How to Prepare for Recovery Week with Scott Gibson, LCSW, MSW, and Linda Royster, LCMHC
In 1988, Dr. Dan Allender led the very first Recovery Week. Nearly four decades later, these immersive experiences continue to offer sacred space for survivors of childhood sexual abuse to come together, face the impact of what happened, and find care and restoration for the profound heartache they’ve experienced.
But how do you know if Recovery Week is right for you? Do you need to do any preparation or pre-work before you arrive? And what if you’re not sure your story is “big enough” or “bad enough” to warrant being there?
In this episode, Dan is joined by longtime friends and Recovery Week leaders and facilitators Linda Royster and Scott Gibson, who lead the Women’s and Men’s Recovery Weeks, respectively. Together, they talk about why this work is so sacred to them and offer a glimpse into the decades of experience and carefully developed process behind Recovery Week.
They also talk honestly about what it can feel like to consider stepping into a week like this: the fear, resistance, desire for a step-by-step plan, and uncertainty about what you’re supposed to bring with you.
Here’s the truth: you don’t have to arrive ready to resolve everything. Instead, Recovery Week invites you to begin with curiosity, honesty, and perhaps even a little kindness toward yourself.
Listen in to learn more about who Recovery Week is for, why it exists, and how to begin discerning whether it might be a place for you.
Next week, Dan will return with Wendell Moss and Sue Cunningham to give you an inside glimpse into what actually happens when you arrive at a Recovery Week.
If you’ve been thinking about attending a Recovery Week for Men or Women, or if you’re just hearing about it for the first time, we invite you to learn more here on our website.
About Our Guests:
Scott Gibson, LCSW, MSW, graduated from Loyola School of Social Work in 1994. Scott has been involved with the Allender Center as a participant the first few years, and has served as a Facilitator since 2015. Scott has a passion for helping others engage in their stories of trauma and harm. Scott resides in Barrington, IL and engages with clients’ stories through his private practice, www.scottlcsw.com.
Linda Royster, LCMHC, has been called to traumatized populations. She has crafted an extensive history of work experiences with children, adolescents, and adults in hospital, academic, and non-profit milieus, respectively. She earned a Master’s degree in Counseling Psychology from The Seattle School of Theology & Psychology Graduate School and she is a Licensed Clinical Mental Health Counselor in private practice in NC. Linda continued her journey with TSS as a Practicum Facilitator upon graduation in 2011. Also, she authored the addendum of the 25th-anniversary re-release of Healing the Wounded Heart by Dr. Dan Allender. Her addendum addresses issues that African-American women survivors of childhood abuse might face. Additionally, she is in the process of writing a book that addresses racial trauma and sexual abuse. Currently, Linda is the Strategic Alliances Manager at The Seattle School and a Lead Instructor at the Allender Center. Linda was part of a think tank that gave rise to the idea of the Allender Center’s formation, of which she joined as a Facilitator in 2011. She is deeply committed to the recovery, healing, and well-being of her people specifically, but not exclusively.
About the Allender Center Podcast:
For over a decade, the Allender Center Podcast has offered honest, thoughtful conversations about the deep work of healing and transformation. Hosted by Dr. Dan Allender and Rachael Clinton Chen, MDiv, this weekly podcast explores the complexities of trauma, abuse recovery, story, relationships, and spiritual formation. Through questions submitted by listeners, stories, interviews, and conversations, we engage the deep places of heartache and hope that are rarely addressed so candidly in our culture today. Join the Allender Center Podcast to uncover meaningful perspectives and support for your path to healing and growth.
At the Allender Center, we value thoughtful dialogue across a wide range of voices, stories, and lived experiences. In that spirit, our podcast features guests and hosts who may hold differing perspectives. The perspectives shared on this podcast by guests and hosts reflect their own experiences and viewpoints and do not necessarily represent the views, positions, or endorsements of the Allender Center and/or The Seattle School of Theology & Psychology.
