Hi, I’m Claire, a Christian in Recovery from anxiety, which for me looks like: fear of what people think, fear of authority figures, fear of doing the wrong thing, fear of letting people down – a lot of fear – not always the stand frozen, rabbit in the headlights kind of fear but certainly something that affects me and my actions most days.

So begins my testimony which I have now shared a few times at my Celebrate Recovery Group.

The act of writing and sharing my testimony was initially really daunting; it felt like the culmination of many things, and therefore it had to be good, worthy, helpful, and many other unrealistic perfectionist expectations.   

Getting a date in the calendar for reading my testimony at our CR meeting really focused my thought processes, although I had been working on it for a little while already.  Deciding what to share was a really interesting process; I had some things to start with from my previous brief forays into testimony writing, but figuring out what was important scene setting and useful for people to know, from general rambling, self-indulgent wallowing and going over old mistakes and resentments which did not deserve an airing, was a tough call.

I would like to say I set aside a good amount of time and prayed before I began but that wouldn’t be an accurate representation of what happened (I just prayed now about writing this post).  I definitely got a fair way in before I invited/asked/begged God to come into the process with me and help me sort out my confused ramblings into something coherent that would help other people to see God in my recovery and give hope for their own journeys.  I have been known as a last minute-er but I prefer to think that I’m someone who works well to a deadline.

One of my biggest motives for writing and sharing my testimony is that I have found other people’s honest, open sharing in their testimonies so helpful in my own recovery, knowing that I’m not unique in my struggles, that they have come though seemingly impossible situations, that God helped them gave me so much hope that God could help me too and spurred me on to keep going.

It was helpful to read the ‘Writing a Testimony’ leaflet, think about what I had found most helpful from others testimonies and I chose to structure it around the principles which I felt had made the biggest impact on my recovery. 

I wanted to be really conscious to present myself and my recovery as a work in progress not in any way a finished article, the group guidelines helped too as using ‘’I and ‘me’ statements allowed me not to be preachy or give the impression that I had found the one and only way of working through things – the one and only saviour Jesus Christ but not the one and only process or way of doing it.

The suggested word limit 2500 (ish) and having someone else willing to read and make suggestions on it was really useful as it gave me a dry run, if the reader wasn’t horrified and mostly understood that gave me a good impression that it would go over ok on the night. 

My tips:

• Only share as much as you’re comfortable with

• Invite God into the process (and when you realise you’ve stopped relying on him invite him in again)

• Share hopefully but honestly – some things are rubbish and that maybe just what someone needs to hear alongside the victories

• You don’t have to be finished to share a testimony but you do need to be working the programme with God

• Ask for help if you need it

• Don’t let the first time you share it with everyone be the first time you share it with anyone

• Be yourself, don’t try and do it the way someone else did, God made you and can use you to share his hope with others

Thank you for letting me share.