“When God Rewrites the Label: Addiction, Identity & the Power of Redemption”(Co-Hosted with Dad: A Father–Daughter Conversation on Recovery & Jesus)

In this heartfelt father–daughter conversation, Shannon sits down with her dad to talk openly about addiction, recovery, identity — and what it truly means to move from who you were to who God says you are.

What began as an episode about dropping old labels quickly turned into a raw, Spirit-led conversation about NA, accountability, shame, healing, and how God uses community AND grace to restore broken places. Shannon and her dad explore why recovery groups use the term “addict,” how that label functions in healing, and how Scripture declares something deeper: redeemed, restored, made new.

This episode is for anyone who has battled addiction, loves someone who has, or is trying to reconcile recovery with faith. You’ll hear real testimony, biblical truth, emotional honesty, and the beautiful reminder that God never wastes a story — He rewrites it.

KEY BIBLE VERSES

2 Corinthians 5:17

“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.”

 Identity isn’t earned — it’s given. 

Psalm 40:1–3

“He lifted me out of the slimy pit… He set my feet on a rock… Many will see and fear the Lord and put their trust in Him.”

 God doesn’t just pull you out — He puts you on solid ground. 

John 8:36

“So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.”

 Recovery is daily. Redemption is eternal. 

Romans 8:1

“There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”

 Shame is not your portion anymore. 

Galatians 6:2

“Carry each other’s burdens, and in this way you fulfill the law of Christ.”

 Community matters — NA, church, family, support systems. We heal together. 

ENCOURAGEMENT FOR THE LISTENER

Friend, whether you’re in recovery, walking with someone who is, or wrestling with your own identity, hear this:

You are not who your past says you are.
You are not the worst thing you’ve ever done.
And you are not stuck carrying labels forever.

God calls you:

✨ Redeemed
✨ Chosen
✨ Restored
✨ Loved
✨ New
✨ His

Recovery may describe where you’ve been.
 But redemption describes where you’re going.

Your story is not over.
 Your healing is not wasted.
 And your testimony has power — not despite your past, but because of what Jesus has done through it.

God is still writing.
 He is still healing.
 He is still using every chapter — even the messy ones.

CLOSING PRAYER FOR LISTENERS

Dear Lord Jesus,
Thank You for Your presence, for Your saving power, and for the way You rewrite our lives with grace. Thank You that no label from our past has more authority than the name You speak over us: redeemed, forgiven, restored, loved.

For every listener who is battling addiction, shame, or old identities — breathe fresh hope into them. Remind them that they are not beyond Your reac

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:00

Dear Lord Jesus, we thank you for this day. We thank you for your mercy and your blessings and your grace. We thank you for this opportunity to have this podcast. Um this is the second time we've tried to do this podcast, so I believe that you're definitely in this room and I believe your presence is here with us today. I'm super, super excited to have my dad with me uh for today for this podcast. Lord, just let your words come out of our mouth. Let us listen to what you want us to say and let us follow your God and the people listening to it. I hope you get as much out of this and as much healing out of this as we will today. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.

SPEAKER_02: 0:38

Amen.

SPEAKER_01: 0:40

So hey, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome back to Unrelated Sisters Truth and Grace Conversation. Today's episode is one that's been on my heart for a minute, and it's about identity, freedom, and labels. Um, I recently saw a TikTok where someone says that recovery programs like AA or NA teach us to always call yourself a recovery addict. And listen, I want to say this up front. I'm not here to bash those programs. Uh they've helped millions of people, and God absolutely uses them. Uh, my daddy is definitely um one of those, one of those people that it's helped. And this morning, I actually went to a celebration, uh, my daddy's five-year celebration. And being in the room with the people that introduced themselves as a recovering addict and saying their name definitely had it moved my heart in a different way. Um, from when I originally wrote this podcast. Uh, you know, because I think about it, I've never been to the one of those programs. And so I think about it as one of those things that, you know, I depend on God, I depend on his grace to keep me from wanting to take a step back. Um, the things of being grateful for the things that he's given me and being being blessed by him every day. And but there's days that I wish I had accountability, I think. I feel like, right? Because I feel like I can have a glass of wine and it would be okay. I feel like I can do, I mean, I'm not gonna say I go out and party or do any of the things, but I I have a glass of wine, you know, and the other day I had one and it kind of convicted me a little bit, and I was kind of like, well, that's weird, that's unusual, that hadn't happened before. And and I don't know because my relationship with God over the last couple months has been extremely strong.

