“Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed.” James 5:16 (NIV)
On Monday, I will graduate from my 12-step program. When I first started this journey, I didn’t really know what God was going to show me. I knew I had things in my past that hurt me. I knew I had made mistakes. And I knew I had spent a lot of years trying to cope with pain in ways that only created more pain.
Working through the 12 steps made me look deeper. God showed me things I had carried for years, resentment, anger, fear, shame, unforgiveness, and my need to control things. Some of it came from what had been done to me, and some of it came from choices I had made myself.
One of the biggest things I learned was that healing required honesty. I had to stop hiding the ugly parts. I had to bring them into the light, give them to God, forgive people I never thought I could forgive, and take responsibility for the things that belonged to me.
Somewhere along the way, I realized recovery wasn’t just about putting down alcohol or staying away from the things that once controlled me. It was about letting God change me.
Graduating Monday doesn’t mean I’m finished with recovery. I don’t think recovery has a finish line. There will always be areas where God is growing me, correcting me, and teaching me to surrender. But I can look back now and see how far He has brought me.
I’m not the same woman who started those steps. There are things I understand about myself now that I didn’t understand before. There are things I’ve finally let go of, and there are places in my heart where God has begun healing wounds I carried for a very long time.
So Monday isn’t the end. It’s a milestone. It’s a reminder that God really can take our brokenness, our mistakes, our pain, and even the parts of our story we wish we could erase and use all of it.
I’m grateful for every hard conversation, every uncomfortable step, every tear, every truth I had to face, and every person who walked beside me through it. Most of all, I’m grateful that Jesus met me right where I was and loved me enough not to leave me there.
I may be graduating from the 12 steps on Monday, but I’m still walking this road one day at a time, with Jesus leading the way.