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Episode Transcript
Dan: Well, my co-hostess is not joining me today, but I have truly two beloved friends, colleagues whom I have known for several… We do life and dog years, so this would be pretty close to over a hundred years. At least I think they probably feel that way with regard to engagement with me. Linda Royster, who has been on our show often, who’s a therapist in North Carolina, writer, speaker, just stunningly remarkable human being. So Linda, welcome.
Linda: Thank you. Happy to be here. Good to see you.
Dan: And Scott Gibson, who is, I just think one of the most remarkable men I know on the earth. That’s a pretty strong statement, but it’s also quite true. Not only a therapist, not only a spiritual director, not only a internationally known, and I don’t know how to put the next phrase…to say a dog runner doesn’t make sense. Scott, how do I describe your beloved doggies and what you do with them?
Scott: Compete in dog agility competitions. Yeah.
Dan: We’ve had you on talking about that and you’re on YouTube and it’s a glorious gift to, in one sense, have that kind of companionship. And again, you are a man who is known harm and heartache and yet lived with a level of integrity and honor in the midst of a lot of heartache. So to say –
Scott: Thank you.
Dan: Having the two of you talking about one of the most sweet, odd, compelling weeks I get to be part of, and that is a Recovery Week, a recovery addressing the issues of sexual abuse. So both dear friends, you have been with me for decades doing this work and thank you. So we want people to know about Recovery Week, but we also want you all to be thinking about the reality of what is required to begin addressing the past harm of sexual violation. And I don’t think it’s the reality that because you’ve been harmed, you’re going to engage it tragically. I think there are too many people who spend heartbreaking, heartbreaking, a lifetime avoiding addressing it. So at least to say, what’s the origin for you of engaging Recovery Weeks? And I’ll say we began Recovery Weeks in the December of 1988, and we have run them every year, which would be 38 years minus two that we were unable to do so due to COVID. So we have been over 30 years involved in doing the work of engaging the harm where a person knows that their body, their soul, their being has been violated. So when we talk about sexual abuse, we’re talking about when someone has physically, verbally, visually, in some form violated your integrity, the boundaries of your soul and body by using you for their own sexual pleasure when there has not been the capacity for consent as a child, as an adolescent, even as an adult. So how? When I ask the question of how did you get involved in this kind of work, my beloved friends?
Linda: Yeah, I love that question. And it’s been a while for me. I think I first began working with facilitating Recovery Weeks. I think it was 2011, which was the year, I think it was the year that I graduated from the Seattle School. So it was a pretty short window that I began facilitating. So about 15 years ago joining in that work. And I thought it was absolutely remarkable that someone, you and a team of people, Dan, would dare to journey with people into stories of trauma and not do so only one-to-one, but in a collective so other people are hearing story. So that was daring. And who are these group of people who had that amount of courage and just gusto to lean in and do that kind of work and to break taboos and taboos across the board, but certainly taboos in communities of color or in African American communities that someone would be willing to step in and name things with kindness, but a lot of courage to name difficult things about story and family dynamics regarding mother and father, for example. So I loved and I loved being a part of it, felt the privilege of being a part and was also terrified by it at the same time, intrigued, intrigued, but also called. How about you, Scott?
Scott: Well, yeah. I experienced some sexual trauma as a child, but as a therapist, pretty early on decided I would not take on clients, that that was their issue. I just was like, “Yeah, I’ll try to avoid that.” But that did not go well because I kept getting people that even if I tried to vet them, that they would have part of their story is some kind of sexual trauma. And I worked with a lot of men, but I kept finding men five sessions in talking about things that would happen and it stirred up a lot. And so I actually had a client that had gone to the Men’s Recovery Week and came back and just saw such transformation. And I was like, I need to go. I need to be a part of something like this. And so not knowing certainly all of what was involved, though at that time, I had done many retreats myself personally as well as leading them. But like you said, Linda, just to. And back in 1996, my first one that I went participated was in 2000… I think 2009 or 2010. But 1996 when I went to school, male sexual abuse wasn’t even in the DSM-4. So to be a part of something for a lot of men just have been named as that’s what men do, or that’s kind of what, this is how men grow up. It’s just one of the funnest things I get to be a part of in some ways to disrupt that kind of narrative to really help them embrace their humanity. I mean, the things that God made them so good. And it’s just fun to be on a team like we have to be on and play together.
