In my bedroom, buried in a pile of papers is a questionnaire labeled "The Marriage Expectation Inventory." Each question is answered in neatly printed block letters in purple ink. After nearly a decade and a half, the ink has started to bleed through the pages and on the reverse of each page are the blurry ghosts of letters in a screaming fuchsia.

On the line beneath "What is the greatest weakness you bring to your marriage?" I've printed, "Jealousy/insecurity," which is an interesting answer given what happened in our marriage in the years after I completed the questionnaire. At the time, I wouldn't allow myself to admit that I wasn't comfortable with my husband's behavior toward women, so I thought there must be something wrong with me for being uncomfortable about it. I wasn't worried that he might find himself involved with another woman because, oh, say, he was looking to get involved with other women, but because I was lacking in the confidence necessary to fully believe the fantasy that he wouldn't.

This weekend we were out at the park with our kids when a woman approached us and complimented Janie's curls, a compliment we hear, oh, roughly, once a minute every time Janie walks anywhere outside our home. Janie whispered "thank you" while looking at her toes and then ran off to play. Mark and I sat down on a bench and a few minutes later the same woman came over, sat down next to Mark and began chatting.

The odd thing was, unlike most moms at the park, she didn't chat about her children. She chatted briefly about her own physical attractiveness and her availability for a relationship. Then, a few awkward moments later, she left.

A decade ago, Mark would have had her number at the end of the conversation or would have given her his. She would be one of his new friends, someone to keep in flirtatious contact with and maybe have an affair with. And I would have gone home furiously angry at him and hating her, but most of all mad at myself for being so insecure that I couldn't trust the husband who clearly loved me. I would have tried to keep all that in until it exploded out at Mark. We would have fought about it. He would have assured me he loved me and it was just my jealous mind playing tricks on me.

This time around, I thought of that questionnaire and laughed. That woman's conversation crossed some invisible line of intimacy and it made both Mark and me uncomfortable. I can identify the exact words and the exact moments that brought up those feelings of discomfort for me. I can talk to my husband about it without contemptuously berating him for any part in it. And I can recognize that it's not helpful to dismiss my feelings as the delusions of an insanely jealous or insecure mind. But then again, it never was.

A few days ago, a columnist I generally like wrote a satirical piece on sex addiction rehab (one I won't link to here, due to its triggering nature). He's a liberal columnist, so the comments were populated with lots of LOLs and virtual eye rolling at the concept of sex addiction as a creation of the religious right: people who are uptight about and don't know how to enjoy sex. There was lots of mocking of the "higher power" concept, lots of atheists sneering at the superstitious nonsense that is God.

Of course, the conservative flip side of the "sex addiction is a joke" coin is to sneer at therapists: people who are forever trying to write off weakness and lack of willpower as "diseases" in order to bilk people out of money.  Either way, treatment for sex addiction is seen as misguided and useless: so called "sex addicts" either "just" need to loosen up and learn to accept and enjoy their sexuality or "just" need to have more willpower and moral fortitude.

And either way, as someone married to a sex addict, it can be both hurtful and maddening to feel the world is ringed around us in a circle, pointing and laughing, saying that we've been duped when, for the first time, we feel we're seeing clearly. It's one of those things that is likely to draw me back into that crazy place I used to occupy: where, like a six-year-old, I yell "NO!" at someone else's "Yes!" only to have them yell "Yes!" back at me in an endless cycle; where I feel panicked and crazy, as if someone's telling me the sky is red when I see it's blue; where I spend my time and energy fruitlessly trying to convince someone else that they're wrong so that I can feel right again.

I wanted (desperately) to pull out my credentials and yell into the comments section, "Mark and I weren't some crazy, uptight religious fanatics who just couldn't embrace our sexuality!  And I'm not some uptight, frigid wife who can't please her man!  I was a really good atheist who really loves sex!"  As if the columnist, or any of the commenters, would read that and suddenly say, "Oh, some random stranger on the Internet says that wasn't her experience. Now I've totally changed my view on sex addiction!" rather than, "I bet she actually sucks in bed and her husband is an asshole."

