Former Street Sense vendor Tammy Karuza wants her readers and customers to know she is doing well. She left the streets of Washington, D.C., in July 2012 for a better life in Fayetteville, North Carolina. Now she has a place to live near her adult son. Her sights are set on getting a job at a local newspaper where she once worked as a freelancer. Karuza said she has found much help and stability through participation in a Christian 12- step program called Celebrate Recovery. To learn more, please read on…
After the Aug. 20 episode of Rizzoli and Isles aired, a tribute was made to Lee Thompson Young. I went online and found that the captivating actor had committed suicide. One would wonder why someone who had so much going for him would choose to end his own life, but things aren’t always as they appear. Truth be told, there are many things which can make even the most seemingly enchanted life rough, even unmanageable, for the person living it. More than 38,364 Americans took their own lives in 2010, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
In addition, more than 45 million more suffer from mental illness, and 23.5 million struggle with addiction according to national statistics. Over 3 million children are abused each year, the advocacy organization Child-Help USA reports.
These “personal issues” don’t just destroy individual lives. Since only a fraction of the people who need psychological help get the care they need, they end up hurting families, communities, and society as a whole. Its no secret, for instance, that untreated mental illness contributes to homelessness.
Well, as Anne Murray once sang “We sure could use a little good news today.”And there is good news. In response to such an obvious need, successful self-help groups such as Celebrate Recovery are helping people who are struggling with addictions and traumas to find peace and healing.
Celebrate Recovery was started in 1991 at Saddleback Church in California. The brainchild of Pastors Rick Warren and John Baker, CR is a twelve-step group, based largely on the same steps as programs such as Alcoholics Anonymous but with a special emphasis upon Jesus Christ’s power to heal that which is broken.
CR has won many accolades over the years, and across the nation. Two groups meet right here in Fayetteville at Destiny Now Pentecostal Church and Arron Lake Baptist Church.
“We use the same twelve steps that AA uses,” says Jamie Rich, Leader of the Arron Lake Baptist Church Celebrate Recovery program. “The difference is in step three: we say ‘we turn our life and will over to the care of God.”
Rich grew up in a loving home. Yet he himself faced struggles. He was over-weight, was bullied by the other children, leaving him to feel that he did not fit in anywhere among his peers. “Then, one day I was introduced to the “party guys” that used to drink and used drugs,” he said. He finally found a group of peers he felt accepted by, but what started out as fun and social turned into an addiction that followed him most of his adult life. “By the time I was thirty-two years old, I finally hit what I call my rock bottom.
(to be continued)