SPEAKER_00: 2:34

Like extremely strong.

SPEAKER_01: 2:36

So but today I have my daddy being with me today, and like I said, he is one of those uh one of those those uh success stories for NA. And I've asked him to come and talk with us about it because when this came across my my thought process, I wondered how do I how can I speak to something I've never been a part of, right? And so in in on all of it, you know, what does the label of recovering addict, you know, when does it stop being that? And why? You know, what does God call you now? You know, all the different things. So just thank you today for joining us. I'm super, super excited. Um, and here we go.

SPEAKER_02: 3:24

Hi everyone, my name's Dean. Uh, and if this was the NA meeting, I'd say I'm an addict. Uh recovering addict, uh yes, uh, I recover every day, but it's not just from the use of drugs because the NA program will promise you freedom to lose the desire to get high. And I'm here as a testimony to say that it will give you freedom from the desire to use drugs. But that ain't the only thing that it makes me an addict. I used the drugs as a way to cover up what was going on inside of me, the feelings I had that I didn't know how to deal with, the things that went on in my life that I was unaware of or unwilling to admit that they had anything to do with the way my life turned out. But on November the 6th, 2020, I got arrested and put in jail for selling drugs. And something told me that as I was going to jail that I there's something wrong. I needed help. And for the first time in my life, well, let me say this before I go there. I got saved in 1979. And I'd done a lot of bad things from 79 until I got best and went to jail in 2020. But the thing that never left was that spirit inside of me trying to guide me to do good. There was a lot of things that I'd done in my life that I that was bad, but there's a lot of bad things that I wouldn't do because of the spirit of God that lived inside of me. I love people. And if you hung out with me no matter what we was doing, it wouldn't be long before I told you the only happiness that you'll ever find is in Jesus, in the perfect will of God. If you want to be truly free and happy, you've got to find that perfect will of God. You've got to give your life to Jesus. You gotta accept Him as your Savior. Because without that, we don't none of us ever have a hope. Without that hope of Christ, you ain't got no hope. But NA taught me something. I went to jail in 2020, and that's the first time ever in my life that I asked for help. Shandem can tell you that her dad never asked to find nobody for nothing. But I paid a lawyer and told that lawyer, he said, What do you want me to do? And I said, I want help. I know something was wrong, and I didn't know how to fix it. Of course I started praying, asking God to take me to the place that he wanted me to be, whatever that place might be. Wherever it would be, for his will to be done, and that's the main thing that we got to realize, that we've got to realize. We made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood him. We have to turn our will and our life over to God. In a no programs will ever keep you clean and happy and full of joy. The will of God is the only place that we'll ever find that joy. But God's will was that He sent me to a program called Drug Court. And I was in drug court for two years. But drug court forced me to go to NA. I had to have a paper sign, I had to have three meetings a week. I had to have that paper sign to turn into my to drug court. And then doing that, my I got in trouble, and my counselor made me do a paper on the NA basic text. And the first thing that you'll read in the basic text is who is an addict. And as I studied that passage in that book, I realized that was me. For the first time in my life, I realized it's me. And when I seen that, what I seen was I was able to see me for who I was. For what I was. I seen my mama, my daddy, my whole family was addicts. And in seeing that, I realized that they were just like me, they couldn't change. They didn't know how to change. They had the same desires I had, but we didn't want to do it no more, but we didn't know how not to do it. How do you stop being who you are? How do you change who you are? People that's that's a question that I guess millions of people have asked, and I don't know how to answer it except we say in NA the do 90 meetings in in 90 days. That's our suggestion. We suggest that you get a home group. A home group is a place where that you call home, you support the meetings, you support their services, uh, you support them in money, uh, you support them in being there at the meetings and uh cheering meetings, uh, being part of uh we suggest that you get a circle of friends, because it we say the addicts, one addict helping another addict is without parallel. It will they addicts understand each other. If you've never been an addict, I'd sit here and talk to you about things that I feel and things that goes on with in me that we can never, ever, you'd never understand, you never understand, know, but if another addict, you talk to that addict, and even whether that addict had been through the same uh same thing or something similar, they will never, unless it's an addict, they'll understand. That addict understands when we're talking about our feelings and how we deal with our feelings. But when I realized that I was an addict, it changed everything about me. When do we go from recovery to redeemed when we turn our will and our life over to the care of God? We sh still say we're addicts, and I'll always be an addict because I still see myself today as letting my addict thinking take control. And because of the program of NA, I'm able to not to let it take control. If it's something that's really, really deep bothering me, I pick up the phone, call my sponsor. I pick my phone up, call another NA member, and we talk about it. And you know what I've learned over the course of the last five years that if we can learn to talk about our feelings, most of the time we can handle our feelings.

