What is Recovery?

Ever had a surgical procedure? I've had several, all of which required full sedation. The part I've always dreaded since my first experience is the recovery room. It's cold, you're disoriented - not awake but not asleep. You are somehow aware that something is different about you than before you arrived in this room: something has been removed or repaired. And people keep asking you questions in louder than normal volume. "Mrs. Haynes, how are you feeling?" "Mrs. Haynes, are you in any pain?" Mostly you just want to get another one of those warm blankets and go back to sleeping peacefully.

Today, it occurred to me that life recovery has some similarities. For clarification, when I say "life recovery" I believe every human being is in recovery from life in a fallen world. Some people are recovering from life with parents who were cruel and abusive. Some are recovering from life with parents who were neither of those, but were all the same, imperfect parents. Some are recovering from sadness and suffering due to no one person's fault - the early death of a parent or sibling, for example. Some are recovering from sinful choices. Maybe those choices were a response to any of the previously mentioned life experiences; but perhaps those choices were just a product of a sinful will. And so really, we are all in life recovery. Not just drug addicts and alcoholics.

To be in "recovery" means that we have become aware that something is amiss in our lives and we are beginning to do something about it. This first stage is like making an appointment to go talk to a doctor about this ailment. That phase alone can require a lot of courage. But if you finally make it to the surgeon's table - you really mean business. You're committed. The surgery may be a huge success - the problem is identified and removed or repaired. This is the awareness and repair phase of life recovery. You spend a lot of time digging into terribly painful experiences and even disecting consequences to gain more clarity and understanding. If a surgical patient jumped off the surgeon's table onto the floor to go out and start back a normal life, all that was gained from the procedure may be lost and the patient may actually be worse off than before. So it is with life recovery.

The courageous women of Safe Harbor get one year for "surgery and the recovery room." It is a very painful and messy process. Dr. Sandra Wilson, author of "Released from Shame," one of the books we teach in our program, encourages us that "Depending on the severity of your personal brokenness and the extent of your cooperation with the work of his [God's] Spirit in your life, you will be able to 'soar on wings like eagles,....run and not grow weary...[or at least] walk and not be faint" (Isaiah 40:31).

She says that if we wait out the process, spending the time in the recovery room as needed, making full use of the healing professionals available to us "there will be fewer 'fainting' days and more 'running' and 'soaring' days than there used to be."