Codependacny Recovery Testimony
Hi my name is Heather, I am a faithful follower of Jesus and I am in recovery for codependency.
Before I started Celebrate Recovery the insanity of my life was the belief that I was essentially God. That I could control other people and control situations that were actually out of my control and not even my responsibility. I believed I was responsible for everything and everyone in my life, I believed that success was my gain and failure was my fault and I believed that I wasn't actually a good Christian unless my family was picture perfect. Instead of being still and listening to God and the work He was trying to do in my life, I distracted myself and avoided God by busying myself with trying to fix everyone around me. This lead me to burn out, exhaustion and resentment towards my loved ones. I was trying to be strong and perfect to earn the love of God.
Romans 3:23-24 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.
I was trying to earn what was meant for me to receive and it was killing me and causing problems within my family.
I am the oldest of three girls. I grew up going to church as my Grandmother was a faithful woman of the Lord all her life and started offering to take me to church when I was little. My father grew up in a Christian home and my mother did not have faith until she knew my dads mom. I actually remember watching my mom get baptised as an adult, it was an odd experience that I didn't really understand because until then, I had only ever seen babies get christened.
Growing up my mom took us three girls to church and when I was around 10 I had my first real encounter with the Holy Spirit at Maple Grove Church camp. It was there, in the middle of worship, during an alter call that I decided to give my life to the Lord. Church camp was a week and it was such an interesting experience, when my parents would drop me off at the beginning of the week I would cry because I was sad to be away from them and then when they would pick me up at the end of the week I would cry all the way home because I was sad camp was over. When I came home from camp, the year I gave my life to the Lord, my soul was lit on fire, I wanted to tell everyone about Him, I wanted to start a ministry, I wanted to help all my friends get saved. It’s interesting, my heart was pure but looking back I can't help but wonder that even at that young age, I wanted to do those things for my glory.
As a child I avoided pain by suppressing it or escaping. I had a great imagination and loved performing arts and would often escape to my dreams about the future. I would imagine myself in scenarios about becoming a famous actress as well as lose myself in practising for a play or creating my own production. The end goal was being seen. I desired attention and boundaries. As I entered my teen years and into my twenties I would escape through drinking, alcohol and getting attention from boys and men by wearing revealing clothing. I would also escape through the high of buying new things which lead me to push past healthy boundaries with money.
I grew up in my teens and twenties finding my identity in things of the world which constantly let me down and feeling empty. As I entered my twenties and some of my friends started to get married, I started to desire getting married too. If I am honest, I wanted it because I wanted to feel normal. I have often always found myself in circles of friends not feeling like I was ever enough, always comparing the physical things to calculate my value, I am not enough because I have credit card debt, I am not enough because my house isnt big and fancy enough, I am not enough because I don't have a post secondary education, I am not enough because I am not like them. I have always felt like an outsider. I wanted to fit in so badly, I wanted to feel seen so badly, I wanted to belong so badly, I suppressed who God created me to be to try and fit in but it always left me still feeling like not enough and wondering what was wrong with me. My thoughts and feelings of not enough, caused me to resent those who I thought did have enough and caused me to feel entitled in my pain and struggle, like I was the only one struggling.
When I was 21 I met my husband who I instantly adored and he showered me with affection and compliments like I had never experienced before.
We lived together for 5 years before we got married and then three years after being married we were blessed to get pregnant with our first child.
I had experienced anxiety throughout my life up until this point, mostly in times of transition but being pregnant raised a whole new level of anxiety in me and I felt overwhelmed by questions and scenarios that felt out of control as I prepared to become a mother. My anxiety was so bad that I even started to imagine things that were not true. This is when I re dedicated my life to Christ as an adult, this is when I began to turn my life over to Jesus. I started using the YouVersion Bible Study app and reading one Bible verse a day and praying and the Lord began to bring me peace and reveal new things to me as I drew nearer to Him.
At the time of becoming pregnant I was working in marketing and over the 5 years prior I had worked my way up in the company from sales person to vice president of the growing firm. When I left on my maternity leave I had planned to only take half of my maternity leave but after only being home for a short time with my new baby, the Lord started to reveal new things to me, new dreams, dreams of being a stay at home mom. This idea had never been on my heart before but the Lord used motherhood to reveal His new plans to me and even though my husband and I hadn't discussed me being a stay at home mom, prior to starting our family, the Lord made a way to align us.
The next few years being home with my children, growing our family and working on growing small businesses at home, were filled with so many wonderful memories, the Lord slowed down the pace of my life and began to show me His plans for my life. It has been a constant unravelling of me letting go of control and submitting to His will.
During Covid, during lockdown, after the loss of business and income stability I went into survival mode and became triggered by the increasingly unknown circumstances of our changing world. My need for control went into overdrive as my life spiralled out of control. Everything that kinda looked ok on the surface but wasn't really ok, was exposed through the challenges presented by the changes that were taking place in our world. Our finances were in terrible health, I was avoiding communication with my husband and I started to feel hopeless about the future of our family.
In an attempt to control my husband and fix our circumstances, I went to live with friends to get space from my husband. During this time out of the home, a friend recommended that I attend a Celebrate Recovery in our town in Ontario. I spoke with one of the organizers about the program and after hearing what it was all about, decided it wasn't something I needed.
My husband and I communicated and decided we would work on things and the kids and I came home. We knew we needed to make some changes, we knew we needed to make some financial changes. For years my husband and I had talked about moving to New Brunswick. His friend owned a campground where he could work as a carpenter and we loved the idea of a fresh start and more time in nature that would be available on the east coast. In the fall of 2022 we sold our home and most of our belongings and moved to New Brunswick.