SPEAKER_01: 10:38

Well, and we talk about that a lot on the podcast. I talk a lot about it's not that my faith has stopped me from going through things because I still go through it. It's the way I react to it that's gonna become different. It's the way that I handle it that has become different. It's the way that I allow it to bother me, or I allow it to interfere in my life, or I allow it to take my joy is different. You know, in 2 Corinthians 5.17, he says, Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has gone and the new has has come again. And when you sit there and at the meeting today, I felt that in reading. I felt that, you know, there were so many people sitting there that reminded me of you back in the day. And each one of them, you could see a difference in their glow, a difference in their face, a difference in their in their thing. And so just because you choose, you know, we talk a lot about what we call ourselves, you know, I'm a daughter of God, I'm redeemed, I'm, you know, I'm all of the things and that, you know, and then bringing negativity to you. But y'all don't treat yourself as a recovering addict as a negative as a negative. It's not a negative comment. It's not a negative name for y'all. It's not a negative, it's not, you know, sometimes when you speak negative of yourself, you allow the devil in. But the way that y'all approach it in in a y'all approach it in in a faith-based thing, and you know, and it helps y'all each day. And, you know, I like I said, I've never I never went through it. Uh I I kind of went through it the hard way, right? I I uh secluded myself. I quit hanging out with my friends. I quit, I you know, I quit, I just I had a few friends that I have friends, you know, that I was friends with, but they were they didn't understand because they were never in my shoes. Um they were there for me and they'd done their best. They never judged me, you know, and I'm still friends with them today, but I didn't have so I went through depression, I went through loneliness, I went through a lot of things uh before I realized that it was God that I needed most, right? Instead of trying to go through steps to get coins. Um and in it it's see now the benefits in a just by sitting here meeting this morning, by listening to you talk about it, by listening to the difference and and what I couldn't get through to help instead of what I think we had to figure out all on my own life. So it probably took me 10 years, and it probably shouldn't have it taken me 10 years if I'd have had that accountability there, or if I'd have had that group there to help lead me and help me. But instead it took me 10 years to get where I am with my faith and where I am of not feeling ashamed of being a drug addict of not then condemning myself, you know, and I think that's one of the hardest things as a drug addict when you get clean is you condemn yourself.

SPEAKER_00: 13:47

You can't let go of what you've done, you can't do the things uh, you know, you can't, it's hard. It's hard to forgive yourself.

SPEAKER_02: 13:58

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00: 13:59

That's so hard. Like, you know, and it took me two years to realize that, which now I realize that if I had gone through maybe with a group of people that understood it wouldn't take so long to get there.