Dan: Oh, it’s one of the strangest things that is hard to imagine that the intensity of the stories, because they’re so connected to the category of death, of violation, of decay, of degradation, there’s something about entering into death that opens the potentiality of being able to be held by, in one sense, be captured by resurrection, which is the intersection between tears, but also laughter. And I think that’s one of the… When I had the privilege, and I just named first names with Carla and Shannon and Al and Nancy, four folks that dreamt with me early on in probably the end of 1987, beginnings of 1988 of creating this. I don’t think we would’ve had in a trillion years the sense that there could be laughter. Tears, yes. But laughter I think would have been a… almost it would’ve sounded obscene. You can’t approach this with any thought that laughter would be anything other than a means of escape versus the result of engagement. So when I think about what does a person have to begin to ponder, engage, and to even begin to get the prompting, the courage to step into a week like this or just to step into naming the reality of their own past abuse?
Linda: So having a heart’s posture to show kindness toward the younger parts that experience violation that’s in one sense unimaginable or one sense unspeakable, but to have a level of commitment to kindness and honor. And I know it doesn’t always manifest or show that way, but coming in with a heart not to violate or to reenact or do to oneself what has been done in prior years. So having a foundation of kindness and to honor the story, honor what has been the story rather than burying it. And Dan, one thing I want to go back to naming, you mentioned death and resurrection. Well, really those are components of the gospel, right? So when you come to a Recovery Week, the foundation, it is the gospel that we’re… that’s our foundation, but also we see the rise and fall of a gospel story playing out in our own stories, our own death, our own burial. And what I mean by that, the stories we’ve wanted to bury, we have buried and vanished that we piled stuff on top of that we don’t want anyone else to know. So kind of death and burial, but also the resurrection that happens when you start to reenter stories and you do so with a level of kindness, your own, but also experiencing the kindness of those who are facilitating story, those who are in your group and reentering story with the level of kindness that brings new life, that brings fresh life. So I would say for sure entering in with a level of kindness and honor.
Scott: No, I love that. I was thinking about that word kindness too, and the aspect of kindness I think also is too really, really important is that kindness towards your authentic experience as a human. There’s something when I’ve seen, obviously I would do with the men’s Recovery Week, but when I’ve seen men just be kindly honest about their experience, whether it’s a judgment they have about themselves or an experience they have with another person in their group or what they’re hearing in what the teachers are saying kind of thing, there’s just this vulnerability that opens up. And along with that, I would just say if they can continue to be curious about why that’s happening kind of thing, I think when I’ve seen men and even be kind about their resistance, I mean, I haven’t met a man that has been in my group that hasn’t had some level of heck no… I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to talk about this stuff. I don’t want to say these things. I don’t want to feel these things. But when I see men that are just open and kind about their authentic feeling or thoughts and curious about that or inviting others into that thing, that’s where just the wild stuff starts to happen that you just can’t make it up because it just is where I think the spirit just takes all of that and just blows your mind away. Yeah.
Dan: Obviously I agree with you both 10,000%. Here’s the but, but the power of shame, again, you have this, and we bring this to bear in so many different ways. Romans chapter 2:4, it is the kindness of God that leads to repentance. But then Paul’s phrase, “Why do you treat the kindness of God with contempt?” So the reality is for most of the people coming, the idea of being kind to the young boy or girl that bore the abuse and then kind to the adolescent, to the young adult, the adult, the sexual struggles I’ve had over the last many years, the idea of kindness is like, I don’t know what you’re talking about. And I think that’s a standard line of at least to know that you’re not kind would be one of the benefits to if there can be a step or two toward kindness and honor, that would be fabulous. But I think I would settle for the person just coming to say, yeah, I know I’m not very kind to myself. That would at least open up the possibility of a curiosity as to why would there be such, in many ways, revulsion and revenge against yourself even more so than to the one who violated and used you. Do you find that to be accurate?
