Not Alone

You can smile at work, sit in a church pew, and still feel like you’re suffocating at home. Loving a spouse who’s battling addiction can create a lonely silence that nobody sees, and it can convince you that you’re the only one living this kind of private pain. We go straight into that reality and say the thing you may not believe yet: you’re not alone. I share what I wish someone had told me while I was married to someone addicted to pain medication, including how shame and secrecy isolate you, why people who don’t understand will ask “why don’t you just leave,” and how codependency can keep you stuck even when you’re exhausted. We also talk about the spiritual and emotional impact of isolation, how the lies get louder when you’re alone, and why trying to “fix the addict” by yourself becomes its own prison. If you’re searching for support for spouses of addicts, Christian help for addiction in marriage, or guidance for codependency recovery, you’ll hear language for what you’re carrying and a path forward. We open Hebrews 13:5 and unpack the difference between feeling alone and being alone, because God’s presence isn’t always loud but it is real. Then we land on a hard truth that can also be freeing: healing doesn’t happen in isolation. That’s why I point you toward community and invite you to take a first step toward connection and real support. If this helped you, subscribe, share it with someone who needs it, and leave a review so more spouses can find hope.

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Transcript

You Are Not Alone

SPEAKER_00 0:00

You are carrying something in your life that most people will never fully understand. You show up to work, you smile at church, and you say, I'm fine when people ask you. But behind closed doors, you're exhausted, you're consumed, you're ashamed, and you're wondering if anybody's ever gonna fully understand what you're walking through. This episode's for you. And I need you to hear this. You're not alone. Welcome to Reclaiming Your Identity, a podcast dedicated to providing hope, healing, and support for married individuals whose spouses are battling addiction. Rooted in the truth of your identity in Christ, this podcast offers practical guidance and biblical insight to help you navigate the challenges of addiction within your marriage. Here we'll find encouragement and embrace God's plan for restoration in your life. Let's walk this journey together, one step at a time.

The Tenth Unspoken Truth

SPEAKER_00 0:57

Hello, and welcome to another episode of Reclaiming Your Identity Podcast. I'm Steve, your host. Super excited that you're here today. In this episode, we're talking about the last of the ten truths unspoken. Number 10 in this episode, the most important probably, is you're not alone. The things that I wish somebody would have told me when I was entangled with my ex-wife, who was addicted to pain medication. I wish somebody would have said, you're not alone. Because I felt so alone. Even being a preacher in the pulpit at a church, I felt alone. I felt like God abandoned me. I felt like I had nobody that understood what I was walking through, and I just felt completely alone. So as we do this episode on the last of the ten truths, I want you to know that it's not the end. It's an invitation to the beginning.

The Hidden Loneliness Of Addiction

SPEAKER_00 1:52

But before we get started, I want you to know that this download is available for you. It's available for you to read the 10 things I wish somebody would have told me. I wrote them down. These are the things I've learned, things I've wish somebody would have just grabbed me by the shoulder, shaken me, and said, Hey, Steve, you can't do this. Here's some things I can tell you. These ten truths hopefully will give you clarity and start the process of healing if you haven't started already, or maybe advance where you are in your healing. But this is a free resource. It's a short book, it's a guide, I call it, and it's probably around 30 pages, but it's in the show notes. You can download it for free. Please check it out. Find out the 10 truths that were unspoken to me and cost me 13 years of hell. And I'm trying to stop people in their tracks of where they are with this addiction and start healing today. So maybe you know somebody that's going through this, get it to them. That would be great. Everything's in the show notes. You can click on the link and get your free guide and start on your path to healing. But let's get started with the show. When you are with an addict and you love somebody in addiction, it creates a really weird kind of loneliness. You could be surrounded by people at work, you could be surrounded by some friends, you could be surrounded by people at church, but you are just so alone and you feel so isolated. It really impacts a person. And I can say that because I was leading a company, I was a pastor in a church, I was leading a congregation this whole time, surrounded by all these people. I felt so alone. One, because I held a secret, I couldn't tell anybody because of shame and what would happen in a church. And it just was such an overwhelming feeling of loneliness. Most people don't understand why you stay with the person, why you hurt, and why can't you just move on? Why can't you just move on? I heard that a lot from people that just didn't understand.

