Spiritual Pathways || Phase 1 | Lesson Two

You know, I relate so much with Dr. Bob's story in the big book, because you're familiar with Dr. Bob, like he had given himself and was committed to a spiritual part of the program or a connection to God. But it wasn't until he understood the nature of addiction and what was happening in him physically and all the other things that were going on that he was able to find what sobriety looked like. And I relate with that. I never had trouble believing that God was here or God was real. There was way too many things I saw for me to think that like this all just happened by chance. I never had a hard time believing that God's way was best for me. I just could not live in those ways. And maybe you've experienced this, if you've tried to explain your addiction to people that love you or care about you or other people that you've encountered in life, and it feels like no matter what you do to describe it, it just doesn't always come together. And that's because like there's really three pieces of addiction. There's a physical piece to addiction, there's a spiritual piece to addiction, and there's an emotional piece to addiction. And so like if you don't explain all three of those things, it's like any piece of that kind of leaves the other ones lacking. And for somebody that's never struggled or is not one of us, then it's hard for them to connect and relate with that. There's something that's different about it. When I put alcohol in me, my body does something physically that once I put something in me physically like there's things that take place that are different for other people. There's a physical piece of addiction. There's also an emotional piece of addiction that like if I feel this discomfort or I feel like on edge or I feel uneasy, that like a human nature, our survival mechanism will only let us sit in discomfort or uneasiness for a certain amount of time before we are prompted to do something to change that.

Like if we're outside right now and it starts pouring down rain, nobody has to come to us and say, hey, do you guys want to come in? We will find a way out of that. There's like this emotional discomfort piece that you have to understand to be able to really understand addiction. And then there's a spiritual piece. And it's the spiritual piece is that for my whole life, I've lived it like with this, like thinking it's on me or like that I'm the center of the story, that my self will or my self determination is the most important thing about it. And so the reality for the spiritual piece is that if I don't look to something that's more powerful and I don't look to something that is greater than what I'm capable of, then I'm going to stay in that in that same cycle. But if you if you hammer, if you just unpack one of those things without the others, it feels like it's like there's always something missing from that definition. And that's why in Se Recovery and on this journey that you're going to be on with us, that we really like to unpack and think through and understand just a holistic approach to recovery, that we look at all three of those those components that go into addiction, not being just one over the other, but all of those things. And that's why I relate so much with Dr. Bob's story, because he loved God and knew God's way was best. But it wasn't until he understood his his addiction and what was going on in him that he was able to find sobriety. And so that is our desire for you, that you take this journey with us and you unpack the holistic the way that God made all of us. God is interested in more than just your behaviors. He made all of you and all of those things come together. And when we look at all the addressing all the three points of addiction, they were able to find healing. You know, and healing is not a straight line. Healing kind of goes up and back and there's there's there's moments where it's going really well and there's moments where it's going hard.

It's not a it's not a straight line and there's a lot of back and forth in there. So this if this is not your first time in recovery, be encouraged, because stats say that those of us that do recover from addiction, that it takes at least five hard relapses. And that's not me waking up in the morning feeling hungover or dope sick. That is me trying to make some changes in my life to find sobriety takes five hard relapses before they can find that. That's because healing is not a straight line. So if you're here and this isn't your first run or this isn't your first rodeo at recovery, just know that, man, like if you're alive and you're here, that God is interested in more than just your behaviors and he is capable of addressing all of those things that go into what it looks like to be sober. And he unpacks some of that in Romans chapter five, verses three through five. This is not only so, but we are also glory in our sufferings because we know that suffering produces perseverance. Perseverance produces character and character produces hope and this hope does not put us to shame because God's love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit whom he has given us. Just to know that healing is something that God is interested in you. He is interested in healing the wounds behind your behaviors. God is not just interested in your behaviors. God is interested in healing and walking with you in the wounds that are behind those behaviors. And to know that it's not you that have to go get all this stuff right and then God will help. Sometimes I think we treat God like one of those buy-here pay-here car lots where we think that I really want this kind of life but I've got to work enough to get a down payment so that I believe that I'm qualified to receive this life that I want. Man, God doesn't run life like one of those buy-here pay-here car lots where you got to show up with a down payment. The down payment's already been paid. It's already been secured. And the guy that we talked about in the last lesson that walked through the locked doors that leads with peace that says I'm not interested in just your behaviors, I'm interested in healing the things that