Deep breath.  Step 1.  I am powerless over other people.  I am powerless to change their perceptions of me.  And trying to do so anyway makes my life unmanageable.  Followed by Step 2.  Help from that much maligned higher power.

I didn't leave the comment.  I stopped reading, made the column disappear in a flash of electrons with the click of my mouse and I did something I never used to do before.  I prayed.  "God, let me see the world through your eyes.  Let me not be threatened by people whose experiences are different.  When I mock others, I am usually scared and hurting.  In every place that this columnist and his readers are scared and hurting too, open their hearts to love and peace.  Help me on my journey, and help all of them follow the path they need to, so that we can find love and understanding for each other."

In the past, I wouldn't have prayed because my God is not a separate being who controls the world, but I've found that prayer isn't (as I used to think) some useless, crazy, superstitious ritual predicated on achieving results with the help of a supernatural power.  Prayer is a tool I use to ground myself, open my own heart and let go of my own pain, fear and anger.  Prayer is a way of connecting to my higher power, my better nature, my Buddha nature, the God part inside me.  Prayer is a way of feeling love and compassion and connection to others, rather than distance and anger and fear and resentment.  When I pray for someone who requests my prayers, it connects us, and lifts us both up.  When I pray (quietly, secretly) for someone who doesn't request it, it helps me love and forgive.  I've learned that even if prayer never produces any tangible results in the world, it's not useless -- not to me -- because the purpose isn't to change the world to get what I want, it's to help me be in line with and at peace with what is.

As I write this, I have a cup of tea beside me, and I am trying to get myself to drink it.  I'm not hesitating because I don't like tea or because I think it will be unpleasant.  I'm hesitating because I'm trying to drink it out of a Pyrex measuring cup, which feels... Uncomfortable.  Weird.  Challenging.

You see, my mugs were all dirty and I had forgotten to start the dishwasher.  Now sure, I could have hand washed a mug, but why not use the more readily available measuring cup?  It has a handle.  It can hold hot liquids.  It's no heavier or more unwieldy than some of my beloved oversized mugs.  But I recoiled a bit at the thought.  Was it sanitary? I wondered.  Um, yes.  It's been through the same dishwasher as the mugs I usually drink tea from, and I use it to make lots of food that I safely and happily eat.  Would the tea taste ok?  Why wouldn't it; the measuring cup is just glass, and I drink out of glasses all the time.  But still, it just seemed... Wrong.

Of course, my son Austen is very familiar with this sensation.  Austen (as those of you who visit regularly may know) is autistic and has to eat his yogurt with a plastic spoon.  It can't be silverware, because those spoons are heavier and will (if left in the yogurt container) sometimes tip the carton.  Disaster!  But even among plastic spoons, not all spoons are created equal.  Austen's plastic spoons must be clear plastic, and not just any clear plastic; they must be the kind I buy (in bulk) from our local grocery.

This has been frustrating.  I've carried a lingering resentment over it.  After all, I once forgot to pack a spoon in his lunch, and the school called.  Austen completely refused to eat lunch without that damn spoon.  The school has plastic spoons of course, but they are white, not clear.  He insisted on a clear spoon.  So, the teachers looked through their own lunches and his classmates lunches for one to trade, but their clear spoons weren't the same brand as our clear spoons.  Their clear spoons had little swirls on the handles, making them totally different.  And because he couldn't eat his yogurt, he couldn't eat anything.  He was stuck on yogurt and couldn't get past that to the rest of lunch.

So, I ended up driving a package of spoons over to school, muttering to myself the whole time, "A spoon's a spoon, damn it!  Why does it have to be this spoon?  There are a hundred spoons at school.  There are even clear plastic spoons at school.  For crying out loud you don't even need a spoon.  You could drink it.  Or lick it off your fingers!  Why do you have to eat the yogurt with this particular type of spoon?!"