Shame And Codependency Keep You Stuck

SPEAKER_00 4:12

And it's not that I wanted to stay, it was I was stuck in codependency. And most people that are with addicts have codependency. Now, there's people that I'm not going to tolerate this, and they move on because they're strong and they maybe didn't have any childhood trauma. But when you have childhood trauma and you have these less than feelings, and then somebody becomes an addict, like in my case, my ex-wife wasn't an addict when we got married, but she became an addict three years into our marriage. And that is when you start to click into codependencies. I mean, they were always there, but they just weren't emphasized too much. But when this addiction happened, man, that's when these things reared up and just fired up. And you just are consumed with the addiction, and you can't just move on. You can't just say I've had enough when you're in an unhealthy space like that. And you have pulled back from friends because now you're embarrassed of explaining every time, and you're trying to come up with excuses of why your ex-wife is that way. I remember going to friends' Christmas parties and different barbecues, and I was so embarrassed and shameful, even going. And it ends up to where you just come up with excuses. I got to work, I can't go. I mean, it was just because the whole time you're there, you're embarrassed when your wife's talking, you're embarrassed because of this, you're embarrassed because of that, she's doing this. You just get tired of explaining yourself in some of those situations of why you can't go, and maybe they did notice something and you have to explain. I mean, it just is so lonely and it's so hurtful and it's so shameful.

Isolation Makes The Lies Louder

SPEAKER_00 6:04

Stop going to people at church because again, we get the Christian easy answers. Oh, God is with you, God is strong, and God will bring you through this. And they say all these Christian words just to throw up because they don't know how to really react. They have no clue on what you're going through, and they have no clue on how to even help you, except for I'll pray for you, and here's a couple Bible verses that I memorized. It isn't that they want, don't want to help. I think most people just don't know how to help. That's the problem. And there's a silence that settles into your life, there's a silence that settles into your home that nobody outside of that realm can see. This is the loneliness that the enemy wants to keep us in. This is the loneliness that the devil loves because he can just sit there and whisper to you about how bad you are and how shameful you are, and you're less than, and you're never going to fix this, and you're never gonna get out of this, and this is the prison that you're gonna be in for the rest of your life. You become so isolated, and isolated people are so easy to defeat. They're so easy to bully, they're so easy to pick on, they're so easy to keep down, and that's what the devil does. Loneliness is not just an emotional state. Loneliness isn't, oh, I feel lonely. No, loneliness is actually something that really affects you. It affects who and how you think about yourself. Loneliness affects on how you see yourself. When you are isolated, the lies become louder. When you feel alone, all these lies are amplified. You're never gonna stop this. You can't stop this, you're not good enough. They don't want to stop for you. Nobody cares, you're not enough. All that just keeps piling on, and he just keeps whispering that in your ear. And that's what keeps you in this prison of loneliness and shame and torture, and we don't realize what's actually going on in the spiritual warfare, but in just life in general, it's just a hell. It is just a hell that we are in, it's a prison we are in. And if you go back and listen to all these episodes, we talk about being in a prison, we talk about the lies, we talk about all this stuff. So maybe you should go back and listen to some of those episodes if you haven't. Isolation keeps you stuck in the same patterns because there is no mirror. There is no mirror, nobody is reflecting any kind of truth back to you. So you're just walking in the same stuff every single day. And they're the lies. You keep walking in those lies, you keep living in those lies because nobody is truly speaking truth into you. There's nothing that's coming back that contradicts the lies that you're believing. So if you believe that you're less than, there's nobody standing there going, you know what, you're great, you don't need this, or you're feeling shameful, and nobody's standing there going, This is not your fault, this is their fault. There's nothing coming back of truth. There's nothing to help steer you out

