Latest / UNMASKED with Wesley Farnsworth / EP 77 - Recovery Identity: When Healing Becomes the Whole Story | Who Am I Really? (Part 3)

Transcript

EP 77 - Recovery Identity: When Healing Becomes the Whole Story | Who Am I Really? (Part 3) · UNMASKED with Wesley Farnsworth

• 0:02
  Recovery changes people. Healing changes people.
• 0:07
  Surviving something difficult changes people.
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  And that is good, because healing matters, Recovery
• 0:15
  matters. Freedom matters.
• 0:18
  But eventually a question begins to emerge, Who am I now?
• 0:24
  Because there comes a point where people realize that they
• 0:28
  are no longer who they are outside of the struggle.
• 0:32
  The meetings become identity, journey becomes the identity,
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  the rebuilding becomes the identity.
• 0:40
  The healing becomes the identity.
• 0:44
  And well, the growth happened. The becoming stopped.
• 0:50
  Because sometimes people move out of crisis, but they never
• 0:54
  move into calling. They survive, but they stop
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  there. Today we're talking about
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  recovery, identity. What happens when healing
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  becomes a whole story? Welcome to Unmask, where we take
• 1:18
  off the filters and we get real about pace, failure, healing,
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  and finding freedom. I'm your host, Wesley
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  Farnsworth, and this is episode 3 in our miniseries Who Am I
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  Really? In episode 1, we talked about
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  trauma identity, when pain becomes your name.
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  In episode 2, we talked about the performance identity, when
• 1:41
  achievement becomes worse. And today we're stepping into
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  another identity, one that often develops after healing begins,
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  and that is recovery Identity, because recovery is beautiful.
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  Healing matters, freedom matters.
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  And eventually every person reaches a moment where they must
• 2:03
  ask, am I still surviving or am I becoming?
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  So? Take a breath, pull up a chair,
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  and let's dive in. This is unmasked.
• 2:24
  Now let me get something straight here.
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  Recovery is not the problem. Healing is not the problem.
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  Growth is not the problem. For many people, recovery saved
• 2:38
  their life. It gave them language,
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  community, hope, truth, and structure.
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  Recovery becomes a place, or became a place where people
• 2:49
  finally realized that they could stop hiding and they could take
• 2:53
  off their mask. And that matters because
• 2:57
  eventually recover and that matters.
• 3:02
  But eventually recovery must evolve because recovery was
• 3:08
  never meant to become the destination.
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  It was meant to become the doorway.
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  The goal was never survival forever.
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  The goal was freedom. But it's very easy for survival
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  to become your identity. See trauma.
• 3:32
  Identity says I am what happened to me, but recovery says I am
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  what I survived. And that may feel healthier, but
• 3:41
  it can still become limiting because now your identity lives
• 3:46
  inside of the struggle. Your identity becomes the
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  recovering person, the survivor, the rebuilding one, the one
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  healing. And eventually those labels
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  become your home and then makes you want to stay there.
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  It makes you want to stay there because it feels safe.
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  The struggle becomes familiar. The healing becomes familiar.
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  Starting over becomes familiar, and moving beyond that identity
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  becomes scary, even terrifying, because if I'm no longer the
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  survivor, then who am I? One of the strongest pictures of
• 4:34
  this is Israel leaving Egypt. God frees them and breaks
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  chains. He moves them out and delivers
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  them. But even after freedom, Egypt
• 4:46
  stayed inside of them. They kept looking back.
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  They kept longing for what was familiar.
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  Even slavery felt safer than an uncertainty.
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  Think about that for a second. Bondage was familiar, and
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  freedom was foreign. People still do this today, not
• 5:12
  because they want pain, but because familiar pain is safer
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  than unfamiliar. Growth, recovery, identity
• 5:22
  sometimes does that. It keeps people looking
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  backwards, always remembering, always surviving, always
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  rebuilding, but never becoming. There's comfort in staying the
• 5:39
  survivor because survivor identity carries meaning.
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  It comes with community purpose. Understanding and stepping
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  beyond that can feel like betrayal, like moving forward
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  means minimizing what happened. But healing does not dishonor
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  pain. It honors redemption.
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  You are allowed to move forward. You are allowed to become more
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  than your hardest season. You are allowed to stop
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  introducing yourself by your wounds because surviving was
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  never meant to become your ceiling.
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  Healing is a beautiful thing, but healing is also
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  transitional. At some point, the question has
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  to shift, has to shift from what am I healing from to what am I
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  building towards. And that's where some people get
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  stuck because pain gave them direction, but recovery gave
• 6:56
  structure. And that's where some people get
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  stuck. Because pain gave direction,
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  recovery gave structure, healing gave purpose.
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  And now life feels all uncertain all over again.
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  And now life feels uncertain all over again.
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  Because becoming requires imagination, it requires vision,
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  it requires future, and future feel very risky after pain.