But I know why.  Autistic engineer and author Temple Grandin explained it in her recent interview on NPR when she said, "If I say to you, 'Think about a church steeple,' I only see specific ones and I can tell you exactly where they're at. And I was shocked to find out that most of the people see a generalized sort of vague, generalized, generic steeple. For me there's no generalized one. There's only lots of different specific ones."  There is no Platonic ideal of a spoon in Austen's mind, there are only specific spoons.

And I can say that's crazy and troublesome and that I just don't get why it makes eating yogurt at school impossible some days.  I can say that, that is, until I sit here unable to drink out of a clearly very mug-like object, complete with a handle and an ability to hold hot liquids simply because it doesn't fit my idea of what one ought to drink tea from.

I wavered a little over whether it was more morally wrong to skim the book in the store without buying it (is that the literary equivalent of downloading music without paying?) or to actually buy the book, in essence rewarding the author for his cheesy charlatanism (however entertaining).  After a quick look at the first chapter, I decided it would definitely be more wrong to buy the book.

Like many books of the self-help genre, the first few chapters contain don't actually contain any helpful information, but are instead dedicated to telling you (aaaatttt gggrrreeeaaattt lllleeennngggttthhhh) how much helpful information you will find later in this book if you just keep reading.

This is to discourage people like me from doing what I was doing.  Most people just break down buy the book after skimming the introductory marketing material.  Only the persistent skimmer will stick through those self-promotional first few chapters about how Al-Anon is wrong and you are not powerless and you totally can change people if only you follow the four easy steps laid out in this book, which, trust me, are coming, right after a few more of these chapters about how this book is right on the money.  (And speaking of money...  But I bravely pressed on, both because I was eager to see where I had gone wrong on the whole fixing-my-husband's-sex-addiction thing and because knew this was totally blog fodder.

It turns out that the right thing to do is to gather together people who love the addict and stage an intervention.  You are all, unlike what those suckers in 12 Step tell you, to use lots of "I" language to communicate your message.  (Oh, "I" language is a fundamental part of 12 Step? Well, ok, moving on...) The message you are supposed to communicate is that you really love and are concerned about the addict, so much so that you want this person to enter recovery, which includes 12 Step meetings (in spite of the fact that powerlessness is for suckers).

At this point, by the way, your loved one is supposed say yes, you're supposed to set some very non-12 Step boundaries (damn, that's 12 Step too?), your loved one is supposed to enter rehab and — with continued loving detachment (oh, wait, loving detachment is a 12 Step concept too?) — is fixed forever.  Ta da!  You've effected change!  See how awesome you are!

Of course, there's this little, tiny section, buried somewhere deep in the book about what to do in the (really, very highly unlikely event) that the addict refuses to admit to having a problem and says "no" to recovery or storms out or tells you you're crazy.  (But really, don't worry too much about that, because addicts almost never do that kind of thing.  That's why this section is one 200th of the entire book.  The chances are that small.  But you know, just in case.)  The answer?  Keep trying.  Eventually, one day, if you keep at it, your addict will enter recovery.  Because you are powerful, and you can change people.  Don't give up!  If it's not working, you're probably just not doing it right and should study the book harder.

It's as simple as that.

Or is it? It's probably not entirely fair for me to mock this book for repackaging powerlessness as powerfulness and selling it. After all, it does trick people into reading about some concepts that they might not otherwise be willing to explore. Maybe it's the codependent version of putting a free beer sign on the door of an AA meeting. It's false advertising, but it still gets them through the door.

If there is one thing I know about making changes in my life, it's that I can't do it alone.  Those of you who have been clicking over to the Second Road know that I've instituted a day of spirituality and rest (a sort of personal Sabbath) one day a week, and for those of you who don't (and I don't blame you, it drives me crazy to click the links out to other sites), well, now you know.  But it occurred to me that while not being part of any organized religion is freeing (Sabbath on Wednesdays, baby!), it can also be isolating.  But then I saw a solution!  What if some of us are independent together?