Breaking Point In The Pulpit

SPEAKER_00 9:30

of that. My biggest moment of loneliness was when I was at the church and I was preaching one Sunday morning, and when my wife went, she would sit on the front row, and I got so tired of her nodding off while I was preaching. I was so angry, I was so embarrassed, I was so full of shame. I wanted to run and hide. I was so angry, I was there was so many different emotions going through when I saw that. And it was the last time. And I remember leaving and going home, and I remember just saying, God, I'm done. I'm done. I don't feel like you're here. You're not helping me, you're not helping her, we're not fixing her, we're not doing anything, things aren't getting better, they're getting worse. I don't know why, but man, you don't even want me. You don't even want to help me. You might not even be real, and you know what? I am done. I'm done with you, I'm done with church, I'm done with trying to keep this fake happiness going while I try to love on other people. It's just draining, and you're working in their lives, you're not working in mine, and it's just like I was done. I was completely done. I felt so alone, and I walked away from everything. Now you want to talk about being alone, the next two years were complete hell. Because I wasn't praying anymore. I wasn't talking to God anymore. I was just trying to fix the addict. I had no friends. We moved out of the community, we were in a rural area, it was just me, my codependency, her, and her addiction. And the fight was on, and it was a loneliness of hell for two years. Two years. Can I go ahead and take you to the Bible

Hebrews 13 And God’s Promise

SPEAKER_00 11:48

today? We're gonna be in Hebrews 13. It's at the end of Hebrews, if you want to work your way over there, and it's in verse five. I'm actually gonna be in the second part of 13, 5, where it says this simple I will never leave you, never, and I will not loosen my grip on your life. So that we can say with great confidence, I know that the Lord is for me, and I will never be afraid of what people may do to me. This is a verse that people like to kind of scream out in Christianese, but it's actually a really good verse, and it's actually died into what I'm talking today. It's tied into this loneliness. And what the writer's talking about here in chapter 13 is that you need to fill your heart up with love, you need to be kind to strangers, honor your marriage, don't worry about money, don't make money your goal. He's talking about all these different things, and then he gives the promise. This promise here, don't you remember that God promised you this? He promised he will never leave you, never forsake you, and he will have a grip on your life. Well, that's great, and that's Christian ease that we don't want to hear when we're in the midst of this hell and loneliness. But I'm here to tell you that it's actually a really good verse for you today because you're not alone. But let me explain this further. The verse doesn't say that God will fix everything immediately, it says he'll never leave. He'll be with you in this suffering. But you have to open some of the doors to allow him in to start healing. So we know that he's with us all the time. We're entangled with him, the Holy Spirit, and Jesus all the time. They're there. But if you never let them in, they won't kick the door in. That's not how they love, that's not we would be puppets in that way, and they don't do that. But once you start opening a door and allow healing to start, and just open that door of loneliness first. Okay, God, if you're really here, you're really with me, you never leave me, then show me that you're here, and he'll show you. I promise you that he'll show you. But remember that just because you have God in your life, he doesn't fix everything immediately. He'll transform you and it takes time, but he won't fix everything immediately. I was expecting God to just snap a finger and everything would be fine, but that's not what he wanted.

Feeling Alone Versus Being Alone

SPEAKER_00 14:24

There's a difference between being alone and feeling alone. We have to really, really, really listen to that. There's a difference between feeling alone and being alone. God's presence doesn't always feel loud, but it's always real. He's always there. And you have to believe that, you really do. We were never meant to carry this without him. We were designed in the image of Jesus Christ, right? We go through sufferings, we go through things that have happened because of what Adam and Eve done. And we choose to stay in that old self instead of the new self, which just complicates things, and that's another episode. But what I'm trying to say is we were never meant to carry our sufferings alone. God has designed us to leave those burdens to him, to put trust in him that he will lift those burdens off of us. We were never meant to carry any of this without others. So

