The scene of me standing on the grass of a neighbor's yard drifted into my mind’s eye. There was a police car down the street.  Then I was standing in front of a closet door. I pushed the door aside and huddled inside was a little girl. She was about 5 years old with blonde pony tails. She had her head down on her pulled up knees and was crying. I guess I started to cry too because ever so softly I felt a hand on my shoulder and a voice telling me to keep my eyes closed and to just tell her what I saw. “Me,” I said, “hiding in the closet.”  That police car had been at my house.  My father had committed suicide.  I was 5 years old.  That little girl in the closet was me.  No one told me the truth.  No one told me anything.  My dad was just there one day and gone the next, never to be seen or spoken of again.  I was 20 when my mother finally told me how my father died and then we never spoke of it or him again.  It was a shameful secret best kept swept under the rug.  I made this doll to commemorate the start of my recovery.

 My list of names might be an indicator of my dysfunctional past.  I think we all come from dysfunctional households to one extent or another.  You don't have to be an alcoholic or drug addict to benefit from GOD CAN.  We all deal with difficulties of one nature or another that need time to heal.  I believe in a God of Love.  I do not believe that God purposely gave me a suicidal father, a neighbor to molest me or a stranger to rape me.  But I do believe that God was beside me all the way giving me what I needed to not just endure, but to thrive in spite of my experiences.  I do not believe that God led me through an extensive recovery just to save myself.  He saved me so that I can share that recovery and all that I learned with others. 

"Praise be to the God of comfort, the Father of compassion who comforts us in all our troubles SO THAT WE can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God."  II Corinthians 1:3-4

This web site and my book of the same title are based on my journey to Peace by learning to embrace who I am instead of defining myself by who I was.  It is based on the compiled writings that came out of my recovery and discovery.  It is my hope that I can share insights with my readers and offer tools to help facilitate fullness of life through Christ.  I will never allow anyone to make me feel rejected, dirty, unloved, abandoned or angry again.  God loves me and through Him, I learned to love myself.  Join me on the journey.  Explore my website for inspiration and tools to aid your journey.  Check out my daily Blog (Scripture and Insights) for ongoing inspiration.  Click on Contact Me with comments, questions or if you'd like me to come speak at your function.  Go to my Facebook page below and leave your story of how God has worked in your life.   

Leading up to the nervous breakdown that landed me in the hospital I found myself rocking in our overstuffed rocking chair for days, unable to respond, unable to do anything.  The only thing that kept going through my mind was suicide.  And the only thing that kept me from doing that was knowing how my father's suicide had affected me.  I couldn't do that to my husband and daughter.  In that rocking chair I could not pray any longer.  At that time, I really felt like God had abandoned me and was choosing not to help me.  I felt not only abandoned but rebuked and rejected.  I was experiencing a spiritual death, separated from God for the first time in my life and that was the scariest thing of all.  Later in my recovery whenever  I was at an impasse, I'd think back to that overstuffed rocking chair and instead of seeing myself in it alone, I imagined God sitting in that chair with me on his lap - rocking me, comforting me, making me feel loved.  I never had that in an earthly father and it warmed my soul to drift away in that rocking chair with Him.  As a Christian friend had once advised me, I stopped struggling and started snuggling.