We can each spend one day changing one thing about our lives.  It doesn't have to be as big as adding a whole set of Sabbath rules.  I'm sure there's something that each and every one of you wants to change.  Maybe you want to eat more vegetables or exercise more or cut down on TV.  Maybe you want to pray more or flip people off on the freeway less.  Why not do it for just one day a week?  Just see how it feels and where it leads.  And then share it.

So, if you want to join me, pick a day and pick a change.  Floss your teeth one day a week.  Go vegan one day a week.  Take a long, hot bath one day a week.  Just one.  It's not a lifetime commitment.  It's just one little day between now and next Tuesday.  You can even define "day" for yourself (daylight hours, 24 hours, whatever you want).  If you have a blog, blog about it.  Then next Tuesday, I'll let you know what I did, and provide a place for you to link back to your post (or comment and share if you don't have a blog), so that we can all share.  So who's up for it?  Anyone?  Anyone?  Bueller?  (Sorry, couldn't resist!)

Of course, I'd love a link back here, so that other people can join.  You can use the image above if you want to, but it must include credit to the photographer.  Here is the code if you need it:

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Spiritual inspiration can come from the oddest bits of serendipity.  I was at a talk a few months ago by a Zen Buddhist who talked about making each moment sacred, about how we could light incense before doing the dishes and make the washing of each dish a meditation and a part of our practice.  That's a nice goal.  I like that image.  Instead, every day I engage in the totally unspiritual practice of washing dishes while playing yesterday's episode of the Colbert Report on my laptop: sometimes watching, sometimes listening, sometimes popping over to my e-mail.  And it turns out, that led me, well, maybe to the same place anyway.

A few months ago, Colbert's guest was AJ Jacobs, author of The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible.  The premise of the book sounded like a take on the humorous e-mail that circulates periodically mocking Biblical literalists for calling homosexuality an abomination while ignoring passages that condone things like slavery and animal sacrifice.  It sounded interesting, but because my hands were wet and covered with dish soap, I didn't jump right over to Amazon to buy it.  And then, I'll admit, I forgot about it.  Until a few weeks later, when my husband and I were out on a date night and decided to use our last few minutes of babysitter coverage to browse in a bookstore, where I noticed the book and decided to buy it after page one made me laugh out loud.

I loved it. It was much more than a take on a joke e-mail. It was spiritual and funny, reverent and irreverent.  It reminded me in many ways of my own spiritual journey.  (And what's not to love there?)  It even (unknowingly) contained some commentary on what recovering sex addicts face in our culture (but more on that tomorrow).  The bit that inspired me was the author's relationship to the Sabbath.  At first, leaving work aside for a day and resting is an anxiety producing chore for Jacobs, who can't make it through the first evening without checking his e-mail.  But it gradually becomes his favorite day, the one around which the rest of the week revolves.

I thought about my own tendency toward constant work: how hard I push myself, how difficult it is for me to make time for rest and how overwhelmed with guilt and fear I become whenever I am not being "productive."  I thought about how freeing it had been when my computer was in for repairs recently, and I couldn't do some of my work.  And I thought the idea of a Sabbath, a day of rest devoted to spirituality, might be good for me.

I don't formally belong to any organized religion, so I can choose any day for my Sabbath and honor it in any way that works for me.  So I've been thinking about what it would look like to spend one day a week dedicated to my spiritual life and wondering how I can make it happen.  I don't have it all figured out yet, and I don't need to, but what I do know is that I've decided I'd like to make it part of my spiritual journey to find out.  And I suspect that will mean that, at least one day a week, I will turn off the Colbert Report and light some incense when I do the dishes.

"Worry Brain, your mama's so ugly, she makes onions cry!" I found myself saying after I got off the phone with my husband.  I had to hang up the phone because I'd burst into tears, and now I was trying to beat back the anxiety that was consuming me.  I'd read a book on helping children cope with anxiety that suggested we learn to mock the part of our brain that produces those irrational, anxious thoughts.  As a feminist, sometimes I worry that I shouldn't use ugly mama jokes on it, but then I remind myself that's probably just my Worry Brain trying to get out of having its mama called ugly.

