Hate

Forgetting and Forgiving

Say not thou, I will recompense evil; but wait on the Lord, and he shall save thee. Proverbs 20:22

Do not be in a hurry. Let anger cool down. Say nothing and do nothing to avenge yourself. You will be sure to act unwisely if you take up the club and fight your own battles; and, certainly, you will not show the spirit of the Lord Jesus. It is more noble to forgive and let the offense pass. To let an injury burn inside and to think about revenge is to keep old wounds open and to make new ones. It is better to forget and forgive.

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The Emotional Dimension of Recovery, Part 2

Part 1

How do feelings affect the addict in the early stages of recovery?

This second installment on the role of emotion the recovery process will focus on the first 30-90 days of sobriety. The truth is, most addicts return to drugs and drinking when sobriety becomes too stressful for them. Therefore, teach them to deal with their feelings in a healthy manner greatly improves their chances of achieving long-term sobriety.

A. The physiological impact on emotions.

    The first few days without drugs and alcohol are characterized by disjointed thinking and emotional upheaval. Newly sober people tend to be very anxious and uptight. This is due, in a large part , to the fact that alcohol and drug use have caused their bodies to be depleted of many important neurochemicals, like endorphines, that contribute to a normal state of well-being. Crack and cocaine users especially, experience anxiety, abnormal fears and difficulty sleeping. They can be short tempered and they have short attention spans.

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The Emotional Dimension of Recovery, Part 1

Part Two

A Christian friend once told me, “Well, why even talk about feelings, because you can’t trust them anyway. The Bible says, Have faith and don’t trust your feelings.” Well, that’s not really a healthy attitude at all, because feelings are real. Denial is all of these repressed and stuffed emotions, and part of sobriety and getting better means that all of a sudden all of the pain that has been pushed down. And anger, and everything else that has been there, is going to start rising to the surface, and these people will start feeling depression and loneliness and fear. And we need to be prepared to hear those things and to respond to them in a supportive, kind way. It doesn’t mean that — and some of those feelings are not accurate at all, but still need to be respected and accepted. It has to be there.

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Anger: A Different Response

Proverbs 17:14 NRSV
The beginning of strife is like letting out water;
so stop before the quarrel breaks out.

Ever punch a hole in a container full of water? This proverb is absolutely true. You can put all manner of things against the hole, but it’s almost impossible to stop the water from seeping (or pouring) out!

There are many things in our lives that, once begun, are difficult to stop. Anger and fighting is one of them. I grew up in the generation that said that when you’re angry, you need to “talk it out” in order to dissipate the emotions. Newer studies are showing that talking, when you’re angry, can lead to escalation, rather than de-escalation.

“I thought it was healthy to express my anger.” For the last 50 years the world has been saying:
“Express yourself.”
“Let ‘it out.”
“It’s good for you to express your feelings.”
“It’s bad for you to repress your feelings.”

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When You Want Revenge

1 Corinthians 13:6 RSV
[Love] does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right.

Ever want revenge against someone else? I think that one of the innate human emotions is the desire for one’s persecutor to suffer as much as they have caused suffering (or more). I think that many of us, at one time or another, fantasied about that horrible person being humiliated or hurt like they humiliated or hurt us.

It’s simple human nature.

But Paul tells us that we, as Christians, deny ourselves, deny our nature and choose love. We refuse to rejoice at wrong, even the suffering of our enemy, are rejoice in right. That we have a higher calling: to trust God in everything.

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The 12 Steps to Total and Complete Insanity

1. We admitted we were powerless over nothing. We could manage our lives perfectly and we could manage those of anyone else that would allow it.

2. Came to believe that there was no power greater than ourselves, and the rest of the world was insane.

3. Made a decision to have our loved ones and friends turn their wills and their lives over to our care.

4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of everyone we knew.

5. Admitted to the whole world at large the exact nature of their wrongs.

6. Were entirely ready to make others straighten up and do right.

7. Demanded others to either “shape up or ship out”.

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Forgiveness

There is much to be said about forgiveness and the impact it has one each life. The Bible holds hundreds of examples of people who have experienced first-hand, being forgiven of wrongful deeds: King David, Peter the disciple when he denied knowing Jesus three times, the woman caught in adultery, Paul who murdered hundreds of Christians before his conversion, Cain who killed his brother Abel because Abel’s sacrifice was accepted and Cain’s was not are just some to name a few who experienced the forgiveness of God in their life first-hand.

The sole purpose behind the come of Jesus Christ as a human was that He died as an atonement for our sins. He hung on the cross in our place. By all rights, WE should be the ones hanging on the cross. After all, Jesus was WITHOUT ANY SIN, but we were born into sin, yet it was Jesus who died and it is us who live.

If we say we have no sin, we are only fooling ourselves and refusing to accept the truth. 1 John 1:8.

For all have sinned; all fall short of God’s glorious standard. Romans 3:23.

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Expressing Emotions in Eating Disorder Recovery

In eating disorder recovery, you might discover that you have difficulty identifying and expressing your emotions. Perhaps you stuff your feelings because they make you uncomfortable or you simply have never learned what to do with them. But as you find ways to identify and express your emotions, this can help you in your eating disorder recovery.

You may have grown up in a home where you didn’t feel it was safe to express your feelings or perhaps you met people later in life who gave the impression that you should not show your emotions with them. Maybe others have been angry or critical toward you regarding the expression of your feelings. Your parents may have been so uncomfortable with emotions themselves that they never learned healthy ways to express them so they were never able to model this for you. It may be that they were okay with emotions, but for some reason you still got the impression that you should keep your feelings to yourself.

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Forgiveness Workshop Transcript

Obie-HostIt is my great pleasure to introduce to you today Yvonne Ortega.She serves on the Board of Directors of Christians in Recovery and leads her own ministry which she will tell you about. Today she will be speaking on Forgiveness.

Every time Yvonne leads a workshop we are all greatly blessed by her insights. Let us open in prayer…..

Heavenly Father,
We pray for our workshop leader Yvonne today.Anoint her with the Holy Spirit. Give her Your words of wisdom to share with us —
words of healing. Open our ears, hearts and minds that we are teachable and also open to the Holy Spirit. In the name of Jesus we all pray. Amen.

Yvonne will speak for several minutes and then we will have a question and answer period where you will be able to ask questions. Yvonne, you now have the floor!

Yvonne Thank you.
What does it mean “to forgive”?
It means to give up feeling angry or wanting to punish, to show mercy, to pardon.

Countless adults have told me they can’t forgive themselves. One woman had an abortion and said, “I’m a murderer. I can’t go back to church.”

An alcoholic lost his wife, his children, his job, his car, and his home. His children refused to have anything to do with him. He said, “It’s all my fault for drinking like I did.”

A married woman got drunk and had sex with a male acquaintance. She was beside herself with shame and guilt.

A man fell asleep at the wheel and hit a guardrail. His daughter was thrown from the van and died. He was overwhelmed with grief and beat himself up repeatedly for the loss of his daughter.

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