Sometimes It is Back to Step One

Throughout any recovery you will find yourself back at step one periodically.  It could just be that old habits are hard to break.  It could be pride.  It could be that we never really progressed like we thought.  I found myself slipping back to step one this week.

As you well know I have an issue with co-dependency.  I thought I was getting along fine with getting on the road to recovery until this past week.  I found myself back in the same old rut of needing approval.  The fact that I wanted it so badly made me very depressed.  Am I never to escape from this?

Over the last week I have been focusing on my husband and his health.  It is not good.  I'm worried because he is the love of my life.  I had to stay home over the weekend while he went to a family function five hours away.  I was without my husband and two daughters from Saturday through Monday evening.  While he was gone, I took matters into my own hands and set up a time for him to escape to a cabin without any interference so that he could relax and bring his blood pressure down before he had a stroke.  He came home on Monday and I sent him away on Tuesday.  I barely got to see my husband yet I was willing to do this to have him for many more years to come.  I did not do this for a pat on the back, but the desire for it from a few people crept in.

I had expected a few people who were concerned about him to thank me for organizing it.  Usually they comment on how much I place on him.  Here I was relieving him.  I broke down into tears because they actually seemed to be avoiding me and would not address his health.  I guess that I thought after I had done all this for him that they would realize how much I loved him and that I was doing something good for him.  Why can't I get past this?

Maybe I am just PMSing.  But I cannot deny the fact that I am still seeking their approval.  I need the confirmation that I'm doing something good.  It is so frustrating because I don't want to be like that.  In the end their opinion means absolutely nothing.  Why?  Because it is God's opinion that really matters. 

Maybe that is it.  I know God loves me no matter what and I rest assured in that.  I honestly don't know if the other people love me or even like me.  Maybe that is what eats at me.  I need to be loved and to feel like someone loves me.  Is that what co-dependency really is?  A desire to feel loved and cherished?

I'm back at step one this week.  But I'm ready to work my way back up.

Growing in Wisdom is Part of Recovery

I'm discovering that part of my recovery is to personally grow in wisdom.  This can be a fun yet frustrating experience.

I once had a fight with God over the fact that someone I knew would not see the errors of their ways.  Any court in the world would see how wrong they were.  Why weren't they changing?  Why wasn't God getting their attention?  It was then that God brought it to my attention that I could not change them.  I could not teach them tact, respect, and compassion.  Only He could.  What was I do to then?  Just sit back and be emotional abused?  No, I was to stop myself from becoming that person.

How many of us see our parents in us?  Here I mean the not so admirable qualities.  Why do we see that?  Have you ever seen the movie Monster-In-Law?  I have come to hold that movie so dear.  Not for the humor which is plenty, but for the lesson I got from it.  The story line is that a young man brings home his beautiful fiance to meet his mother.  The fireworks go off as they go at each other.  The mother is determined to ruin the young girl and break them up.  The young girl is fighting for her life as the situations turn from hilarious to dangerous.  What got me was when the future mother-in-law's mother-in-law appeared.  The tables were the turned.  The nasty sharp tongue came from the older woman and directed at the woman whose son was to walk down the aisle.  She became the young bride who could do nothing right.  A vicious cycle.  One woman in your foolishness helped created a mini-me of her who turned and did the same thing to her new daughter-in-law.  Where does the cycle of foolishness end and wisdom prevail?  Here with me.

I began to notice how much people were really like the ones they portrayed as harsh and uncaring.  One woman could not go five minutes whenever she visited her daughter without mentioning the extra microwave.  Why on earth did they have it?  Why didn't they take it back?  It made no sense.  And the new glasses?  Why would they buy such delicate pieces?  Nice sensible glassware would be good enough.  It left her daughter in tears in each visit as she harped on everything they had and did.  One day the mother was going through her cabinets and picked up a waffle iron.  It had to be almost sixty years old.  One of the first electric ones ever made.  She teared up as she mentioned how her own mother would comment on the foolishness of buying it each and every time she visited.  What this woman did not understand was that she was now that other woman.

We can stop that cycle!  We do not have to be like others.  We do not have to answer them.  We have somewhere else to go to get direction.  The Word.  The book of Proverbs is a great place to go to get out of the cycle.  Do you want to truly be like your mother, mother-in-law, father, or father-in-law?  Sadly, most people I know would say no.  Who do they want to be like?  A person of wisdom and a controlled tongue.  That can only be achieved through God and through His Word.

Part of my recovery is going through the book of Proverbs.  I am trying to apply each verse to my life.  Am I a hundred percent successful?  Absolutely not.  But I am trying.  I want to be known for my wisdom and not for my hateful speech or arrogance, or high opinions.

