Recovery programs can provide an answer for those seeking hope

Recovery at the Creek

Thursday nights • Chelsea Creek Community Church

Large Group, 6:30 p.m., Share Groups, 7:30 p.m., Cafe, 8:30 p.m.

Chelsea Creek is located at 48 Chesser Crane Road. For more, visit chelseacreekcc.org.

North Shelby Celebrate Recovery

Tuesday nights • Inverness Vineyard Church

Large Group, 6:30 p.m., Share Groups, 7:30 p.m. (Includes Women’s Life Issues, Women’s Abuse and Addictive Issues, Men’s Life Issues and Men’s Addictive Issues), Step Study Group, held on alternate nights and times.

Inverness Vineyard Church is located at 4733 Valleydale Road. For more, visit northshelbycr.org or email info@northshelbycr.org.

When Michael S. returned from the Gulf War in 1993, he wasn’t the same as when he left. Like many Marines, he was bound by conditioning he learned in the field.

Don’t stand near open windows. It gives the enemy a line of sight.

When you hear an explosion, hit the dirt.

If you see smoke, don’t breathe. It could be gas.

“How do you deal with that stuff?” he said. “How do you deal with having anxiety, when your heart starts to race just because you’re in a room with the blinds open?”

He didn’t know, so his answer was to escape. He turned to alcohol and other addictions. His control and anger issues got worse. Nothing seemed to help, and he found himself locked in a closet in the fetal position.

True defeat crawls over everyone, and it’s always crushing in the end. Like Michael, Carie W. and Cindy B. have felt it, too. Years ago, it put them on their backs, locked in the smallest room they could find, weeping. They either reached for help and didn’t find it or refused it when it was there. In those moments, they were alone. 

But, thankfully, they aren’t anymore.

Michael is now a leader of Recovery at the Creek, a ministry of Chelsea Creek Community Church founded on principles used in secular programs including 12-steps, anonymity and confidentiality. But unlike those programs, it and others on the U.S. 280 corridor take a faith-based approach to healing.

“Secular recovery programs are designed each one specific to a style of recovery,” Chelsea Creek Senior Pastor Matthew Roskam said. “We’re saying there is a common denominator within all of us, and that’s what we’re seeking to reach out to. It doesn’t matter what you’re trying to recover from — from depression to addiction — all these things can be tapped into.”

Learning how to heal

Participants in Recovery at the Creek are known to each other by their first names and last initials. It’s a matter of confidentiality that not only provides comfort from the fear of judgment but is also a means to remove outside influence and turn focus inward.

It’s a part of the program that assisted Michael in finding someone to listen, as he thought anyone who heard his story would immediately consider him a “monster.”

“There’s a powerful thing that happens when you sit down with someone and tell them the core truths of your life and they don’t get up and walk away,” Roskam said.

Eventually, Michael got up, and he turned to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) for help. They showed him how to cope with the triggers of post-traumatic stress (PTS). He had success assimilating, but his anger issues lingered.

“That’s the thing with PTS,” he said. “It isn’t just one thing. I was hurt from being in Corps, yes, but I didn’t enter the Marine Corps perfect. There were issues there before. When I got into a faith-based program, it allowed me to go back further.” 

In this way, the program helped Cindy B. as well. She learned quickly that finding support from others with similar life experiences was critical to her recovery.

Cindy has an inherent need to please other people, she said. She was determined to be the best at her job and the best wife and mother at home. Love and affirmation from others spurred her on, but when she didn’t receive it, she collapsed internally.

These feelings, she said, are called codependency. And they first drew her to a recovery program not for herself, but to provide support for a loved one. 

“When you have codependency issues, your job is to fix everybody,” she said. “I was [at a recovery program] because I had an addict in my family. I went there because I was thinking I was doing this for him, and I found out I was the one who needed help.”

It took a year of sitting through weekly meetings, feeling anger rise and fall over lack of an answer for how to “fix” the other person. Then, thanks to a gentle leading from her sponsor, Cindy, like Michael S., finally looked deeper. She’s a survivor, and her past played into the present far more than she ever thought possible.

“I wanted to act as if it wasn’t part of who I was,” she said. “God said, ‘You’ve got to look at it to heal from it.’ All the other stuff really has a root back there.”

Finding help

Recovery at the Creek ministry leaders said they believe the program isn’t built to only tackle “Big A” addictions, those that society deems the most debilitating and therefore expends the most resources on. Cindy B. said they look at every addiction as something people put in their lives to avoid pain, and it can be anger, people-pleasing, computer games or even perfectionism.

“These others devastate lives, too, but society doesn’t always look at them that way,” she said.

The latter is true with Carie W., another ministry leader. Her son turned to heroin, and she fell apart. She didn’t know why, though.

“My story started when my husband and I had a son struggling with chemical addiction,” she said. “He went to a treatment center, and they encouraged us as parents to go to recovery meetings. When I went, even the very first time, I realized something was going on with me as well.”

She sat in a small group and cried for an hour as others shared their stories. She told her husband on the way home she needed more help. The couple launched into recovery programs, and Carie learned her past had instilled in her a desire to be perfect in all things, especially being a mother.

“My dad was an alcoholic, and I decided somewhere along way getting his approval came about through performance,” she said. “I got my father’s attention when I brought home As, but never anytime else.”

Suddenly, at the worst point of her son’s addiction, both Carie’s mother and sister were diagnosed with cancer. The convergence was crippling, and she ended up on the bathroom floor. 

But she got up, too.

Finding hope

Programs like Recovery at the Creek are meant to be places of shelter where people can find comfort in company. They’re connected to the church and founded on Biblical principles, but their roles are not to preach. They’re meant to give people a reason to get up and get started.

“We isolate in our story because we think it’s unique,” Roskam said. “So, it’s important to gather with people who won’t judge you when you tell the truth.”

By sharing with others who understood, Michael, Carie and Cindy found ways out of their isolation and learned to look for the roots of their destructive behaviors. They now sit tall and speak confidently because they believe the time they invested in themselves has a purpose.

“There’s a group of people who have been where you are who want to share your experience in brokenness and loan you some of their hope until you can find your own,” Carie said.

“Just come. Just try it,” Cindy added. “It works.”

Open Night for Recovery at the Creek is held Thursdays at 6:30 p.m. at the church, located at 48 Chesser Crane Road. Open Nights are made up of large group at 6:30 p.m., share groups at 7:30 p.m. and cafe at 8:30 p.m. For more, visit chelseacreekcc.org.