Guiding Light Recovery is a professional, holistic and all-encompassing four-month substance abuse treatment program for men struggling with addiction. Men that come through our doors seeking help are often in an incredibly dark place and are spiritually, emotionally, and often physically broken. They are beaten down by years, if not decades, of lost time due to addiction and hopelessness.
When men seek to be admitted into the Recovery program, they are initially placed on a three to five-day probationary period. This gives our staff time to observe and evaluate whether they are truly serious about getting sober. Some of the prospective clients that come here do not make it past this stage. At Guiding Light, we have to be sure that men accepted into the Recovery program are serious about their recovery and understand the investment our donors are making so that they can begin a new life.
While on probation, each man is encouraged to sit in quiet reflection and contemplation of why they are here. What are they willing to do to live differently?
Once accepted into the Guiding Light Recovery program, each man is welcomed into the Guiding Light community, following in the footsteps of countless others that have found a way to break the cycle of darkness, addiction, and hopelessness that brought them to our doors. After thirty days in the Recovery program, men are asked to write a commitment statement and are given the opportunity to put their picture on the wall.
Brent, a Recovery client, recently had a chance to hang his photo on our wall. At a community meeting, he read his commitment statement out loud and reaffirmed to his peers why he is committed to living life in a new way. Brent’s statement read as follows:
“I am committed to my recovery and to accept the person that I am so I can be the best father, friend, and son that I can be in this life. Don’t over think it, just do it. It’s OK.”
Writing a commitment statement and “getting on the wall” is an important first step for men in the early phases of our Recovery program. It is a way to put on record, for all your community members to see, what each man is willing to act differently to change their lives.
The Chapel in our building at 255 Division Avenue is filled with the commitment statements and pictures of men that have come through Guiding Light Recovery over the years. Seeing the success of all the men that have come before gives men a glimmer of hope that it is possible to live a new way of life in sobriety and recovery. It is living proof that there is indeed a way out of the darkness and into the light.
Men like Brent are here today, right now, going through a powerful spiritual transformation at Guiding Light, and could not be doing so without the generous support of our donors, volunteers, and supporters. We cannot thank you enough for giving these men a new lease on life and a way to see a light at the end of the tunnel.