The company Mark works for is on shaky ground.  There have been layoffs and the people he knows that have been let go have had a hard time finding new jobs.  But I wasn't worried about that.  I was worried because he had a job interview.  For a really good job.  That pays a lot more than what he makes currently.  Working in an industry he's really interested in.  And the interview went well.  Crazy to be worried about that?  The job is (gasp!) in another state.  We'd have to move.  And the thought of that level of change grips me with anxiety.

I started whirring right into a panicked overdrive, "Fine.  I'll just tell him he can go, but I'm staying here with the kids.  I can't believe he'd pick a job over us!  And if we're not there, he'll probably just go on an incredible acting out spree.  He'll pretend he's not married and have sex all over some new town.  But I can't move, can I?  It took a year for Austen to be able to sleep through the night the last time we moved, and we stayed in the same area.  We'd have to find new 12 Step meetings and new doctors and new friends and a whole new set of resources for Austen.  And for crying out loud, we are a mixed race family and I look like a crazy bohemian.  We can't just move anywhere.  People will burn crosses on our lawn and the neighbors will tear the Darwin fish off my car and kill us.  We're safe here.  Everything is familiar here.  Everything is under control here."

That's when I brought out the big guns and called my Worry Brain's mama ugly.  (I mean she had to be ugly.  She was a big slimy brain, right?)  Mark still has a job.  He hasn't lost his job.  He hasn't been offered a new job.  Even if he were offered the job, we'd have time to discuss it and decide what's right for our family.  No need to try to soothe my anxiety by jumping on the computer and spend the next two hours doing Internet research on school districts a thousand miles away (although I was sorely tempted to), not when I can use my prodigious recovery skills to stay in the moment and tell myself ugly mama jokes instead.

A few months after I first met Mark in college, we ran into each other in a campus dining hall. As we chatted, he admired my high school class ring. I held my hand out to let him see it more closely, and peering down at the ring, he said, "Would you mind taking it off?" So, I took off my ring and handed it to him, expecting that he wanted to look at it more closely still. To my utter astonishment, he simply said "thank you," pocketed the ring and walked away. I stood there in the lobby, open-mouthed and paralyzed with wonder, like a newly carved statue. Had this man just stolen my ring? Was this a joke? Had he taken it to show it to someone else? Was he intending to come back? What did he mean by it? What kind of person does something so odd and unexpected? And what on earth do I do now?

Fortunately, Mark's roommate, who had witnessed the interaction, approached me. "Come on," he said wearily, as if this sort of thing happened all the time, "Let's go get your ring back." He led me, mute and meek, through the building until we finally found Mark in a game room, playing pool. "Mark," said his roommate, extending a palm, "the ring..." Mark smiled at me, looking both sly and awkward, as he handed over the ring, and I knew then that it had been a joke and that he was disappointed that I didn't (or didn't know how to) play along.

Eventually, I got used to Mark's odd tricks, spontaneous decisions, sudden new interests and chance conversations. He'd point over my shoulder and say brightly "Look over there!" while deftly swiping whatever was in front of me and seeing how long it took me to notice. We'd walk down the street, discussing what flavor we thought of when someone said "milkshake," and when we differed, he'd stop the next five random passersby to ask what they thought, as if he were Jay Leno and I were his camera. He'd decide he'd want to learn Russian or juggling or how to play the recorder. He'd strike up a conversation with a strange couple at the next table in a restaurant and leave with their phone numbers. I'd say I was thirsty, and he'd run out of the dormitory, returning with a plastic champagne glass from the cafeteria filled with soda and a flower from the nearest accessible blooming plant.