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  Pain teaches survival, but calling requires hope.
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  Paul understood this. When you look at scripture, he
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  had history, failure, regret. Paul had a past.
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  Yet listen to his words, he says, forgetting what is behind
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  and straining towards what is ahead.
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  Paul is not denying his past here, but he does refuse to live
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  in it. And that's different because
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  healing does not erase memory, but it changes momentum.
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  Recovery identity looks backwards.
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  For me, Calling identity begins looking forward, and eventually
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  every person must choose. Will my story stop at healing,
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  or will it continue into becoming?
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  See, one of the dangers of recovery identity is that people
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  become permanently attached to their hardest season.
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  The struggle becomes central, the pain becomes central, the
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  survival becomes central, and life keeps orbiting around that
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  same chapter. But your worst season is not
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  your whole identity. It does not define you.
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  Your hardest chapter is not your whole identity.
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  What happened matters. What you survived matters, but
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  so does who you are becoming. You are more than the season
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  that almost broke you. There's a reason that this
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  identity or this idea resonates with me so personally.
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  You see, recovery became the doorway to my life change in my
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  own life. For years, there were parts of
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  my life that felt stuck. There were patterns that I
• 9:49
  couldn't break, struggles that I carried quietly.
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  And eventually, I reached the point where I realized that I
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  couldn't keep doing life the way that I had been.
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  The journey led me into recovery through Celebrate Recovery, And
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  more importantly, it led me deeper into Christ.
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  Recovery gave me a language. It gave me community and
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  honesty. It gave me a place where I could
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  take off my mask and healing could begin.
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  And through that process, God began doing more than helping me
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  find freedom from an addiction. He began changing how I saw
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  myself. Because at first, recovery was
• 10:36
  all about survival, and then came the healing.
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  And eventually God started asking a different question.
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  He started asking, now, who are you becoming?
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  And that question changed everything.
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  Today, part of that answer has become writing books, speaking,
• 11:02
  and hosting this very podcast. Not because I have everything
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  figured out, and definitely not because I have arrived, but
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  because God took a season that began with brokenness and
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  started shaping purpose from it. And honestly, I think that that
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  journey of discovery never stops.
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  I don't think we ever arrive at some final version of ourselves
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  where growth ends and understanding is complete.
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  I think following Christ is a lifelong process of discovery of
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  who we are in Him. And layer by layer, season by
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  season, calling by calling recovery was not the
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  destination, it was the doorway. And maybe for some of you
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  listening, it's the doorway for you too.
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  So what do we do with this? Well, we ask new questions.
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  We don't just ask ourselves, what are we leaving behind?
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  What am I leaving behind? But we ask questions like, what
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  am I moving towards? What am I building?
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  What am I becoming? What future is God inviting me
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  into? Because maybe you're not just
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  the survivor. Maybe you are not just the
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  recovering person. Maybe you are not just the one
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  rebuilding. Maybe you are becoming something
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  new. So let me ask you, have you
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  built your identity around surviving?
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  Have you become attached to the version of yourself that lived
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  through pain? What future feels difficult to
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  imagine? And what would happen if you
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  stopped asking what happened to me and started asking what is
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  God building in me? Because maybe the next season of
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  your life is not about surviving at all.
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  Maybe it's about becoming. Think about that.
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  Next time on Unmasked, we're going to talk about clean
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  identity. Because identity is not
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  ultimately found in trauma or performance or even recovery.
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  Eventually the question becomes who did God create me to be?
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  And that happens when your identity shifts from survival to
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  purpose. Until next time, remember this,
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  recovery matters, healing matters, but surviving was never
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  meant to become your final identity.
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  You are more than what you lived for, you are becoming.
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  God bless.