Long-Term Recovery: Spiritual Spackle

Today, I want to introduce you to the concept of Spiritual Spackle. It is what took me from bitter to grateful and from abstinent to being in recovery. To understand what Spiritual Spackle is, let’s start with a story from my younger years:

Late in my addiction, I lived in a house with wooden siding. One day I got mad and punched 2 holes in the side of my house. Being a knucklehead, I duct taped it and left it. I thought it was better. It was an eye sore to anyone who drove by, silver duct tape on a light tan house, but in my mind it was fixed. I couldn't see the holes.

A couple of years later when I got rid of the house I took the duct tape off. You can only imagine what I found. Instead of two fist sized holes, there was a huge hole that was a combination of the two holes. Water had got in to the drywall, and it was moldy and mildewed. Instead of being taken care of, it had gotten much worse by my covering it up. 

That is the basis of Spiritual Spackle. Life punches holes in our soul: childhood abuse, abusive relationships, being told you’ll never be good enough or you’ll grow up to be just like your father/mother, abusive relationships, being raped, not being like everybody else, racism, overweight, etc.  

Life hurts. It is more than some of us can handle. We mask our hurts, habits and hang ups. We hide our pain. We use things to cover it up: sex, food, shopping, violence, power, anger, cutting, codependency, alcohol and/or other drugs. Much like the duct taped hole, we believe the problem is fixed. Over time, the problems we have avoided stack up. The hole becomes deeper. We grow more distant, angrier and more depressed. Addiction sets in.

Then we get sober, start to address the issues and we get scared. They seem too large; so overwhelming we don’t know where to begin. We realize all we have avoided and it hits us like an avalanche of emotions. We hurt and are not prepared to deal with it because we are so used to running away and hiding.

When this happened to me, I got a sponsor and worked steps. Went to meetings and made sober friends. Most people stop there. You can’t. You have to spackle the hole after you have done the ground work with the steps and/or therapy.

I found the Holy Spirit and community service are both like spackle for the holes in our souls. They tell us we are more, we are resources. They allow us to become part of our communities again. They allow us to see that we are not the people we once were. That is when true recovery sets in. When the holes are finally spackled in, only then can we begin truly living that Better Life in Recovery!