The Heart of Recovery: How Compassion and Community Offer Hope in the Wake of Addiction Paperback - 2019

"If you or someone you love is caught in addiction or is in the process of recovery, this is a must-read book!"--Carol Kent, speaker and author of Staying Power

The United States is the most medicated country in the world. More than 1.7 million Americans are struggling with addiction to prescription painkillers, fueling the opioid crisis that claims more than 140 lives every day. The trouble isn't just the drugs--it's that we don't know what to do with the people addicted to them. Not as a country, not as the church, not as a community. The opioid crisis reaches into our homes and challenges everything we thought we knew about the roots of addiction and what it means to be in recovery.

Drawn from current research and the personal experience of the authors, The Heart of Recovery calls us to set aside judgment and to mend recovering addicts and their families with the stuff God uses to heal: compassion and community. It's a call to serve the ones who cannot repay, to continue to forgive, to fling the door wide open to the prodigal, and to remember the purpose of grace.

A supportive community--family, friends, the church, and more--encourages and sustains long-term recovery. Learn how, through deep compassion, we can bring hope for healing.


"As a recovering addict myself, I know that healing and restoration for the addict and everyone around them can seem impossible. Deb and Dave's life is a picture of the impossible becoming possible. They've turned their experience into a manual for what real compassion and grace look like in an addict's recovery."--Gary Morland, author of A Family Shaped by Grace


Deborah Beddoe has been a writer for numerous nonprofit recovery ministries, including rescue missions and Prison Fellowship. David Beddoe, now a pastor, has worked in recovery ministry for nearly a decade, following his own fifteen-year battle with prescription drug addiction. Their story has been featured in Guideposts and Christianity Today. The Beddoes have four grown and nearly grown children and live in the Pacific Northwest.