Why I don't want recovery

Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? 

Isaiah 43:19

I cringe when I hear the word recovery. 

Recovery of what was lost. 

Recovery of the old. 

Before the disaster struck.

Before the choices were made.

Before life crumbled.

Before everything was stolen.

Recovery to the previous state of being. 

Like the suffering never happened.

Like the pain was meaningless. 

Granted, recovery is sometimes preferable to the present state of affairs.  Recovery trumps addiction, brokenness, and estrangement.  When life is in shambles, what used to be often sounds infinitely more desirable than what is.  

Recovery means the return of something lost, or the act of restoring to a previous condition.  I may be a bit presumptuous in my hopes and expectations, but I think that I want more than recovery.  I don’t want to go back to life as it was before.  

I want something new. 

Something fresh.  

I want something that looks like a promise, and the promises that I have seen cast large shadows on the word “recovery.”  I struggle to find a word for this promise.  Possibly transformation, or redemption.  The process of healing houses a world of change that steps outside of the realm of recovery.  

No, I can’t go back to where I was before.  I know too much, have been through too much, have seen too much.  

I am being made new.  

I will never be the same.  I never want to be the same.  

The “me” that I experience now is a deeper, more genuine Megan than I ever knew before the eating disorder and everything else.  Forgive me for this statement if it is too brash, but “recovery” would be utterly devastating.  Simple recovery would render my suffering meaningless.  I do not believe that all of this could have been in any way meaningless.  All of this suffering, heartache, and pain is profoundly teeming with meaning. 

I want change.  

I want new life.  

I want fresh.  

Paradoxically, in this newness of life, I discover that I am more myself than I have ever been before.  There is an old Megan, an ancient, ageless Megan that emerges from the rubble of the catastrophe.  She is recovered, but she is so much more.  She resembles the old Megan only in that she has grown into the promises that were once only evasive shadows.  Those promises actualized, she is discovering new promises.  This life is encapsulated in the building of cocoons, emerging new, and repeating the process, until our final emergence from this earthly chrysalis into glory.  

Oh, recovery is so insufficient.  Call me demanding, but I want more.