We Were Created for Connecting

By Carol Holmstrom, National Assimilation Coach

“‘It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.’ . . . But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him. So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. Then the man said, ‘This at last is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man’” Genesis 2:18, 20-23 (ESV).

The Bible goes on to recount how Adam and Eve fell into temptation and did the one thing that the Lord told them not to do. They then played the “excuse and accuse” game. They blamed each other for their mistakes and bad choices.

How often do we do that in our relationships—especially in marriage? “If my husband wasn’t this way, I wouldn’t respond like that.” “If my wife didn’t do that one thing, then I wouldn’t have to seek comfort in other ways.” The list could go on and on.

This is where the tools that my husband and I have learned through Celebrate Recovery have played an incredibly valuable role. We learn that when we try to play God in our lives, we only mess things up and destroy the connection that God intended us to have from the beginning. We were made to be helpers to each other. When we can admit our part of the mess, truly make amends to one another, and keep choosing to love and help our spouse, that connection grows deeper.

Celebrate Recovery, through Jesus Christ, keeps us on the same page. It keeps us moving forward in our own recovery and helps keep us out of that dangerous “excuse and accuse” game. My husband and I both know that without learning these tools through Celebrate Recovery, we most likely would not still be married. But because we both committed to the process of recovery, God has allowed us to grow in him with each other.

What a wonderful feeling to know that when struggles come up, we can speak the same language with each other and work through our issues in healthy ways. As our children have also grown up learning these same tools through Celebration Place and the Landing, we can see how God is using the same basic principles in their lives as they build healthy relationships in their own marriages.