And I greeted it all with a mix of delighted awe and nagging discomfort. I loved that he did these crazy things that I was too scared, too shy, too bound by rules, too afraid of failure to do myself, and as I grew used to him, little by little, I started to feel more comfortable with spontaneity and novelty both in him and in myself, which I thought was a good thing. Yet I'd often find myself appalled and apologetic. "Yes, I'm sorry he took your coffee cup. It was a joke. He does those things," and like Mark's roommate had, I learned to take care of the people he startled or embarrassed or to tie up the loose ends he left straying behind him like jester's ribbons.

When, years later, he admitted to his sex addiction, much of that spontaneity didn't seem like fun anymore. I started to see that some of his tricks and jokes were ways to test people's limits, that collecting contact numbers wasn't always in the name of friendship and that he hadn't taken Russian so much from a sudden passion for the language as a sudden passion for a Russian classmate. And in an attempt to protect myself from more hurt, I started to wall off and become even more of a compulsive planner, even more rigid about rules, even more strict about structure, even more wedded to routine than I ever had been before.

Spontaneity is still extremely difficult for me. The other night Mark came home after the kids were asleep and said, "Honey, I'd like to take a shower and then make love to you." And as he showered, my mind raced: "That's not right! That's different. It's supposed to be make love first and then take a shower. That's the way it always has been. Has he been with someone else? Is that why he wants to take a shower first?" For a moment, I was as paralyzed as the first time he took my ring and walked away. What did he mean by it? What kind of person does something so odd and unexpected? And what on earth do I do now?

But I have a new guide within me now. One that gently led me to see that a shower was hardly a purloined ring, and not being able to tolerate even so small a change in routine without pain is the damage of disease. But it also led me to see that the gift of recovery is being able to talk to my husband honestly about it rather than pretending the fear and anxiety don't exist (because they "shouldn't"). And I trust that eventually, as my recovery continues, my need for that protective wall of structure will slowly slip away into balance with a new and healthy spontaneity.

A little less than a year ago, I moved my blog to its own URL, and when I did so, I had the opportunity to reread many of my old posts as I updated broken links (still not all fixed, by the way). As I did, I noticed that, whether I wrote about them explicitly or not, I could see the phases I went through, like rings on a tree: here was the fire that burned my bark; here was a season rich with rain; here was mild and pleasant weather; here was the drought that left me parched. With each ring, my focus became a little bit more clear and I got a little bit better at knowing what material I could share with a large and diverse audience in a healthy way.

When I first started blogging, I shared much more broadly than I do now. I wrote about my extended family and my friends (most of whom didn't know about the blog). I wrote about situations I was struggling with and people with whom I was angry. I shared my opinions about politics and celebrities. I speculated about sex addiction in the news. I tried to answer any and all questions ("try" being the operative word, as I'll admit that some of those questions are still sitting in my inbox, waiting).

But gradually, as more people started reading and as I grew and changed myself, my focus changed. I felt less comfortable putting friends and family members out there without their knowledge, even when I was focusing on my own response to them or telling my story as it related to them. And I found it less and less helpful and healthy to share my current struggles, emotions or opinions in such a broad forum. I still do from time to time, but I do it less often and less pointedly than I once did.

I began to recognize that when I get a tight feeling in my chest as I'm writing — when I vent, or rant, or try hard to get a good laugh, or struggle to find a way to change people or force them to understand me — I'm likely to feel awful afterwards. I started to key in to when I heard that critical little voice in my head saying "but..." or "you're wrong" or "you're crazy." I'd notice how I'd fuss and fuss to get the words right so that people wouldn't "misunderstand" me, knowing what I really wanted was to be able to use my words to bully any difference into submission. And almost inevitably my anger or uncertainty or sarcasm or desperate need to have everyone agree with me would trigger someone, which would in turn trigger me.

In 12 Step we talk about sharing our "experience, strength and hope." That is: what happened to us in the past, how we got through it and the hope and faith we now have for the future. And as I look at those tree rings of writing drawing in over the years, I notice that the focus I'm moving toward is exactly that: experience, strength, hope. When I'm able to share from that place, even if I'm ashamed of what I've done and scared (often very much so!) of how people will perceive me, I'm able to feel good about what I'm doing. In moving away from focusing on others or on my resentment and anger or on the things (and people and opinions) I can't change, I'm more likely to be of service to others, to make progress myself and to do no harm.

