All Is Grace by Brennan Manning

Author:Brennan Manning
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Brennan Manning, Christian, Ragamuffin, Abba, God, Memoir, gospel, Grace
Publisher: David C. Cook
Published: 2011-09-13T10:00:00+00:00

While at Hazelden, part of our curriculum was to give peer reviews. The purpose of peer reviews was, as Hazelden put it,

to offer our peers help in seeing themselves more specifically, their areas of dishonesty, their defense mechanisms, and their character defects. It takes courage to risk confronting. We have all traded our honesty for the approval of others in the past. However, if we care about our fellow peers, and if we want them to be honest with us in return, we will present them with our picture of them. Our disease is life-threatening. Recovery requires taking risks, learning about ourselves, and making changes.

Here is an example of a peer-review worksheet we all had to fill out. I’ve kept it as a keepsake of sorts, of how bad things can really get.

A. I SEE YOU DOING THE FOLLOWING TO PRESENT BARRIERS TO YOUR RECOVERY (circle statements which apply)

1. I don’t see you participating in group without prodding

2. I hear you trying to patch everyone up in the community

3. I see you feeling that you deserve special treatment

4. I hear you talking down to other patients on the unit

5. I see you full of denial (minimizing, explaining, justifying)

6. I see you hiding in anger

7. I see you acting like an “old pro” in treatment

8. I see you playing counselor

9. I see you being self-controlled

10. I see you trying to manage the unit

11. I see you not accepting your addiction

12. I hear you bragging about your addiction (war stories)

13. I hear you talking one way in group and another way in community

B. I SEE YOU USING THE FOLLOWING DIVERSIONS TO KEEP FROM DEALING WITH YOUR DISEASE (circle statements which apply)

1. Watching TV, playing cards or games, etc

2. Preoccupied with everything but treatment

3. Using self-pity (PLOM—poor little old me)

4. Getting romantically involved, flirting, etc

5. Preoccupied and talking about physical problems

6. People pleasing

7. Using humor/joking to keep from showing true feelings

8. Staying alone (isolating)

Out of all the Hazelden peers who filled out this form for me, every one of them circled all twenty-one items. I received a horribly perfect score. Then again, I’d had almost a decade of consistent practice, and practice makes perfect.

I don’t like to discuss my time at Hazelden. It was one of the most challenging experiences in all my life, and many times I didn’t know if I had the strength to face it. But I did face it, albeit imperfectly. In addition to being a dreamer, I was a survivor, much like my mother. I could grit my teeth and make it. My mother left her bruised decade, got the education she needed, and worked hard to succeed. I followed that same approach and began writing in earnest my life’s message of grace. My mother also found someone to marry after her bruised decade. Like my mother, I did too.

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