Before moving I got some advice from a pastor's wife who had travelled a lot “find your church and then buy your home”. We had yet to purchase a home and were renting an Air B&B in Saint Martins. As soon as we had moved and unpacked, I started looking for a church and found Kings Church. When I attended one of the services I started reading the pamphlets at the Celebrate Recovery table in the lobby and the messages about codependency started to ring true for me.
We have been attending Sunday services at Kings church since moving to New Brunswick and when we needed to leave our Saint Martins rental in spring of 2023, we looked for a rental home in Rothesay or Quispamsis so we could be closer to the church and I could start attending Celebrate Recovery. The Lord provided us a home just 10 mins from the church and in the end of summer 2023 I started attending Celebrate Recovery and took my first blue chip for unforgiveness and codependency.
If I am honest, when I started Celebrate Recovery I was still taking this action with the motive of control, controlling my husband and my family, trying to make them and me perfect with this idea that to be good Christians we needed to be perfect. Entering Celebrate Recovery I struggled with fight and flight responses to any conflict in my marriage with the idea that divorce was the only answer. I didn’t take any feedback from my husband with grace but instead caused it to form a wedge of bitterness and resentment between us, my heart was hard toward my husband and God. I felt welcomed at Celebrate Recovery right away, like I was with my forever family. At the beginning, worship felt heavy and through the lessons and testimonies on Tuesday nights, the Lord was revealing my unbelief and fear. I had loved the Lord for a lot of my life and thought of myself as someone with strong faith but my unbelief was exposed here, I had trust issues with God. When the Step Study was offered in the fall of 2023, I signed up not exactly sure what I was getting myself into. I went into Step Study focusing on my struggle with codependency in my marriage, I was terrified of conflict and of my husband not being in a good mood. For me to be ok, I needed him to be ok. I can see that I made him an idol in my life and that was unfair for him, a sin against God and a tumultuous way for me to live. Through step study the Lord began to help me understand that I had abandonment wounds that I was trying to fill with my husband. I had believed the lie that to be a good Christian, I needed to be perfect and so did my family and it was my responsibility to create that perfection. I also desired to be better than my husband, to Lord over him, I didn't want anything within our family to be my fault and so I was keeping score and justifying my poor choices because of the way he had hurt me. Again I was playing God.
1 Corinthians 8:6 yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom all things came and for whom we live; and there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things came and through whom we live.
There is only one God and I am not it! Through Celebrate Recovery the Lord brought order to my chaos by helping me see that I did not have Him in his rightful place. My insanity was putting myself in the place of God when I wanted control or putting my husband in the place of God when I was too exhausted from trying to be God and blaming him for everything.
The victory that I have received through my Celebrate Recovery step study for codependency is a physical calming in my spirit that allows me to create space for my husband to be who he is. For me to enjoy my husband for who he is and for me to cherish my family for the gift they are. The Lord has given me new eyes of love and appreciation for my husband and family and I no longer have thoughts of divorce and yet feel an overwhelming sense of gratitude for the man the Lord has blessed me with to be my husband.
I have learned to recognize when certain situations feel triggering and get curious about why I feel triggered and make turning to the Lord in prayer and worship my first action. I feel like after my first year in Celebrate Recovery God is in His rightful place and I have a renewed relationship with Him as my Father. I have a sense of being seen and when I start to feel unseen or unheard which can cause me to swing into being super busy and people pleasing, I repeat to myself, Jesus sees me, Jesus sees me as I wash the dishes, Jesus sees me as I fold the laundry, Jesus sees me as I sweep the floor for the third time today, Jesus sees me and I am important to him.
Psalm 139:14
New International Version
14 I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.
Right now our family is going through a transition of finding a new home to live, there are a lot of unknowns and I am experiencing a lot of stress. The stress started to show up on my face in the form of a rash around my eye and cold sores on my lips. I know this was because initially I stuffed my stressful feelings inside and tries to cover them up with business and new creative projects but the Lord is making it harder for me to run from myself which I am grateful for. When I couldn’t run anymore, I rested. I took a full week of recovery which included naps and this was hard for me because I often feel powerless in rest but I was able to rest and my face healed and I had time to just be honest with God about my mixed up feelings. I am still learning how to be vulnerable in front of the Lord and my loved ones and not try to be God but one of my new tools is allowing myself to rest. When I get worn out I am at risk for controlling, anger, resentment and causing hurt in the lives of those I love. Accepting my human limitations and trusting God for everything that is beyond me has been refining and freeing.
To the New Comer, if this feels heavy right now to walk through those doors, I see you. When I first started Celebrate Recovery I felt a physical heaviness in my feet and legs and sometimes standing during worship felt exhausting. I cried a lot during worship and share group. My very first group I could barely talk because I was crying so hard from keeping so much bottled up over the years. I am so glad I started to let it all out in this safe environment. The heaviness started to lift as I let out all I stored up inside myself. I also had moments, when I felt like Celebrate Recovery was making my life worse because as I started to face the truth it felt like things were getting messy and because I like control and order, that made me question if this was a good idea or not. What I know is, God brings order to chaos but we need to be honest before Him, about our chaos. There is a reason we say KEEP COMING BACK because this isn't a one and done situation, this is a lifestyle. Trust the process, find people to do the journey with and know that God is calling you to something higher and that requires work and obedience.
I am so grateful to God that He brought me all the way from Ontario, to Kings Church in New Brunswick to Celebrate Recovery, this is what I needed to learn to live more free in the gift of salvation Jesus died on the cross to give me. Some days my family and I wonder why God brought us here to New Brunswick but if we came only so that I could start Celebrate Recovery, that would be more than enough.