Lesson 8 - Sponsor

In this lesson I am asked why is it important for me to have a support team.  It is not just in this recovery program that we need support teams.  We cannot go through life without a support team around us in some form or fashion.  We are made to want communion with others.

What is the job of a support team?  They are there to support.  Why is support needed?  Because the foundation is not strong enough on its own.  A support is needed to hold it up.  That is what our support team does for us.

I struggle here.  I do not have much of a support team.  That is usually because of the position I am in as a wife of a minister.  I've always heard from other pastors' wives how alone they feel because they have no one to talk to or confide in.  That is so very true.  You cannot reveal much if anything because most people take it and tell others.  They remember it during a business meeting.  They forget that the pastor and his family are human and so much alone.  Since I am battling co-dependency I have trouble getting a support team because I have no one to talk to.  They all know him and work with him. 

I need to get a support team, but I have no idea where.  I cannot advance much here if I do not have someone who will eventually become my sponsor.  I'm really going to have to pray about this since it could prove disastrous if I do not handle this properly.

Recovery is Continual

One thing I have learned in this process is that recovery is an ongoing process.  Even when you say that you have reached step 12, in reality you go through all 12 steps each day of your life.  I have to remind myself over and over that it is not about me.  I have to give it all over to God again.  I have to recognize hurt and pain.  I have to forgive and go forward.  I have to face my defects and work on them.

So many people look at recovery as just getting over being addicted to drugs or alcohol.  How wrong they are!  Each and every person breathing needs to recovery from something.  If nothing else, they need to recover from pride.  No one is perfect.  We are all sinners.  This program is perfect in that it does not address only alcohol or only drugs.  It addresses your entire life. 

In our spiritual walks we are to start our day putting back on the armor of God.  We have to almost start over each day as we prepare ourselves for the battles ahead.  That is no different that it is to be in Celebrate Recovery.  We have to gird up and protect ourselves in the same way.  That armor is vital to us.

Shedding bad baggage and influences is what all Christians are called to do.  We are called to grow and mature.  We are called to recover from this world.

Still Trying to Understand

I'm trying to hard to understand how to recover from co-dependency when it seems forced on me.  Most of the testimonies I have found revolve around alcohol and drug recovery.  The few that I have found that involve co-dependency are mainly those spouses our children of alcoholics and drug addicts.  I am not finding anyone who is trying to recover from being married to an ADD spouse.

This is really hard for me as I try to understand how I can get through it all.  I try to go through the steps but I keep finding my life in chaos as he makes decisions without thinking and lives in the moment.  I can see the bridge is out ahead of us but what do I do?  If I yell and try to pull him back, we fight and I get depressed.  If I don't say anything we fall into the canyon.

I remember one testimony in which a wife was recovering from co-dependency with a husband who cheated on her and was a huge alcoholic.  She always felt that if her husband would change all would be well.  She just didn't realize that she needed to change, too.  I feel like that.  But the difference is I know that I need to change, but it is hard when you do not see the other one attempting to change.

Does ADD win?  Do I just give in and my change and recovery involves letting the ADD have complete control?  That is where I feel lost.

We do see a counselor to help him with his ADD.  Where I struggle is that once we leave the office, he forgets about we are to work on and goes back to his normal way of living.  How can I get over my co-dependency when I see no way?

I am not going to give up on my recovery.  This program is wonderful and I am learning so much.  It is great and I would recommend it for anyone.  I just wish I could find more that were in my situation.

Lesson 7 - Moral

Lesson 7 gets me started on my moral inventory.  This can be a difficult lesson.  In fact, this is where many people stop the 12 step program.  It is not easy facing your mistakes or even your successes.

One of the questions asked in this lesson is "List the things you have used to block the pain of your past."  This was a hard one for me.  I have to admit that because I do not drink and do drugs that I took a while to answer this.  This narrow-minded thought process is shameful.  There are so many ways to block the pain.  Alcohol and drugs are just one of the ways.  So now the internal struggle began as I tried to discover what I was doing and why.

I am one that tries to please everyone.  There is that darn co-dependency again.  The pain I felt from all those type D personalities was masked by me trying to gain their approval.  I tried to dress to please them and prevent negative comments.  I tried to do everything to appease them.  I had to realize that I would never do that.  My haircut was never going to be just right.  The way I disciplined my children was never going to be correct.  The way I cooked was never going to be above "OK".  I was never going to succeed.  I blocked my pain in denial and in striving to be someone I was not.