SPEAKER_02: 14:11

Well, we at NA we have the steps and they could come in order because first thing we gotta met. And you know, I don't know about y'all, but me as a man, it's hard for me to admit that I'm perilous of my addiction. I always told myself I could quit anytime I wanted to quit. But but in my algae, I couldn't quit for a day because of the pack my and I always paid my bills. I never was homeless. I'd seen times when I didn't know whether I was gonna have food to eat the next day, but my God always supplied my need. Always. Even in my worstest place, I'd never done without something to eat because God always made a way, always. My whole life. He has always made a way for me. Now, people I'm not here for saying E and A is the because it ain't. God is the one that has prepared me through my addiction through all my life. Because if you ever truly give your heart and accept Christ as your Savior, and He comes and the Holy Spirit moves into you, you can build that Holy Spirit. You can make it where you can't hardly hear him, but you'll never make him go away. He'll always be there. Uh and he'll always be having you to do good. He'll always be having you to help that person next to you. You know, the Bible teaches us to love one another. It don't matter what that other is, who it is, what they are, or what they do, God teaches us to love that person. And if we love that person when we love ourselves, we'll always try to figure out a way that we can help that person we'll do without to help that person. We'll always I go to NA meetings and I sure but my main desire is to see people never get high again and see them get led to a place where our third step says we made a decision to turn a will in our life over to the care of God. If we learn to turn a little will in our life over to the care of God, then we will learn to do good. And you cannot give God. I don't care what you give, God will always keep giving. Your bank will never go dry if you give it out of the goodness of your heart and you follow the Holy Spirit again. If the Holy Spirit tells you to give something, no matter where you at, if it's your last name, give it because God will always put money put it back in your bank account, I promise. Always. If you're following the Holy Spirit, doing what he tells you to do, now don't just jump it over whim and wham. But if God is telling you to do something, and you know it's God telling you, don't hesitate, do it, because God will always be filled with a bank account, I promise.

SPEAKER_01: 17:20

So that's funny. Oh, so I'm longer laughing. So um last week, uh, I've been I've been going to a legs Bible study, and last week uh at the Bible study, the uh everybody has been in a season where they feel like they're drowning, right? Where they feel like they just can't get a leg up. And they were talking about it, and one of the ladies was talking about a financial need. And um, and out of the goodness of my heart, of course, I wanted to give her the money, right? But the whole time, and we talk about this a lot in the podcast, the elephant was sitting on my chest, right? So I knew I wasn't supposed to, but I wasn't gonna do it anyway because not because God told me to, but because I can, right? And um, so I went to the bank, I withdrawed the money. I, you know, I it I carry around in my hearse for two days.

SPEAKER_00: 18:16

Um, you know, I finally met up with her, and she's like, You're not supposed to give me this money, are you? And I was like, No, I'm not. And she's like, That's okay.

SPEAKER_01: 18:23

Because I don't, um I I will never give to the munk to money, right? I want it to be a gift from God. I want it to, I truly believe that He will take care of me. You know, and that that bothered me for a minute. It uh, you know, it I I got myself pity for a couple days, right? Um, but every day she texted me something every morning, right? To let me know that she wasn't upset or she wasn't mad, but you know, um, and she, you know, in the last the second day she texted, she said, Thank you for receiving what I said. Thank you for not letting it make you shy away from me. Thank you for you know following what God did. And I carried that money in my purse until yesterday. And yesterday I finally took it and put it back in the bank. Uh, because I kept thinking, God, why won't you let me give this to her? God, I can afford to give this to her. Why won't you let me do it? And um, so until yesterday morning when I finally took that money to the bank. I've been feeling very heavy. And for the first time this morning when I woke up, I didn't feel heavy. And so that sorry, I I we totally left, geared left for what we talked about.

SPEAKER_00: 19:33

But that made me um I find it funny how God always seems to bring everything full circle for me with this podcast. Like this podcast has become more it's healing for me and for Deborah and for all the people that we bring on here. And it's just, you know, and when you go to thinking about NA and all the steps that y'all take, the healing process that you go through and is just amazing.

