CLEARRLY Recovering - Blog #6
My wife and I just spent a weekend together doing our budget. Budgets are funny things, especially when you have a husband‘s point of view and a wife’s point of view.
My wife is beautiful, practical, and safe. I am frivolous, unrealistic, and made up almost entirely of marshmallow filling and curly fries—that particular combination made for some interesting discussions.
As a recovering musician, I didn’t spend a lot of my time thinking about things like retirement. Instead, I thought more about things like, “How old is too old to buy a bouncy house?” My wife thinks about long-term security; I like to think about how many packages of PEZ I would have to buy to fill my new bouncy house.
I would make a lot of requests during the budget-making process. These requests would elicit responses like, “You are a grown man,” or “I didn’t know this about you when we got married,” and “Please stop giggling every time I use the word duty,” and “If you say, ‘Dave Ramsey can bite me,’ one more time, I’m canceling your bouncy house fund.”
There’s a theory that you stop maturing from the age that you become dependent on a substance. That means that I am roughly a 15-year-old boy. 15-year-old boys do not make budgets. We are almost at the six-year mark, so technically, I’m getting ready to turn 21. 21-year-olds can make a budget, but their budget looks much different than a 52-year-old's. Life, in general, looks a lot different.
When you’re new in recovery, everything seems impossible: long-term recovery, healing, relationships, keeping a job, earning trust, and living life on life’s terms.
GRACE!!!!
Grace is given freely, and debts were paid for on a cross. The experience of redemption and release can be instantaneous when coming to Christ. The reality of life and the damage caused by our choices can take years to come to terms with and rectify.
Corinthians 12:9
Jesus tells Paul, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness."
Whether it’s your budget, your relationships, your spiritual life, or your self-esteem, Christ is working on you. And when you are in a community of believers, he is working through them on your behalf. The community that I belong to guided me, protected me, and taught me patience and acceptance. People ask all the time, “What are the keys to your recovery?”
Christ and community.
So find a group of people, allow them to give you grace, and allow them to teach you how to give yourself grace!
And remember, I can affect my today, I can allow God to mold my tomorrow, but even Jesus doesn’t change the past.