A few months ago, Mark and I took the kids to a "sensory friendly" movie showing.  Autistic individuals, and others with sensory processing difficulties, can find a typical movie going experience overwhelming.  Movies are loud.  Theaters are dark and often crowded.  The screen is huge and the images on it are flickering and fast paced.  There are previews and commercials before the show that switch rapidly from one theme to another, while we wait impatiently for what we actually came to see.  Then when the movie does start, its story and situations are designed to evoke strong emotional responses: to scare or thrill or amaze us.  And did I mention they're LOUD?

Most of us go to the movies to be a little overwhelmed.  But for some people, all of that can be too much.  So, at sensory friendly showings, there are no previews.  The lights are dim, but the theater is not dark.  And the sound is turned down.  And not only that, it's ok to sing or talk or to get up and walk around, dance or jump if it all gets to be too much anyway.

At the showing we went to, some kids got up and paced the aisles.  Some rocked in their seats.  Some grunted or chirped.  My son commented on the movie at full voice.  (Whispering is only for secrets.)  And we all had a fun day out doing something different while nobody stared.  Nobody glared.  Nobody shifted uncomfortably in their seats and made little "hem" noises in their throats.  The air didn't buzz with electric hostility.  And nobody had to worry that, at any moment, it might.

I don't know about the other parents in that theater, but I felt like I'd been able to put down a hundred pound weight.  The kids and young adults in that theater could all be themselves, and we all understood.  No one said anything or did anything, but there was a palpable sense of acceptance in the air.  It hung there, invisible but enveloping, like the drowsy smell of honeysuckle on a warm afternoon.  What a relief.  Which made me realize just how guarded I am and how much weight, how much fear and tension and worry, I carry every day.

This past weekend, I went to a convention for my 12 Step group.  Hundreds of sex addicts and their partners or family members gathered in hotel conference rooms and ballrooms.  There were meetings and workshops and outings.  There were speakers who shared their experience, strength and hope.  At each banquet iced tea was served instead of alcohol.  No one gossiped about the latest infidelity scandal in the media.  People openly shared their pain and their weaknesses and their gratitude.  And all weekend long, I had nothing to do but connect with my Higher Power in a group of people who was supporting me in doing just that.  All weekend long, I felt I had nothing to worry about and nothing to fear.

Again that love and acceptance enveloped me.  Again that hundred pound weight dropped off my shoulders. Again the relief washed over me.  And again I realized just how guarded I am and how much weight, how much fear and tension and worry, I carry every day.

On the last day of the convention, I wept with gratitude for the gift of having been there.  (If you were one of the lovely ladies sitting around a hotel banquet table with me on Monday morning at breakfast, yes, that was me crying and smiling at you all crazy.) We were asked on that last day if we had picked up any burdens that we wanted to leave behind, and I couldn't think of any.  All I could think was that I needed to try not to reshoulder the burdens I'd set down when I entered.

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.

Last week, I was sitting cross-legged on my plump little black cushion on the floor of the Zendo I visit regularly and listening to a talk about cleaning incense burners.  And as I listened, the very deep and profound thought that came to me was, "I seriously am never going to volunteer to clean incense burners at this place."  It wasn't that the task sounded unpleasant — it didn't — but the volunteers who hadn't done it right, who hadn't been sufficiently thorough in their cleaning, were the subject of the dharma talk.  Yikes!  Wouldn't want to be those guys!

Now the leader of the Zendo... (Or is it master or priest or teacher? I never know, because everyone refers to him as Bob, which sounds odd when trying to put him in context.)  In any case, Bob had built his talk around these slacker volunteers — who remained nameless (but they knew who they were...) — who were occasionally leaving little butt-ends of incense in the burners.

Bob wanted to make the point that we need to put our whole hearts and our full effort into everything we do.  But instead of being inspired, I was thinking, "Damn, that job cleaning the incense burners sounds like way too much pressure.  Not only that, everything sounds like way too much pressure.  I've already tried to put my 'full effort' into everything.  It's what led me to crawl, broken and bleeding, into both the rooms of 12 Step and this damn Zendo.  This is so not a good talk for a recovering perfectionist to hear..."

