I went to group again this morning. The woman I’ve started seeing was there, along with a woman whose been around since when I started. They form friendships at group and make plans to hang out with each other in their normal life time. One of the women was having a cookout at her house for the 4th and she’d invited the new woman plus another one of the regular group attenders to come over for an alcohol-less supper.

It’s sweet how they support each other. I told them both how I enjoyed and appreciated seeing them interact, particularly the way they made their plans and how they were working to be considering of each other as they figured each other out. There is that part of me that feels some fear with this relationship I have started with this new woman. Like perhaps it won’t work out with her or we don’t end up being a good fit.

But for now it’s going well. I’ve been quieter in group this week and prayed on the way there that I might be able to say something helpful or encouraging. After group I went upstairs and when he asked me, “So how was group?”, the lump that had been growing in my throat got even bigger until somehow I was crying in his office on the couch. He asked his standard question of, “What is coming up?” I told him it was these people.

And the struggles are going through. It wasn’t a lie but none of it felt like that was truly the thing exactly. He asked again if I had a therapist and I said not at the moment. He said if you don’t heal whatever it was that brought you here, then I’m not going to be able to help people because they’re going to keep bringing up my stuff (something like that). I said I had healed it and he brought up that I was having a very strong reaction.

Then it came to me what exactly it was. It was because I didn’t have what they had, the place to heal in community. That the suffering itself was long and isolated and the healing of that suffering was long and isolated. I only said the community part. Somehow all of this turned into me telling him about Jesus. Something he said in group made me think of it and say that Jesus was God who came to the earth in human form.

It was all so basic and elementary. How Jesus came to reconcile us to God and restore us to wholeness. That him dying on the cross was to pay the punishment of our sins, to take the punishment that we deserved but did not make us pay. There are sayings in the world like Christianity is about avoiding hell, but recovery is about being brought out of hell. He kept saying it sounds good in theory but what is the lived experience?

During the evening the staff was having a 4th of July party. Laura’s parents were there and another set of parents was there. Our friends who are divorced were there but one had to leave because it was eventually too much. Some of the staff had brought fireworks and they put on a show while the counselors and older adults sat on the hill.