are going on inside of you and all the different pieces of addiction he works in. And that our suffering will produce perseverance and perseverance produces character and this character produces this hope and this hope does not disappoint. So have hope today that God is interested in more than just those behaviors and that he'll walk with you through this healing even though it's not just a straight line. One thing Matt challenged us with in this lesson is that healing doesn't happen in a straight line. And I think somewhere in our brains we think that only if we're doing everything right does it count. But kind of like when I told you my spiritual timeline was a roller coaster, healing can happen the same way. And we've talked a lot about the three big areas of recovery, our physical healing, our emotional healing, and our spiritual healing. But it's so important to understand how our bodies were wired to work so that we can understand how to best heal. So I have a little Play-Doh brain I made here. If this is my model, this is our brain. Shows the different parts, the different areas of the brain and what they do. But if I were gonna take some Play-Doh, if we were sitting in a room together, I'd have you take two colors of Play-Doh and I'd have you make the bottom, we'll call this, think of it like a house, a two-story house. This is floor one of our house and this is floor two. The blue is floor two of our house. Our brain essentially operates like a two-story house. However, if you notice on this end or if you look at my brain model here, there's this part in the back right here at the the base of our neck, that's called the brain stem and that's where everything starts. Because every thought and every emotion becomes a message that travels through your brain stem into the rest of your brain. But where do those thoughts or where do those messages come from? And the answer is your five senses. So think back to kindergarten and when you learned about your five senses for the first time, do you remember what they were? Your sense of hear, hearing, seeing, smelling, tasting and touching. And it wasn't until just recently I realized four of those five senses are right here on my face, right here next to my brain. And then the sense of touch is over our whole entire body. But all day long we are interacting with

our senses. We are seeing things, we're hearing things, we're smelling, tasting, touching things that are sending messages to our body. A quick example, if we all walked into a kitchen right now and there was a red hot stove burner, what would most of us do? Spring into action and cut the burner off, right? Because we know somebody could get burned. Obviously nobody's monitoring the burner. Maybe somebody was boiling some macaroni and forgot to shut it off or maybe somebody was getting ready to cook and they just haven't gotten to the stove yet. But seeing that red burner created an emotion of fear or a sense of urgency and moved us to action. That is what is happening all day long as we are constantly seeing things, hearing things, smelling things, tasting things and touching things. So as these emotions come in through our brain stem, they go to that first level of our brain and our emotions, that emotional headquarters is housed there. If you've seen the movie Inside Out, kind of that cartoon version of where all those emotions sit, that's right there on floor. one. But here's what's really important is that those messages need to move from floor one to floor two where thinking and reasoning functions live. But if we react emotionally or if we jump the gun or make assumptions and just lash out or run away whatever it may be we haven't given those messages time to get to the thinking and reasoning functions of our brain. Here is why this is important to us and what we're studying through in these next few sessions. Because in recovery our brains aren't starting in the in their best place. They aren't starting as a whole functioning organ as it was designed to be. What happens when we're in any sort of an addictive cycle? It could be substance use, it could be gambling, pornography, shopping to the state of addiction. Anything that we do in an addictive way starts to eat away at the gray matter of our brain. So if you look at this big model here, this gray matter is this wrinkly part on the outside. And as those parts start to shrink, start to deteriorate, you can imagine what happens to the thinking and reasoning functions in floor two of your brain there. Those thinking and reasoning functions also start to shrink and deteriorate and are not operating at full capacity. And while if we stop there

that could be really discouraging, right? But here's what's cool is God created that gray matter to regenerate. Just like if you break a fingernail, it grows back. You cut your hair, it grows back. Unless you're my husband who's balding. But those things are created to regenerate just like the gray matter in our brain. And so when we stop those addictive cycles and replace them with healthy patterns instead, we're not stuck here. But that gray matter starts to regenerate and grow back. And you can imagine as that gray matter starts to regenerate and grow back. Guess what happens to those thinking and reasoning functions? They start to regenerate and grow back too. And every single time we get to sit with you and have this conversation, mouths are dropped open and clients will say, you mean I'm not stuck here forever? No, there's hope because of the way God created our brains to work and to function. There is hope for healing and restoration to come full circle to who and what he created you to be.