Awaken Recovery

Innocence is Not the Goal

Greg Oliver — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 14:51:09 +0000

“I just want to keep them little…a little longer.” That’s the desire, isn’t it? The one that runs in the back of a parent’s head while they’re locking down the router, switching on parental controls, putting the iPad on the top shelf. The desire is not wrong. It comes from love. Most of us were...

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6213

Greg Oliver — Thu, 08 Jan 2026 16:24:21 +0000

I’m not sure exactly when Stacey and I started talking about it. I know it’s been quite a while. At some point, one of us mentioned how nice it would be once we got to the date where we’d been married healthy longer than we were married unhealthy. In our recovery community, we talk a...

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Living Outside the Greenhouse

Greg Oliver — Mon, 06 Oct 2025 21:46:13 +0000

Near the end of our conversation with Cathy Loerzel, we asked a question we know lives in a lot of hearts: “Will this ever go away? Will the pain finally disappear?” Her answer was not what most people want to hear—but it’s the truth everyone needs to acknowledge. Healing, she said, doesn’t mean the suffering...

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Honor and Honesty in our Stories

Greg Oliver — Sat, 04 Oct 2025 21:20:29 +0000

A very meaningful part of our conversation with Cathy Loerzel on What We Really Want was her take on the Bible’s command to “honor your father and mother.” For many, that verse has always felt heavy, like a rule that meant: “Don’t ever talk about your parents’ failures. Don’t ever complain. Don’t ever air family...

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Why Telling Our Stories Matters

Greg Oliver — Wed, 01 Oct 2025 16:57:19 +0000

When we sat down with Cathy Loerzel on a recent episode of What We Really Want, one of the first things she said stopped us in our tracks. “Healing is not about eliminating suffering. It’s about learning how to be present to it.” That sentence lingers because most of us approach healing as a way...

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Talk To Somebody

Greg Oliver — Thu, 22 Dec 2022 21:43:33 +0000

In the Spring of 2017… I was sitting at my desk doing some work when my phone rang. I looked at my screen and saw the name of the caller. I immediately had a familiar thought, “Oh, no, what’s happened?” That might sound a little odd, but whenever my phone rings and the name that...

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Helping Isn’t Easy (or Simple), part 4

Greg Oliver — Fri, 09 Apr 2021 14:11:00 +0000

This is the third in a series of posts on helping people through sexual brokenness. CLICK HERE to read Part 1. CLICK HERE to read Part 2. CLICK HERE to read Part 3. In this series of posts, we’ve sought to give needed context to people who provide help and counsel to men and women...

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Helping Isn’t Easy (or Simple), part 3

Greg Oliver — Wed, 07 Apr 2021 09:00:50 +0000

This is the third in a series of posts on helping people through sexual brokenness. CLICK HERE to read Part 1. CLICK HERE to read Part 2. In this series of posts, we’re talking about the difficulty of leaders helping people navigate through sexual brokenness. In Part 2, we talked about the important realization that...

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Helping Isn’t Easy (or Simple), part 2

Greg Oliver — Mon, 05 Apr 2021 14:27:08 +0000

This is the second in a series of posts on helping people through sexual brokenness. CLICK HERE to read Part 1. In the last post, I talked about how helping sexually broken people is a blessing and privilege, AND that it’s an extraordinarily hard thing to do. The situations that lead to sexual brokenness in...

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Helping Isn’t Easy (or Simple), part 1

Greg Oliver — Fri, 02 Apr 2021 19:37:49 +0000

These next few posts are specifically written with pastors, church leaders, and other caring/helping professionals in mind. They are for anyone who takes on the role of helping and walking with people in their brokenness. I believe one of the greatest privileges pastors and other leaders/helpers have is the opportunity to help people in their...

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