I had grown up in church and believed in Jesus, but it wasn’t until I put down alcohol and chose Jesus to lead my life at the age of 27 that I began a living relationship with my Lord. However, when I said “I do,” I gave up Jesus as my priority, and co-dependency took over my life. In 2004, my marriage ended after 26 years. I had been living in codependency afraid of my husband’s anger. My relationship had been entirely based on pleasing someone else. So when the marriage ended, I felt like a teenager trying to figure out who I was.
I had been sober for almost 30 years with the help of AA, so I sought out Christ-centered help that included this kind of gut level honesty.
A program out of Saddleback Church caught my attention as I had found Rick Warren’s book “Purpose Driven Life” very helpful in my recovery journey. I ordered the Celebrate Recovery Starter kit with the intention of sharing it with my pastor and starting it in my church.
In 2005, I attended my first Celebrate Recovery Summit at Saddleback Church, and was blessed beyond words. As I attended the workshops, and learned more about CR, I felt as if I had come home!! Everything I heard brought me healing. This Summit was also the first time a new outreach program of Celebrate Recovery was introduced: Celebrate Recovery Inside (jails and prisons).
As a Probation Officer for 22 years, my goal was to help people, and now as I saw how much CR was helping me, I knew it would help the defendants and inmates in prison. I brought the program back to my church and to the prisons and jails in my community where I seek to continue to bring the restorative impact of CR to our inmate participants and their families from incarceration through re- entry into the community where CR is a ministry of the local church. I continue to grow through CR into the child of God He created me to be and I seek to follow what He has called me to do.
Thanks for letting me share, Nancy