At the end of the talk, there were questions, and as I struggled to formulate mine, someone else asked it for me.  "I don't understand," one woman said, "This week you tell us to put our full effort into perfectly cleaning the incense burners, but last week you told us this story about a student who thoroughly raked all the leaves in a courtyard, only to have the Zen master throw the leaves back on the ground and make him do it again.  The student raked the leaves perfectly, but was told that was too much effort.  How do we know when we're giving our full effort and when we're doing too much?"

I have a habit, born of years of training as a straight A student, of always trying to answer another student's question before the teacher does.  I give myself extra points if my answer (as scored by an independent panel of judges in my head) is better than the instructor's.  But in this case, all I could think was, "Good question!  Let's see you get out of that one, Bob!"

Bob paused and said, "You stop when it is no longer a gift.  In the story, when the master threw the leaves on the ground, it was because the student asked for the master's approval.  He wanted to be praised for what a good job he did.  So he did the work, not as a gift, but to gain something: to gain the master's approval.  When you seek to gain something, it is not a gift.  And when your work is not a gift, it's time to stop.  That is your full effort, even if the job is not done."

Oh.

Good answer.  Wish someone had told me that about 40 years ago.  Maybe I can learn to clean those incense burners better than I thought I could.

Two years ago, I gave up on New Year's resolutions.  What do those ever lead to but disappointment anyway?  Maybe I keep them, but mostly I don't.  And when I don't, I feel like a failure.  So, I picked a single word as my intention for the year instead.  Since I was feeling down at the time, the word I picked for 2008 was "happy." And what do you know, 2008 was happy!

As 2008 drew to a close, I picked another word.  The word for 2009 was "God." And I'm pleased to report that this really was a year of growing spirituality:

• I started attending 12 Step meetings again and reworking the Steps with a Step group of wonderful women.
• I meditated and prayed more this year than any other in my life, which included spending time on a short spiritual retreat.
• I instituted my own Sabbath, a day each week focused on rest and spirituality.
• I even, although I didn't write about it here for anonymity reasons, celebrated my birthday with a special dedication to God.

Wow.  Since this whole word thing has been working out pretty well, it's time to pick a focus for 2010.  And this year's word is (drum roll, please):

HEALTH

Yep, this year I will be focusing on my health.  I plan to continue working on my mental, emotional and spiritual health as always, but I'm hoping to concentrate especially on my much neglected physical health.  I am not setting any specific goal.  No "I'm going to lose 10 pounds" or "I'm going to stop drinking soda."  I'm just going to see where the word "health" takes me.  Hopefully to more exercise, eating better and regular doctor's visits, but we'll see.  I'm open and ready.

Hope you all have a wonderful, happy, healthy New Year! Do you have an intention — or any good old fashioned resolutions? Leave a comment. I'd love to hear about them.

After really struggling last week between my need to sleep and my desire not to sleep, I decided that this week on my day of spirituality I would spend one day throwing out my to do list and letting go of all the things I "should" do in favor of whatever came to me in the moment.

So after I got the kids off to school, I thought, "I should exercise, but I'd like to sit down and pet the cat and look out the window."  So I sat down with the cat and just relaxed.  Every now and then a thought would come to me and I'd worry about when I should get up or what I should do next.  I told myself that I would know when I knew.  And I sat petting the cat until I was done and it felt like time to go lie down and take a nap.  So I took a nap.  And when I woke up, I didn't quite want to get out of bed yet, so I stayed in bed, trying to trust that I would get up when the time was right.

And when my daughter was finished with school, she wanted to play outside.  So I went outside.  And as I stood there watching her play, I thought, "This day feels so much better than last week.  What if I lived every day this way?  Just doing the next right thing and trusting that I'd know when to do it..."  Which I followed immediately with the thought, "But then nothing would ever get done!"  And I realized that I was fine trusting God to take care of rest and relaxation, but I did not trust God when it came to getting work done.  Sure, God could help me relax and pet a cat, but I didn't feel God was going to be there when it came to getting the dishes done or cleaning the bathroom, which was quite a lesson and one I need more than ever at this time of year.  I hope I can take at least some of that into the coming weeks with me.

Did you do anything this week? Share in the comments or post a link to a blog post in Mister Linky below. And if you want to join in and change one aspect of your life for one day, click over to my introductory post to get more information and a badge.