Scott: Yeah. I mean, I think what I’ve seen a lot, especially in the group thing, there’s the cover up, the shame that we want to cover up certainly kind of thing. And then in the group, the men in the group and the facilitators will more than likely catch you not being kind. And what will you do with their invitation to think about yourself, your younger self in a different way? That will be disruptive and there’s often resistance about that kindness, but can you take a little step, like you’re saying, into considering that maybe there’s something I could try on for 15 minutes and that’s important because you can sit in a group and resist the kindness all the live long day and we will be kind to let you struggle. But that’s what if you can be a little bit open to try some of that on, I think you’ll find it really beneficial and disruptive.
Dan: Thoughts about that, Linda?
Linda: Yeah. I think that tiny movement before you get to a Recovery Week where you begin to notice and name that you’re not kind to yourself or that you’re unkind is a kindness in and of itself. So being able to even name and notice is a kindness that you begin to offer, which kindness seems to be a strange phenomena, but that can be a kindness in and of itself to say, I’m really contemptuous or I have so much shame or I hold so much violence toward myself or I hate that five-year-old. I hate that 15-year-old. I think they’re monsters, little monsters. And so being able to say it and name it is the beginning of a turn. And so we’re not demanding that you have everything or anything resolved before you come to your Recovery Week, but just that tiny little shift and being able to name and notice, I would say is a form of kindness.
Dan: Well, I love the way you put it because it is so paradoxical, but it is so fundamentally true to face the lack of kindness is a kindness. And I would almost use the same category to say your lack of fondness for God is actually a new level of trust. Again, we’ll have really, really good-hearted people come to a Recovery Week who love God and are deeply committed to pursuing maturity. And often I find sometimes they’re the hardest people to work with because the questions that we need to open our heart to feel contrary to what often in certain ecclesial worlds would be honored or allowed and not shamed. And so being open to questioning where was God? How is it that he seems to have protected others and not me? I mean, just the broad capacity to enter into the lament and complaint Psalms, I think is a helpful beginning point. We have folks who come who would actually say, I’m not Christian. I used to be. I have no heart for God right now. I’m not going to say that there is inevitably a reorientation for them to relationship with Jesus, but often there is because we presume things about God that are bound more to our own shame and judgment than to actually what the gospel is. So when you were talking about the gospel earlier, Linda, I think there are plenty of people who are like, I can’t go into another freaking crazy religious context where I’m basically told shut up and believe.
Linda: And we’re inviting people to something that’s radically different. The difference being that you get to hold anger or question or even rage at God about your story and no one is going to condemn or judge or punish you because you do. And that’s part of the work that’s transformative, that you get to be in a group of people or in a one-to-one setting where the response to your radically honest experience, feelings, emotions are going to be held well, and you’re not going to be punished because you have a particular reaction. So we’re not inviting you to a kind of gospel that’s nice and neat and that’s suffocating, but a kind of radical, and I would think the true gospel that gives you the freedom to come as you are and then to get to experience the God of the gospel, get to experience Jesus as radically kind and radically capable of containing and holding all that we are and all that we bring.
Dan: Well, I also would underscore that first evening when everyone draws together, we generally do these weeks in some really beautiful places. It’s just important that it have a kind of beauty. And again, we’ve done so near the shores of some beautiful water in Washington and Colorado and to be in the place of beauty because we’re inviting you to, in one sense, engage some of the most ugly, heartbreaking stories of your life. And that first night of people coming in looking like, “Good God, what was wrong with me that I chose to come to this?” I mean, what’s it like for you in that first night?
Scott: I think that is one. I sometimes wish that we got people’s permission to take a little video clip of that first night, because to me, that’s one of the most fun nights because you can see their terror, you can see their resistance, you can see their squirming, you can see their, why am I here? Why did I get talked into doing this kind of thing? And I also see the beauty of their desire because in that room of 30 some men, there is so much desire and they don’t know what to do with it. And we don’t either, of course, but it’s just when you then… in fact, we could take a video of the exits, it is just palpable on their faces and their bodies, what has changed.
