FROM THE DESK OF TL1 GRADUATE, RYAN P. MARSHALL (MDiv, MA, Counseling)

For many of us, September is the beginning of the year. January is month-number-one in name only, for September is truly the start of a new year of life as students head back to school, the NFL kicks off, and primetime TV networks launch new seasons. With my children all being in fall sports, September is for me the beginning of standing on sidelines chewing gum and pacing like Pete Carroll.
September has also been deemed *recovery month,* and interestingly enough, “recover!” is one of the things I hear soccer coaches yelling at my son as I gnaw away at my sugar-free-peppermint anti-anxiety-aid.

Recover, when shouted by the coach, comes after a regrettable play like a turn-over or a goal. In this context, recovery is moving back to one’s position, shaking off the sting of a mistake, and reestablishing the strategic shape.

Recover means getting back into position and finding the motivation to continue advancing towards a goal.

My story includes addiction and mental illness in spades and from all sides. My family bears the ongoing burdens of anxiety, depression, substance use disorder, and post traumatic stress disorder. Close friends of mine have suffered and died from these same and many other psychological disorders, and my professional life has been spent journeying alongside scores of these same downtrodden.

Recover! rings in my ears from the sideline to the office to family gatherings and to my bedside.

My experience with PAX is intimately tied to my own recovery. During the pandemic shutdown, my wife and I joined a Transformational Listening Group to try to find some footing when so much of our lives felt jostled. What I initially believed would be a class helping me to listen to others became a guided experience of listening to my own inner dialogue and to God’s input into that conversation as it were. And as I grew in my ability to listen to myself, I gained insight that became invaluable to my recovery specifically from burnout and major depression.

Particularly important to my recovery has been learning that I am not a collection of strictly independent categories of self. That is, I am not a mind, a body, a heart, and a soul that conveniently co-operate. In my experience of self, these elements are far more intricately woven together than I can fully understand, and so when one part of me suffers, all parts suffer (1 Cor 12:26). Likewise, in order to experience recovery for one part of me, I do well to consider the interaction of these parts as a whole.

Clinically speaking, this is a bio-psycho-social-spiritual model of overall health. Each part can be an input and an output of the health of the entire system. When one part is neglected, all suffer. When one is invested therein, we can amplify positive outcomes in the others. I can hear coaches saying “you get out what you put in!”

PAX found me at a time when I was neglecting parts of me and wondering why I felt poorly overall. Was my lack of exercise related to my negative self-talk and my frustrating prayer life, or were they all randomly coincidental? Could it be that my spiritual self was intimately tied to my physical and mental self? Of course I could express that as an idea, but PAX gave me a framework to piece together my inner spiritual experience with my thought life in a way that, alongside ongoing clinical therapy, participation in Alanon, and increasing exercise, let me integrate the parts of self that I falsely believed were distinct. I like to say that while PAX doesn’t offer therapy in the strictest sense, its program offerings can be therapeutic because they present opportunities to organize and integrate our spiritual parts into the whole self.

While they did not ever shout, “recover!” at me, my PAX leaders and mentors gave me tools to recover by getting back into position and finding the motivation to continue advancing towards a goal. For me, that position was heavily influenced by the work of Henri Nouwen in Life of the Beloved, in which I find consolation and stability in the shocking notion that God’s message of pleasure and goodwill toward the baptized Christ applies equally to lowly old me (Matt 3:17)! And when I find my footing from that position I am energized and motivated to pursue God’s purposes as God molds me ever more into the image and likeness of Christ (2 Cor 3:18).

I wonder what your experience of Recover! has been? Are you noticing a need for it in your own life? Are you walking alongside someone who is on that journey? What “part” of yourself might need some intensive attention? Have you found a way to pause and look deeply into your inner life as a means to get back into position and find motivation? If so, what resources were helpful to you? If not, might you consider reaching out to a trusted friend, spiritual leader, or counselor to investigate first steps?

This September, National Recovery Month, go deeper in your inner journey with Christ, that you might Recover! a healthier position and motivation to continue advancing toward your goals.

With you on the journey,

~Ryan

Ryan P. Marshall (MDiv, MA, Counseling) is a mental health counselor and ordained minister in the Evangelical Covenant Church. He spent nearly fifteen years in pastoral ministry and as of August ‘25 serves as Program Director of Life/Work Direction at Theology of Work Project. He can be reached at ryan@theologyofwork.org.