"I don't want to get up and I don't want to go to school!" my daughter Janie yelled when she heard me chime "Time to get up!" this morning.  ("Well, maybe tonight you will go to sleep on time so you won't be tired tomorrow," I found myself muttering, then added mentally, "And I won't either.")

It was a battle to get Janie's clothes on and a battle to get her out the door.  At the time we ought to be leaving the house, she was clothed, but still hadn't eaten breakfast.  ("I don't want to eat, because I don't want to go to school!")  I weighed the odds and decided just to give up on trying to make the bus and drive her today.  So I plopped her in the back of the car with a piece of toast and we headed off to school, where she managed to run in just in time (and in a considerably better mood after having grudgingly eaten the toast in the car).

On my drive home, a little bird darted out from the side of the road and began to take flight just as I drove past.  There was no time for it or for me to react and it hit my front bumper with a sickening thud.  I stopped and watched, wondering "What should I do?" as it thrashed for just a moment and then lay still before I had time to answer my own question.

On any other day, that bird could have flown low over the street and my car would not have been there to hit it.  If I had decided to try to have Janie catch the bus today (which she might have, though it would have been close), my car would not have been there to hit it.  If Mark had gotten Janie to bed earlier while I was out last night or if I had not gone out and put her to bed myself, maybe she would not have been so cranky this morning and I wouldn't have been on the road.  Or maybe the car behind me would have startled the bird and hit it instead if I hadn't been there.  My little decisions — my small, seemingly random, actions — affect so many other things, but I don't always know how and why.

Last night, while Mark was trying to wrangle Janie in to bed, I was attending a talk by a Zen Buddhist who said, "Things are.  There is a reason that they are.  But we do not know the reason, only that they are and that there is a reason."  There is special providence in the fall of a sparrow.  I want to know what it is, but it's enough to know that it is.

Last week, oddly inspired by the humorous book The Year of Living Biblically, I decided I wanted to try to add a little Sabbath into my own life.  Couldn't I use a day of rest once a week, even if I didn't have an organized religion backing me up?  And because I'm not part of any organized religion, I'm not bound to keep my Sabbath on a Judeo-Christian Saturday or Sunday.  In fact, I didn't want to.  After all, if you have kids (or maybe just if you have my kids), you'll know that "rest" and "the kids have a day off from school" are far (very, very far) from complimentary for parents.  So, I decided to pick the more convenient (to me) Wednesday instead.  Yep, it'll just be me and the Anglo-Saxon pagans who worship Woden, for whom the day is named...

Wednesday has the advantage of being the day of the week the kids are least likely to have off of school, because the district wisely schedules Mondays and Fridays off instead whenever possible.  It's also the day when a local meditation group meets, meaning I've already got mediation right there on the schedule.  The only problem was that last Wednesday was Veteran's Day, and my kids had no school, throwing my "pick a day when the kids will be in school" plan off right from the start.  Nonetheless, I decided to give Sabbath a try, and the day went well overall.  I can't say there was much rest or spiritual revelation, but I did manage to keep the computer off from bedtime on Tuesday to breakfast on Thursday (in spite of having the kids tempt me to turn my laptop back on several times by asking that I look up the answers to everything from what kinds of animals reproduce asexually to when Grandma's plane would arrive for Christmas).  And I got to spend a relatively quiet day with the kids.

In the intervening few days, I've been thinking about how I want to structure my newly holy Wednesdays, and I've come up with a few guidelines, at least to start.  These only apply only to me, which is yet another reason I scheduled it during the week:

• No electronics: no computer, no TV and no video games (with a few exceptions).
• No sugar. (I'm definitely going to have to ease into this one.)
• Time dedicated to prayer and meditation.
• Time dedicated to physical exercise (which I don't get enough of): yoga, walks, dancing. For the time being, I've decided to exempt the iPod (inside the house only), Wii Fit and Dance Dance Revolution from the electronics ban in order to encourage aerobic exercise.
• Household chores, reading and writing may be done in moderation as long as a focus on mental, spiritual and/or physical health can be maintained.  (In other words, I'm going to have to see how and whether these will fit in, since I know that I, personally, have the potential to overdo and misuse all three.)
• Focus on being present for family members when they are home.