Linda: I love what you’re naming there, Scott. And it’s a sense that we’re not delighting in their pain. We’re not deriving pleasure from their pain, but I think the fun is that we know something they don’t yet know. We know that by the time they get to the end of the week, their countenance will have changed, that a door would have opened, that something would have been lifted for them. So we’re not sadistic in this derived pleasure from their suffering, but it’s the sense that, oh my word, the spirit of the living God has something for you and you will be met.
Scott: Yes.
Dan: I feel as we begin, like a kid being let into the proverbial candy store, and I know that’s insane because again, we are addressing some of the deepest harm that human beings can suffer. And we have said this many times that I don’t think there is greater joy for the kingdom of evil more than doing sexual harm to a child, adolescent, or an adult, as I said, in the context of a professional relationship. That setting to walk into to actually feel like I can’t believe I get the honor and truly pleasure of being in this context, and I know people are nauseous, they’re angry, they’re confused, they want control, they want to know exactly what are we going to do every minute and are you going to press, push? Are there steps? Do you require me to do X, Y? Again, to allow the human heart to know the level of angst that a person is going to experience when they walk in, which is why we say to people, you are stunningly courageous. Now, nobody feels it and nobody believes it, but we know it’s true that they’re choosing to enter into a disruption of the kind of narrative that it isn’t the story has remained inert in them, like it’s boxed away and needs to be taken out and reformed. The reality is the story has been operating in their life, shaping how they relate to their own body, how do they relate to their own sexuality, how they relate to other human beings, how they actually protect themselves from exposure. All that to say that’s what they’re opening the door to. And in that you go, it isn’t just the story of the past. Both of you underscored this, that abuse doesn’t happen in a vacuum. We open the door to engaging everything from socioeconomic status, race, the reality of your neighborhood, the reality of your family of origin. Again, would just love for you to put words to what you experience as you invite people to that.
Linda: Style of relating is that sense that you’re living out the past in the present and the here and now. And my experience of that is it’s one of the scariest forms of engagement because you don’t have time to go away and think about a process and bring it back. You don’t have time to dissect what has or debrief what has happened. You’re in the moment and then you’re putting words with someone in the moment, how their style of relating is affecting the room, how their style of relating is inviting or not inviting, how it disrupts or whatever it might be, but you’re engaging it in the moment and that’s risky on everyone’s part. It’s risky because it’s happening without all of the buffers, without the distance, without time. It’s happening in the moment and that level of vulnerability because we don’t know where it will go. We don’t know how people might respond to us naming or co-naming what’s happening in the moment. It’s vulnerable on both sides, vulnerable for the participant, but also vulnerable for us. And that’s our way of fighting for and fighting with the participants and fighting for one another. What would be your experience of that?
Scott: Well, I resonate so much with what you’re saying because I mean, one of the things I love about Recovery Weeks is just the… Obviously nothing’s ever complete, but there is so much, so many aspects that are inclusive in the teaching is so not just informative, but also deeply personal, the one-on-one time and the group time and then the play. So there’s so many aspects, but in the group time, especially like you’re saying, the opportunity to, in some ways, catch that kind of their style, their attachment styles, all of that stuff right there and the opportunity to both enter, whether it’s the conflict or the grief of how it is still playing out even in this very moment and to help people start to repair with themselves and repair with each other and to literally just be a witness to redemption. And it’s just the magic of what kind of happens when you just, as humans, just try to bring your compassion and your curiosity and listen to their hearts. And so that’s my favorite part of group like you’re talking to when you see that kind of play out. That started, of course, in their family of origin or with their abuser, but it is still. And it gives them such a little picture of like, well, maybe I can go home and maybe that conversation with my son, with my wife, With my boss, whatever, could be a little bit different next time, which is beautiful.
Dan: Well, one of the things that we’ve been critiqued for, critiqued for a lot of stuff, but one thing that occasionally comes up is you didn’t set a plan for me and I thought you would give me steps to be able to resolve and get done with this past harm. And right there are two things that is so important to disrupt, that there is no one size fits all, that your growth in addressing past harm will look like something unique to you and maybe somewhat comparable to someone else, but may also be almost the opposite as what it would look like for someone else. So we are critiquable in that we’re not going to give you a set structure of four steps, eight steps, 12 steps that if you do, has a certain inherent incipient promise that it will largely address and take care of all the harm of the past. So again, when you work with people, either before they came or during, how has that… the term for me would be bespoke tailoring, meaning it’s not a suit already made. We make the suit for you in the process. How does that kind of bespoke, shall we say, story interaction feel for you?
