I Choose Healed

Yesterday I ran into a friend who asked if I would take a few minutes to share my thoughts and experience with addiction recovery.

Although there are millions of people all over the world whose lives have been transformed using the 12-steps of recovery, I am not one of them. I’d like to see our culture move beyond a “one method fits all” mentality. I’ve been through inpatient treatment—three times—and that experience isn’t what healed me from this devastating disease.

God did.

First, I refuse to refer to God as my Higher Power. To put Him in the same category as a doorknob is blasphemy. I won’t even speak the mantra that slides around this issue at meetings: “My Higher Power whom I wish to refer to as God…” As soon as I confidently say the word “God” without a preamble, people break eye contact with me and begin to fidget. Then I get huffy and walk out, which is undeniably rude.

Second, 12-step programs teach that we are never “recovered.” The best we can hope for is “recovering.” I refute that premise.

Doorknobs and nature cannot heal broken people, but God can and does if we permit Him to do so. Today when I work with people who are fighting addiction, I tell them the truth. “God can heal you right here, right now!” The issue isn’t His ability, willingness, or the efficacy of our prayers. The issue is us. Are we ready to walk in the healing or not?

In the gospel of John a man had waited 38 years by the pools at Bethesda, praying that his infirmity be healed. “When Jesus saw him lying there, and knew that he already had been in that condition a long time, He said to him, ‘Do you want to be made well?’”

The man gave him excuses for why he had not entered the healing water, but Jesus said, “Rise, take up your bed and walk.”

In other words, if you really want to be healed, quite behaving like you are sick.

I lived for decades in the wheelchair of active addiction. When I finally accepted God’s offer of healing, my muscles had atrophied from disuse. I’d learned how to manipulate my family and friends so they would accommodate, enable, and feel sorry for me.

After God healed me, I deliberately found people who taught me how to walk and encouragers who cheered me on without shaming me for getting sick in the first place. In the beginning I traded my wheelchair for a stationary walker and had a cane on standby. Later I graduated to a cane. When I quit leaning on it, I limped for awhile. There was lots to learn.

Addicts think they aren’t healed because they still have a desire to use. That desire is a permanent consequence of their disease. Healing is what gives an addict the empowering ability to choose whether they succumb to that desire or not.

I studied people who are really good walkers. In other words, I watched how healthy people locomote through life and I imitated them. Sometimes I fell, but I got up and kept going. We don’t shame toddlers who tumble while they are learning to walk. Why do we do it to addicts who relapse?

I don’t waste my time in meetings listening to stories that glorify wheelchair living or that question my healing. I’m busy walking. It’s what God made me for. It’s what I intend to do for the remainder of my days.

Call me if you want to walk. (253) 678-3063