But never fear, since I'm about progress, not perfection, I'm still likely to slip up and be a smart ass or gossip or boss people who are being wrong (that is, anyone who doesn't agree with me). You know, just to keep things entertaining.

I shared in a meeting recently about my fear around my husband's business trips and how that fear is a reminder to me to connect with my Higher Power. After the meeting a newcomer asked me what I'm going to do now: I mean, he's going on a business trip soon, right? So what do you do now? Check his phone records? How can you make sure he's not acting out in his addiction?

Of course, I had already said what I was going to do: recognize, accept and take responsibility for my own emotions, pray and meditate, work my program, let go. However, as I watched this woman's brow cloud with genuine befuddlement as I repeated this, I remembered how hopelessly inadequate that answer seemed to me in the frantic struggle of those early days. There I was, standing in the wreckage of the-life-I-thought-I-had thinking, "What the hell just happened? And how am I going to rebuild this?" And the "answer" didn't even register as a solution at all. I'd think, "Ok, ok, I know you said something about some useless, flaky spiritual stuff and keep coming back. Blah blah blah. But what do I DO?"

It was as if my home had just been leveled by a natural disaster. Pray? Sit around meditating? That's not any kind of an answer at all. What was that going to do? I knew what I needed to feel better again; I needed my house back or rather a better house, one that wouldn't fall down again. I couldn't envision a world where my happiness was not dependent on that house. And to get that house back, I had to do something: get on the phone with the insurance company, get the Red Cross and the National Guards in, interview contractors, analyze where the structure had failed and build reinforcements to ensure this could never happen again. All the spiritual mumbo jumbo in the world wasn't going to help with that, and there wasn't any God out there who was going to make a new house magically appear with the wave of an invisible hand.

Likewise, when I first started recovery, I simply couldn't yet envision a world in which the answer to my problems didn't involve having an husband who never acted out again. As long as I could make sure he would never act out in his addiction again, everything would be ok, right? And I could achieve that by somehow doing things the "right" way. In pre-recovery that meant being sexy and passionate and sweet and smart and just generally amazing and perfect enough to fully satisfy him. And when that didn't work, I moved into early recovery, where it meant somehow learning to do this recovery thing (whatever it was) right enough.

And oh, was it annoying when people told me the answer was God, as if God were the ultimate addict to please. I'd tried that game before, the one where God held the key to my happiness but wouldn't give it to me until I did everything perfectly according to some arbitrary and unspoken set of rules. But God hadn't given up the key any more than any of the other people in my life had. That's what made me lose faith in the first place. And now I was supposed to believe things were going to be different? Ha! Those 12 Steppers were deluded! Give up trying to control my husband and try to control God into controlling him instead? I thought to myself, "No, I think I'll stick with controlling him myself rather than handing that over to some non-existent magical being, thanks."

It took years to see that all the flaky spiritual stuff wasn't about changing the world and the people around me to make it all more comfortable for me; it was learning how to be comfortable in the world as it is. My God wasn't going to rebuild the metaphorical house of my life or make sure it would never fall down again; my God was going to help me let go of the pain of losing the house and be ok whatever happened around it in the future. My God doesn't control the things I can't; my God helps me let go of the need to control them in the first place.

Each week we read the promises of our 12 Step program, and my favorite is: "We will intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle us." And I realized, when I saw myself reflected in that look of pain and confusion in a newcomer's face, that I didn't used to know what to do when I was filled with fear at Mark's actions, but I do now, even if it doesn't seem much like doing anything at all. When Mark gets on that plane, I'm going to try to stay connected with my Higher Power: not so that he doesn't act out or so that I can find out about it if he does, but so that, whatever he does or doesn't do, I can stay present and centered in my own life.