SPEAKER_02: 19:59

Well, it says after we've done all these other steps, step eleven tells us we thought through prayer and meditation to prove to improve our conscious contact with God as we understand. Praying for the knowledge of his will for us and the power to carry that out. Step twelve says, having had a spiritual awakening as we already stand. It's a spiritual, not religious program. We ain't trying to put church on me, but we are telling me that you got to have a spirit, and the spirit has got to lay it. If we ain't got if we don't follow the will of God constantly praying and meditating for his knowledge the knowledge of his will. Because we know God's will is for us to be happy, to be joyful, to have what we made. And so we're gonna go to the life. We got I mean that's just hard. But if we know we're in the will of God we're meditating on his will and we know he's got the power to take care of us. We can show us if we're able to get the money from able to give something while back I get my personal money. Uh and they didn't ask me to be just going to say, you know, I would never ask for that anybody for help. She said, But I asked God You know, and then if we ask God, God's got somebody out there that's listening. And if we if we pay attention, if the people that God knows us pays attention. And if I don't God find a way to provide it anyway. He don't need you. We need him. Uh you know, He will use you if you're willing to let Him use you. But we not He don't need you. God can get uh his friend to do what He wants and have it done as good as He can get you to do it. God is capable of doing great and mighty things. But we gotta be willing to meditate, pray, and ask Him for the power to carry out His will. We try to carry this message and it's into practice Christmas. I try my best to listen to the Holy Spirit. I'll go to church the way I should I go sometimes not the way I should go. Uh but I always ask God always let me be my let me hear that small voice that's telling me to do this or to do that or not to do that. And if we choose to do God's will, God's will is first to do good and love one another. And I've always said that love could fix every problem we got in this world. And we could just love one person when we love ourselves. And everybody in the world would love that one person more than they do themselves. But nobody in the world ever be in need of anything. Nobody in the world would ever be hungry. Nobody in the world would ever need anything because that love would fix everything. But we love everything but more than another. And that's the message that God wants us to hear more than anything else. If you study the Bible, it'll tell you that God wants us to love one another. Not just love the people in our church, not just love the people in the group, but love that homeless person walking down the street with a true love. Don't let it down on them because we never know what circumstances put them people there. But we know I know a person that can fix it all, and his name's Jesus. But anyway, uh I don't know, uh I don't know why Chen even got me to come and do this, but uh I hope that God uses something I say to help somebody to understand that God is all powerful, he's all great. And he's taking us nobody from the great and mighty things, and we're the slaves.

SPEAKER_01: 24:25

Uh we we truly believe that you should be the hands and feet of Jesus. And and being the hands and feet of Jesus is is taking that moment to listen. To to listen to him, you know. I talk a lot about back when I was in addiction about how there was I was never alone, even though I felt alone. He had to have been standing beside me the whole time. He had to have been standing there waiting for me to grab his hand. Because in all honesty, that's all God wants. You know, when you're a parent, all you want is for your child to grab your hand and walk with you. And Jesus wants the same thing. And in some of the situations, some of the type places that I was in, some of the things that I I put myself, situations I put myself in, God had to be there standing there next to me because he protected me, he kept me safe. Um, and we've talked about that a lot, you know, in John 8 36. So if the sun sets you free, you'll be free indeed. And I believe that verse is perfect for me, right? So um, and I have several more, but that's the one that keeps jumping off the page at me, is you know, uh John 8.36. So if the sun sets you free, you'll be free indeed. So uh we're gonna close this out today, but I want to invite you if you are struggling, uh if you're struggling with addiction, whether it be drugs, alcohol, shopping, sex, addiction is just not those things. Addiction can be a lot of things. And when we were at in the recovery and the gentleman was speaking, he was talking about I do the same thing. And I and and it hit me sitting there when I'm sitting bored. I buy$100 worth of team. I don't need none of that stuff, but I'll worry anyway, right? And and I and you know, sometimes I have a purpose for it, and sometimes I don't, you know, sometimes it just ends up in the floor up here in a crate somewhere because I didn't really need it. I didn't really have a plan. It was just it was something I could do. So so I'm gonna I'm gonna pray on that. And I'm gonna uh I'm gonna pray on that and uh and uh I guess that's confession.