I once told someone in our small group discussion (I can repeat this since I was the one saying it) that my organization and anal tendencies were not the real me and not my nature.  Now those same type D people would say that I was not organized enough, but my immediate family would say that I was on the road to being too anal.  Why is that if that is not the real me?  Because I spent my life trying to be what others said I had to be.  I used to work about 50 hours a week in downtown Milwaukee.  My husband was home more than I was and the kids were always beating me home by about an hour.  One day a relative stopped by to visit.  She asked where the broom was so that she could sweep up a mess that was just made.  I answered honestly that I did not know.  Where I would place it was never where it could be found when I got home.  She looked at me in shock and dismay.  It was my responsibility to know where that broom was she informed me.  It was my house, right?  When I said that with me being gone at work so much, that there was a lot that I did not know.  I was informed that that was beside the point.  I should always know.  That weighed on me for years.  I put so much pressure on myself to work full-time and to be in control of a house that I really had no control over.  I mentally beat myself daily on how much of a failure I was because I did not have control of my house.  This also strained my marriage and my relation with my children.  I became an ogre and began to yell a lot.  Why weren't things left where I put them?  Why couldn't I do it all?  I was supposed to.  What others did not realize was that I was to work, manage a home, follow behind my children and my husband and still meet other responsibilities as they arose.  I began to melt down.  I could not do it all so why should I?

I hid my sense of failure in striving harder.  This made the number of failures increase and be more obvious.  I could not do it anymore.  The day this realization hit was painful.  I'm learning to be me.  I'm learning to look at others and say, "I don't care."  I will not live my life to please them.  I will live it only to please God.  If they don't like it, take it up with Him.  I cannot please everyone.  I will not try anymore.  I will not agree to things just so that they will think better of me.  I will not give up my family time to appease others.  I will not re-create myself to be what they want.  I will be what God wants.

Lesson 6 - Action

One of the questions asked in Lesson 6 is "What have you been able to turn over to God?"

This was a hard one for me.  After all, I am co-dependent which means that I do not have anything that I have control over to turn over.  Well, I might not have control over anything, but I do still have my clutches on things that I need to relinquish to God.  I'm trying to control it.  Though I never seem to have control.  I need to turn my day to day schedule over to God.

One night at about 2 am God and I had a very long and deep discussion.  I was about to pull my hair out.  God is not a ruler or creator of chaos.  So why is my day so chaotic?  Come on, God.  I'm trying to put order in my life.  Why does it seem that You are fighting against me and allowing the chaos to reign?  I could not get past these statements.  I repeated them over and over.  It was then that wonderful James rose up and spoke.

"Now listen, you who say, "Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money."  Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow.  What is your life?  You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.  Instead, you ought to say, "If it is the Lord's will, we will live and do this or that."  As it is, you boast and brag.  All such boasting is evil.  Anyone, then, who knows the good he ought to do and doesn't do it, sins." (NIV, James 4:13-17)

I was trying to determine my day and what was going to happen.  There is nothing wrong with planning and making sure that crucial things are not missed.  What was I doing wrong?  Not dedicating my day to God and looking to Him about what I should and should not do.  That was my problem.

Do you know how hard this was for me?  I am not naturally an organizer.  I like to get up and go about my day doing whatever is before me.  The world around me forced me to change.  I was an accountant for 20 years.  Much of my job involved a multitude of tasks that had to be scheduled and could not be missed.  Lists became my best friend as they helped me to remember duties that had to be done.  This spilled over into my personal life.

I married an ADD guy.  Life with him was a roller coaster.  You never knew what each day held.  Unfortunately, that included the bills, where we lived, and other important things.  I began to create lists to help us to remember to pay bills, feed the pets, do regular chores, and such.  Why?  Because if it was not on the list, he would not do it.  Even if it was on the list he might not do it, but I would remember amid all my other "normal" duties and get it done.  This grew and grew to where everything in my life was a list.

Now, I still have to have lists.  My memory is getting way too faulty to cope.  God is not banning lists in my life.  What is He doing then?  Asking me to let Him make the list.  That's right.  Give Him the ultimate control of my life - my lists!

How do I do this?  I go ahead and make out my list for tomorrow as normal.  I never realized how ambitious I was.  When the list is made, I pray and ask God to take what needs to be removed and add what I have missed.  I about cry when He has me remove some items that I really want to do.  But in all honesty, I would not have been able to get it all done.

I feel better each day.  My lists are not as long and when they are they are made up of what He wants me to do and not what I want.  This is a huge difference.  He never fails.  His plans never are wrong.  Mine on the other hand.......