Healing Requires Community

SPEAKER_00 15:32

when we're isolated and we're alone, nobody's speaking those reflections into us. We weren't designed that way. We were designed for community. We were designed for people to stand beside us. But those people are afraid sometimes. They don't want to get into the mess. And they could be great Christians of church, but they just don't know what to do. They don't want to get involved, and they don't want to get into the mess. But we were never designed to try to fix it and carry it and do this addiction entanglement alone. The body of Christ was made specifically for people like us. We're to carry each other's burdens, we're to lift each other up, we're to encourage each other and walk with each other. That's what this life was designed for when we go through these types of sufferings. And I have to make a very important point. God never designed us to be alone. God's answer to loneliness always included people, another person. He put Adam in the garden and said, It's not good for man to be alone. He made Eve. Very first chapter of the book. He doesn't want people alone. This is gonna be a hard truth that I'm gonna hit you with right now. Healing doesn't happen in isolation. It never will. You will not heal on your own. You may think you are, but you're not. Healing happens in relationship, in community, in a group setting with other people. There's something so powerful when you hear somebody else go. Me too. I know that. I felt that. I know exactly where you're at. Those are liberating words when you're alone. You don't need people that have all the

Walk Right Community Invitation

SPEAKER_00 17:24

answers. We think that we have to go to therapists and specialized counselors and all these things and doctors and medication to get us out of our loneliness, to feel positive, and to get out of our depression and get us to where we need to go. You don't need somebody that has all the answers. You need somebody who just understands. You need somebody who understands the question. The people that I'm hoping come to Walk Right Community that we just launched, they're not going to be perfect people, but they're going to be people who get it. They're going to be people who are tired of being alone, who are tired of facing this by themselves, and just need somebody to walk beside that can help them through the confusion, the loneliness, the pain, the shame, the everything that I've talked about, everything. That's what they want. And that's what this community is going to provide. So I ask you to, again, in the show notes, you can check out the community. It's a place for people like us. You don't need clinical answers out of a textbook. You need somebody who's actually walked through hell with it, like me. To where I can stand beside you and go, look, this is what we need to do. This is what you need to think, this is how we need to move forward. That's what community is designed for. And it's not a community based around me, it's a community hopefully brung in a bunch of people that have walked through this. And everybody can help everybody. It's not to see show. It's a place of healing and transformation and hope. So check that out in the show notes. Because people who have shed the same tears, people who have felt the same shame, people that have asked those questions at two in the morning know how to help you get healing. And if you've listened to ten episodes now, actually we're on our left, but if you listen to the ten untold things or the unspoken truths, if you've listened to all these now, that tells me something about you. You're somebody who is serious about getting help. You're not a quitter. You want to move forward. You want to break the chains that are keeping you in a prison. You're still here. But the information I give on this podcast won't heal you alone. You need community. Whether you walk in mine or not, you need to find community. You need to find other people that have walked through this that can help you. But walk by community exists exactly for that. It's a faith-based space where spouses of partners who are battling addiction can come and be fully known, be fully free, be fully seen, and walk out their healing together in Christ and be totally transformed. And when you step into this community, you don't have to introduce yourself of um a wife or a husband of an addict because people already know. You're safe there. You're safe here. You don't have to be alone. You're not alone. So don't believe that

Share The Help And Final Blessing

SPEAKER_00 20:50

lie. I want to thank you so much for listening or watching this episode. If you would, would you please like, subscribe, share it with somebody that needs it? And that is my passion. That is what I want to do now. I do not want to see people alone, hurt, and afraid to move forward out of this with an addict. And if you have kids, it just rips my heart up. And if you're going to church, you're probably confused just like I was. We can help you in the community. So again, there's hope. And there's healing out there for you. You have to take the first step. Thank you again for listening. And remember, you're loved, you're holy. And of course, I'm gonna see you on the next episode. God bless you.