Recovery from Addictions - Principles of Healing

We Welcome, Nannette, our new, dear friend from LDS 12 Step Reflections and share this with you in hopes that it will really bless and help someone.  All of us have life challenges to overcome.  It's nice to know we're not alone in some of the struggles.  Here is her story:

"Personal Introduction: I grew up in the Church. I am part of a large, very active family, the oldest of seven kids. I graduated from seminary and Young Women’s and BYU. I’ve got a green bandelo and a blue one too, filled with jewels and charms and a rosebud and cells that represent a real commitment to do what is required. I’ve got the Young Women medallion I earned while serving in stake and ward Young Women leadership. I’m a wife, a mother of five, grandmother of 10; I taught home school for 25 years. I only tell you this to help you see that I am not a woman you might immediately peg as an addict. I’ve been a goal setter extraordinaire and a Personal Progress activist. You get the picture.

The struggle that brought me to the principles of recovery was a life-long battle with compulsive addictive eating. I had always believed that God could tell me what to do. I never had any idea that He would help me do it! Well, I knew He would help me with “good girl” problems like finding my keys, a job, or my way home. But I never knew that He stood ready to help me with the areas of my life that were imperfect or impure.

It was hard to admit that I had come to the end of myself in this area of living. I didn’t want to bother Jesus with my weakness. I wanted to clean myself up by myself. I testify that it is not possible. As a result of studying and applying these 12 gospel-centered principles to my life and attending support group meetings, I have received direction and power through the Atonement of Jesus Christ to live in recovery from compulsive addictive eating. I have lost and kept off 97 pounds. The miracle is not so much in the losing but in maintaining day after day. God has done for me what I have never been able to do for myself.  “Unhealthy eating patterns” is the name of what brought me to this application of gospel principles, but I testify that every aspect of my life has been blessed by a greater understanding of gospel principles and most particularly the doctrine of Christ and the available blessings of His loving Atonement. 

The greatest price I paid in turning to anything that was not God or of God in order to help me forget or get through my problems was in my relationship with the Lord. It was too high a price to pay.  Sometimes people ask me if I will always have to live this way. My response is that living in recovery is the gospel in action and a marvelous way to live. I testify that Jesus Christ lives, that this is His Church, and that this is His work. There is no struggle so small that it is outside His interest, and there is nothing you or I have done, no matter how mortifying, that places us somehow outside the reach of the blessings of His Atonement.

Purpose of my blog:

I want to introduce you to this Blog by sharing the following experience:

My head was swimming with thoughts generated during the Recovery support group meeting I had just attended.  I pulled into the garage, walked into the house and set my key, scriptures, journal, pen and Guide to Addiction Recovery and Healing on the kitchen counter.  What to do next?  I dialed my daughters cell number just to check in on a summer afternoon.  I could tell by the noise behind the, “Hi Mom, what’s up?” that she and the kids were out and about having a bit of fun in the sun.  We visited for a minute and I tried to hear the news of her day over lots of background commotion when suddenly she yelled out, “T.J., don’t drink out of your shoe!” 

Now I wasn’t in church or a recovery meeting, but in that very moment God spoke to me about my recovery through a two and a half year old little boy. My grandson, T.J. had apparently gotten a little thirsty at the water park and thought he had no other alternative than to fill his shoe with water and take care of his problem right then and there. 

What the Lord said to me was, “Whatever you do next Nannette, don’t drink out of your shoe!”  Living in recovery, living clean and sober from my drug of choice (excess food) is about trusting that God will feed my soul and quench my thirst. I don’t have to grab the most accessible, quick acting, “unclean” thing at hand to take care of my immediate need.  I don’t have to drink out of my shoe.

Now this message came to me when I was seemingly out of school for the day.  My experience is that when I listen and watch, the Lord, through the Holy Spirit, teaches me about the 12 life-changing gospel centered principles that bring recovery to the addict and blessings to all, all day long, and in the most ordinary situations.  In appreciation of the uncommon bits of wisdom received during common days, I often record them in my journal.

In keeping with the Lord’s charge to refrain from hiding our witness “under a bushel” (or in my case, in multiple journals, in boxes, in a closet upstairs), I have decided to do some sharing.  I am inviting you to visit the Blog site I have dedicated to posting the every day insights that come every day if my eyes and ears open and my pen is in hand. "