Next week our Healing Through Christ Family Support meetings will begin again with the Introduction to Step One. This is a great time to join us, either in person or by phone. We have many phone meetings, and they have the advantage of providing access to people regardless of their location. Participants can join and listen only, or they can help with the reading and share. These meetings become powerful sources of support and love.

While our workbook talks about having a loved one in addiction, in fact many of the people who come to our group meetings have other challenges that they are facing. The Steps help us to experience hope and healing through the Atonement of Jesus Christ, regardless of the specific circumstances of our lives. Our focus is on the solution, not the problem, so often we don’t know why people come to our groups, unless at some point they decide to share their struggle. We support each other in coming to Christ—it doesn’t matter where we are coming from.

Emotional and spiritual healing for self and relationships come as a result of these principles, among others, that we learn as we work the Steps:

• Learning how to distinguish between negative thoughts and negative emotions and the appropriate way to respond to each
• Respecting agency; honoring the process of personal growth
• Setting healthy boundaries
• Emotionally detaching from obsessing over others’ problems without detaching from the person
• Understanding the emotional stages at work in our own and other’s lives
• Recognizing in ourselves codependent rescuing, persecuting, and suffering behaviors
• Trusting God to work in another’s life
• Placing hope in our Savior, Jesus Christ
• Learning how to believe in and experience the healing power of the Atonement of
• Jesus Christ
• Clearing away clutter that interferes with our ability to hear and respond to the Spirit
• Using tools such as a gratitude journal, fear list, and forgiveness practice to combine the power of emotional and spiritual healing

No problem-solving that happens in meetings; we have no cross-talk, so no one is giving advice to another person. All solutions come through the Spirit. In meetings we simply read the Steps and the Spirit teaches and inspires the individual to find solutions, hope, and healing through the Savior’s Atonement.

We discover how to experience the grace of Jesus Christ as a healing and enabling power in our lives every day. We see others who are in the process of using the Atonement of Jesus Christ to overcome a variety of challenges we don’t feel safe discussing at church; witnessing that success gives us hope for ourselves. When we survey anonymous participants about the ways in which Healing Through Christ meetings helped them or others, they list these challenges that were helped through the meetings and working the Steps.

• Strained relationship with a spouse
• Healthy ways of relating with adult children
• Ways to preserve relationships in spite of concerns over wayward child such as
  • Children who leave the church
  • Children who develop drug or other addictions
  • Children who have come out as gay or lesbian
• Life-threatening health crisis in children or grandchildren
• Diagnosis of chronic health condition
• Caring for children or adult family members with special needs
• Caring for aging parents
• Adult children who make poor financial, educational, or relationship decisions
• Crisis of faith
• Loss of a loved one to suicide
• Relationship challenges without resorting to negative responses
• Creating internal boundaries that prevent rushing into rescue or fix children or teenagers
• Trusting children to make decisions and learn from their own experience, rather than trying to manage their lives
• Emotional stages of response to trauma, loss, change in circumstances, etc.
• Strained relationships as a result of codependent behavior
• Deep, hidden anger and learning how to heal through the 12 Steps and the Atonement of Jesus Christ
• Sexual tensions in a marriage— trying to set boundaries for what is acceptable behavior
• Anger at family and church leaders after traumatic events
• Fear as a result of job loss or marital problems; learning tools to process fear and let go and turn everything over to God
• Struggles with depression and feelings of isolation
• Struggles with anxiety and fear
• Aftermath of childhood physical and sexual abuse
• Struggle to stay faithful to covenants as a member with same-sex attraction
• Emotionally abusive marriage
• Effects of attachment disorders from childhood
• Sexual and other addictions
• Bitterness from a contentious divorce
• Anger at church members or leaders that led to inactivity
• Need to develop a deeper ability to forgive
• Struggle to understand the nature of addiction and why loved ones turn to the addiction when they promise and intend to stop
• Need for a place that is safe to process difficult memories and find hope for the future
• Opportunity to see others who are in the process of using the Atonement of Jesus Christ to overcome a variety of challenges we don’t feel safe discussing at church

While every week is a great week to start coming to meetings, we will be starting from Step One over the next few weeks. Come join us by finding a meeting on our phone meeting page. You will feel love and acceptance and hope.