Scott: I think right off the bat that basically doesn’t everybody I’ve experienced come in with that, give me the five steps. I want to get through this quickly so I can wrap this up with a pretty bow on it and then move on kind of thing. And saying I am so grateful we don’t do that. We would miss out because I just think we would miss out on the beauty of everybody’s unique humanity that is going to have a different path as well as the wild, crazy spirit that just has a unique pathway that even we don’t know. But I love that about our team, that that’s a commitment that I just forever will be because in some ways then we get to watch people listen to their own heart, to their own relationship, whether they’re a faith or not, but it’s just they get to trust their bodies. They get to trust what they need and reclaim their humanity, the goodness of the, I desire this. But it’s frustrating as heck for people.
Linda: I get it in the sense that people want some measure of control. They want to kind of buffer some of the harm that they’re anticipating. And if you have a story of harm when your boundaries were crossed and maybe crossed consistently, then it starts to make sense. Of course you would want to know what’s the next step. Of course you would want to know what’s going to be the plan of action or what’s to come so that you can prepare for the next thing, but not having control, not having a buffer. In some ways it makes so much sense for those of us who have stories of abuse, particularly sexual abuse. We want to know. So we never want to shame people. We don’t shame people for wanting to know or for wanting to have a prescription, like tell me what to do in order to be well. Of course we would want that. I get it. We get it. We understand it. But we’re also inviting people to present, which is far different from a prescription. What does it mean to be you, to be in your body? What does it mean for you to engage your life? That’s in some ways far more difficult than for us writing out a prescription of what you can do when you get back home or these five, six, seven steps toward healing. But we’re inviting you to engage your life, which will be radically different from someone else’s way of engaging and embodying and being radically honest about their life and their story. So in one sense, we’re inviting people to a far more beautiful, but far more difficult path than just giving them something that’s prescriptive.
Dan: I love the way you put it. You are a piece of art and you are an artist and this is where the art is the artist and the artist the art. And we are inviting. There’s some commonalities though. I mean, we make some assumptions that I think is obviously somewhat important to know and that is that everyone who has suffered a degree of sexual violation will struggle with shame. Now, we also think that’s true of every human being that’s ever been born other than Jesus. So the reality of you can’t escape shame if you’re human, but the reality of abuse intensifies that no matter whether it’s been multiple abuse or you would consider the abuse very minor. And I think that’s another issue for people. They come in with shame and therefore judgment, shame and contempt. And so many people come in with… my story is so incidental, so small, I shouldn’t even be here. Or some with quite the other extreme, my story is so horrendous. Nobody can bear me. Nobody can hear what I have suffered. And either extreme, and often it’s very few are in the middle. That sense of we’re just wanting for our participants to begin the process of coming face to face with the judgments and shame because it’s shaping the way of looking, thinking, speaking, acting, which is what we call style of relating. And it’s going to show up in the way you walk into the first group. It’s not something you can manage because it’s just almost as endemic to you as your skin. So part of the disruptive process is not just looking at the past, but inviting people to come into the body of how they actually protect, defend, keep people from getting too close or keeping people from getting too far. And that’s quite a process.
Linda: And both are not helpful. What I mean by that is comparing the story is too small or too big. Comparison is not helpful, just simply is not helpful. And the other thing I would want to say is that coming in thinking that your story is too small or it’s too big, both are ways of escaping your story. Both are ways of escaping in a means that you get to escape or sidestep having to engage how you came to believe that your story was too big or too small. So focusing on either of those ends of the spectrum in one sense takes you out of engaging your story. So it’s clever.