SPEAKER_02: 26:35

Uh well sometimes we gotta stop and think. Uh, you know, we gotta stop and say, what am I doing? And that's the thing about NA that's helped me so much. It taught me to stop and not just let my feelings, my thoughts, my boredom or whatever cause me just to act. I stop now instead of acting because I got so much I want to try to do. Uh I've been thinking about buying me a truck, but I just keep putting it off. I mean, I work every day on the marketplace. I've even talked about some, even went and looked at one, but I just can't feel that freedom to go and actually do it. So I just keep putting it off. Uh and but the impulse is I want it, and I want it now. And as an addict, that's our worst things that we act on. Is that no matter what, we we quit doing drugs so we want our family back. We want our kids not be mad at us, we want a new car, we want a new place to live, we want new furniture, we want, we won't, we won't. But that's what an addict is. I mean, that's one of the worst things the addict is, is they won't. They want and they want and they won't they want to try to replace that empty feeling that we have. I don't know about y'all, but now there's a lot of man's talking earlier about some things and that she said, You don't like to be alone. No, I sure don't like to be alone. I guess it scares me to be alone. Uh you know, uh how did we feel for feel that loneliness? Uh I got a dog. Yeah, uh like I needed a dog. But anyway. I got married, so I you know, so uh, but you know, uh it's not just addicts, it's not just being drugs. We use them drugs to cover up all them feelings and all that stuff that goes on inside of us. So it's learning how to live life on life terms without the use of drugs. It's a really big step. But find a good NA meeting and come. And if you work the steps, it's gonna guide you to a spiritual awakening, and that spiritual awakening will tell you the search for the will of God and the knowledge and the power to carry out his will. And if we end up in the will of God, I promise you everything begins. You don't have to get high no more. You don't have to give in to your feelings no more. If you find what the will of God is and you really truly pray and ask for him to give you, and he will give you the power to carry out his will. You'll never have to worry about because of his will, he'll supply all the needs and everything that you need to do his will, he will supply that need if you don't his will. Not your will, but his. You know, we all want our and want what we want. And sometimes uh God just tells us, no, you don't need that. Stop. And if we listen to that, we'll always be better off.

SPEAKER_01: 29:43

But with that, I'm gonna put uh you're not just surviving, you're walking in victory. Dear Lord Jesus, thank you for your freedom you give us, you gave us through your son. Jesus, thank you for every woman and man listening who's walked through addiction, pain, and bondage. And thank you for calling them by their new name. Lord, we honor the journey that has brought us here and we don't live in the past anymore. We live in your promise. Remind us daily that we are redeemed, restored, and renewed. Break every lie that says we're still who we used to be. And replace it with the truth. Lord Jesus, today has been very touching and very awakening for me personally. It has definitely brought in a new insight on recovery and on people that I've been trying to talk to. They can't just depend on me during their recovery. They need the accountability and they need your spiritual guidance, Lord Jesus. And I hope the ones that are listening today that are feeling lost or feeling lonely, that you find you a group, find you an NA group, find you a serenity group, find you something that can hold you accountable, whether it be a drugs or alcohol or shopping or sex or whatever. And if you can't find one, email us, uh, Lord Jesus. We just thank you for this blessing today. We thank you for this opportunity to share this story and to hopefully guide somebody in the right direction. In Jesus' name we pray. So, listeners, I hope this conversation gave you peace and perspective. Whether in recovery, you're redeemed, or somewhere in between, God sees you. He's proud of your progress and he calls you his own. If this episode spoke to your heart, share it with a friend who needs to be reminded that freedom has a name and his name is Jesus. And until next time, keep walking in truth and grace.