Using Your Talents In Recovery

By: Amy Marcle

My husband sent me a text recently that read as follows: “Since you are not going to push yourself, I am going to push you. I was hoping that by buying you a laptop, you would start writing. Since you are not, I am in the process of starting one (a website) for us. I have a team now building our logo and a website with the logo. It is going to be called “Rent Free Living.” The tagline says, “Are you living to die or dying to live?”  I have wanted to do this for a long time. It is time.”

If you know anything about me, you know that I do enjoy writing. In high school, I began writing. and found that not only did I enjoy it, but others thought I was good at it. I continued writing all the way through college and even during my adult life. But recently, I have let other things get in the way of doing what I love. Jason often asks, “Why do you not write anymore?”  I always use the same excuse that “I’m too busy,” or “I’m too tired.”  But honestly, the reason I stopped writing was because I did not feel as if I had anything to say that others wanted to read. I use my social media to express my opinions often. I try to post positive thoughts, motivational stories, and sometimes (ok, often) sarcastic remarks to make people laugh. I have often thought, though what if writing is the one talent that God gave me that he wants me to use (no matter how good or bad a writer I may be) to help others. What if I do not use the talent given to me?

While I am not sure I would classify myself as talented, what if God thinks otherwise? What if He allowed me to overcome addiction, learn to cope with anxiety, cultivate emotional awareness as part of my talent to share with others? No, He did not sprinkle me with athletic ability. No, He did not bless me with acting capabilities. But He rescued me from the dark hole of sin and self-destruction. And He not only did this for my benefit, but so I could share my addiction recovery story with others.

We learn in the Bible that “We have different gifts, according to the grace given to each of us. If your gift is prophesying, then prophesy in accordance with your faith, if it is serving, then serve; if it is teaching, then teach, if is to encourage, then give encouragement; if it is giving, then give generously, if it is to lead, do it diligently, if is  show mercy, do it cheerfully.” Romans 12: 6-8

A few years ago, I wrote a book about my battle with an eating disorder. I wrote it as a form of therapy to help me finally sit down and allow myself to talk about what I had been through, what I had put myself through, what I had put my family and friends through. I decided to publish it, because if one person could read my story and allow it to help them in their recovery, it would have been worth the cost of publication and the time it took to write it. I had several people reach out to me both in person and through social media to tell me they too had faced the deadly battle of an eating disorder. They had felt alone and like nobody else knew what they were feeling. At that point, I knew that God led me to write my story for a reason. Because of that book, I formed a friendship with Sara Crowley from Whales who flew to Nashville just to “thank” me

for writing my story. She expressed to me that it helped her so much in her recovery that she swore one day she was going to come to the United States and meet me and my family in person. And she did just that! That is powerful. She works in Wales tirelessly promoting the importance of mental health and eating disorders. And she always recommends my book. You see our story may seem unimportant to us, but it may be just what someone else needs to hear.

The purpose of this blog is simple. We want to address the topic of mental illness. It is not our intent to make this a depressing blog, but the opposite. We want to address mental issues that affect all of us. And believe me, we are all affected by mental illness. We have either experience it ourselves or know someone who has dealt with it. We want to share our experiences of the issues we face or have faced during the last few years of our lives and let others know that there is hope for recovery. We want to let others know they are not alone in their battles. We have found many ways to acknowledge, accept, and overcome our personal battles. To us, recovery is only successful when we can use our experiences to help others recover.

A few of the topics we plan to discuss are grief, anxiety, and addiction. These three seem to plague us the most. However, they are often accompanied by other issues. Mental illness is a bag of surprises, and we want to address as many of the topics as we can. We want to hear from you as well! Contact us to tell us what you need help addressing. Tell us what topics you would like us to research and discuss. We can only help ourselves by helping others, and we want this blog to help YOU!

The most effective way to help others overcome addiction, sort out their grief, cope with anxiety, and promote mental well-being is to share our own experiences. What better feeling than to know you are not alone?

Along the way in this new journey, we will give honest details of events that have caused our mental health issues. We will do our best to supply motivational material and make you feel like you have someone who knows what you are going through. We will use both our faith and our sense of humor to hopefully make you think, as well as laugh. We hope you join us on our journey. Together we can be effective in raising awareness about the battles we all face.