Dan: It’s clever. I hate to say it, but it’s clever without it being actually intentional. It’s a way our protection needs to be honored even if it has to be taken apart, not disrupted, but allowed to be in one sense metabolized as to what we’re doing and why we would be doing it, but knowing that it continues to be used in a way that brings even more harm to ourselves. Scott?
Scott: Yeah. And I think it was the only tool that we had often to just stay away, like you’re saying, Linda, from the actual harm. And sometimes the most subtle things are the most sinister and the most difficult to name kind of thing. And yet they have, because of that subtly, because of that, you can’t grab it. You can’t see a black and blue mark. You can’t see what’s actually happening. And yet you see the debris, you see the impact in your life, in your relationships and in your joy. And that’s why the beauty of what you’re saying, Linda, the body that just keeps this story alive for us to engage with differently. But yeah, it’s often the only thing we have is to just, it’s no big deal or it’s too overwhelming. I’ll overwhelm everybody in my group if I really tell my story.
Dan: Well, we attempt to weave good teaching and there will be teaching every day, but also group work where your story is shared, where you get to engage the stories of others, but where there’s individual interactions with really remarkable facilitators. So that process is what we plan. We have prayed, we have planned, we know even if we don’t know what’s going to happen, we generally know when that’s going to happen and where it’s going to go. But one of the things that I find so thrilling, and this is just the work of the Spirit, is the free time, the time that people have to pray, to reflect, to write, but to be with others. That’s where some of the most amazing work happens. Not our work. Our work may be prompting, but so often the interactions between fellow participants takes the hardened directions we couldn’t predict, but also they couldn’t predict. Do you find that to be one of the things you walk away from going woah?
Scott: Yeah. I mean, it’s always to me so interesting because we pray and read people’s interview application process to discern what kind of group would be good for them to be in and we do our best. But then there’s those things that happen that you just can’t make up where whether it’s the two people that just write are such good mirrors for each other and bring such gifts that they didn’t know they had and just the reenactments at times that end up being an opportunity for just such redemption. And that’s just the two people, the unlikely that you would think would never become best friends now are having… Yeah, that’s as a facilitator. I don’t know if it’s for you Linda, but just you sit back and you just watch and witness and smile and so much gratitude to watch that.
Linda: It’s almost like we have an opportunity to go back in time and see the little kids.
Scott: Yes.
Linda: Them come out and play. Yeah,
Scott: I love that. Yes.
Linda: Fully in adult bodies, but it’s almost like kids. And I would say almost like it is seeing the little parts of them come out and play together and become friends and take risks with one another. I think that’s just as significant as what happens in the teaching or the small group time. It is a time where bonding and connections happen and where maybe the child parts get to play in ways they never did when they were biologically five, seven, 10, 15, where they get to be free with one another in a context where they’re going to be held well.
Dan: Well, the sense of we do have a process. We’ve been doing this for decades. We kind of know what we’re doing and there are certain procedures that are part of the process, but it’s the presence, the presence of the human face, the presence of the face of God, and the reality that we get this just enormous privilege of being the face of God on behalf of one another. And I can, again, without going into details, just remember so many interactions where my mind has just been blown. I almost always go back to this. I would’ve despaired if I did not believe that I would see the presence of God, the presence of God in the land of the living. And seeing Recovery Weeks happens to be one of those contexts where I would’ve despaired if I had not seen, and in many ways, not just the presence of God, but your two faces and how you have loved strangers and invited them into not only your heart, but into the heart of God. And I think that’s the privilege I have is to see not just their engagement, but who you have become as a result of not only engaging your own stories, but engaging the stories of others. So my two beloved friends, what a joy to be part of this with you.
Linda: Thank you. And thank you, Dan, for leading the way for us and pioneering a field which has brought and has received so much pushback. But thank you for leading the way and giving us an opportunity to participate in such sacred holy work. So a privilege to be in this work with you and with Scott. And so thank you both.
Dan: Welcome. And before we end, and I know this to be true of both of you, people who have a heart to see and enter depths of human darkness and heartache also have a heart for beauty and glory. And that’s true for you both. Thank you, friends.
Linda: Thank you.
Scott: Thank you so much. Good to be with you.