I grew up in an alcoholic home. We were all dysfunctional to some degree some more than others–including me.
I was a people pleaser in spades. I had no idea what my identity was or was supposed to be. Sometimes a family member other than the alcoholic becomes an alcoholic or addicted to something else, porn, drugs, prescription drugs or meds. I became addicted to pornography. As a teenager and young adult I kept seeking insecure relationships. I sought people or girlfriends I thought I could rescue or easily control. I became addicted to excitement in all my affairs. yo
Fortunately a colleague (also an ACOA–Adult Child of an Alcoholic) friend got me involved in ACOA and Alanon, and even some AA groups. I spent the next six years, one or two nights every week in recovery rooms diligently working the 12 steps and trying to figure out who I was and how I was supposed to navigate this life I had been given. I read all the 12-step recovery literature I could get my hands on.
The 12-steps of AA are based on the Bible. God doesn’t show up until step 3. The step says “God as we understood him” I have always known that God is God but the word ”understood” gave some in the groups the freedom to say “I understand my God to be the oak tree in my backyard.” or “my microwave” or “our cocker spaniel”
I was not walking with the Lord during those years in recovery.
But God showed up.
He had business he wanted to do in me and with me despite my ambivalent, sinful heart. Oh I told my recovery friends I believed in God, and I did even then, but it would be hard to tell by the way I was living.
The way I was living slowly but significantly changed. I learned lots of stuff about myself and life and how to relate to others better in those recovery rooms. Much of it though was from secular-living dysfunctional co-dependents. Their info, like most of their lives, was rarely spiritually based. It was mostly worldly and culturally rooted and, for the most part self-centered..
But God was at work on me and in me. For the next 25 years God took my recovery room education and translated it from recovery room lingo into His glorious truths one principle at a time.
For His Glory 