This week will be my first opportunity to see how the day will work in practice, and I'm really looking forward to it.

"The level of sexual imagery in modern life is astounding. I knew intuitively this was true, but when you tune into it, you just can't believe it. I click on the Yahoo! finance page, and there's this blond model in a low-cut dress looking at a computer screen and nibbling alluringly on the temple of her glasses, apparently very aroused by the latest S&P 500 report."
~ A.J. Jacobs, The Year of Living Biblically

Years ago, when my husband Mark and I were first married, we went away for the weekend, leaving the little city (or big town) we called home to drive to a bed and breakfast on a ranch in the middle of big rolling fields of nowhere.  At night, we could look up and see a sky, not just dotted with a few twinkling stars against a vast blackness, but absolutely littered with more light than darkness.  But even more than the presence of stars, I remember the silence.

There were no cars rumbling past outside, no neighbors talking or banging doors shut, no fire sirens or televisions, no computer network humming and no cell phone coverage.  It was so quiet, I actually had trouble sleeping; the absence of sound rang audibly in my ears.  I didn't realize I was surrounded by a constant whir of background noise until it wasn't there, but when I went back home I was suddenly both very much aware of it and increasingly bothered by it.  Was it good for me to have so much noise in my life that I heard actual ringing in my ears when it was quiet, the same way I have on leaving a rock concert?  At the same time, that level of background noise was clearly normal in the place and culture in which I was living; could I get away from it?

In a way, moving from addiction to recovery felt the same way, as I began to tune in to the ambient noise of our culture.  Suddenly, that billboard or that song or that TV ad wasn't just part of a constant, and largely ignored, backdrop; it was the trigger that could bring the trauma of addiction rushing to engulf me again.  Being married to a recovering sex addict meant suddenly being faced with the need to avoid gratuitous sexual content in order to protect my own sanity.  And that meant becoming acutely aware of just how soaked in sexuality American culture is: everything from hamburgers to web hosting are sold on overtones of porn.  (And seriously, I can think of few things less inherently erotic than ground beef and Internet domain name registration.)

Recovery has also meant looking at patterns of alcoholism and addiction among our extended friends and family, and becoming similarly aware of the pervasiveness of alcohol, which is an integral, accepted, even expected part of everything from weddings to sporting events to birthday parties.

And once I did begin to tune in, I wondered, much as I did when I came home from those nights on that secluded ranch: had all that cultural noise (unnoticed, but loud enough to leave my ears ringing in its absence) been good for me?  I didn't think so.  So, from ad blocking software to a DVR to changes in my own routines, I've worked to beat back the noise our culture throws off and journey toward the quiet that I now crave.

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.

Sometimes people ask me (and frankly, sometimes I ask myself) how I went from being very vocal in my rejection of God to someone who now talks about God all the damn time. The short and simple answer is: 12 Step recovery (which is probably one of the reasons people like me -- or at least like the me I used to be -- find 12 Step scary). The long answer is, well, the accumulation of every tiny moment in a lifetime, which makes it both too long to tell and nothing to tell at all. But in all of the tiny moments that even the answer "12 Step" holds, there are the signposts along the way: the times when everything shifted and changed, in nearly as dramatic (but not as painful) a way as they did when I found out about my husband's addiction. Sometimes I put those together for myself into some story of change.

When I was young and asked why I had to go to church when I didn't believe, my mother said, "I didn't used to like going either, but when things in my life got hard, I found the rituals comforting. I want you to have some foundation in religion, something you can go back to when you need it." So, standing in the bedroom of our old home, the place we lived when I found out about my Mark's sex addiction, I told Mark that I felt like God was trying to break me, like taming a wild horse. God was going to heap woes on me like some mirror Job, until I was so broken down from famines and locust plagues that I would have no choice but to go tamely back to the church, just as my mother had said I would. But I was not going to be broken by God.

Was it months later or a year? At some point, still weighed down with hurt, having been stung yet again by something Mark had said or done, I wept alone in our room and tried to meditate, when the faltering thought came to me that maybe this was it, maybe I should pray. And a voice inside me told me I didn't believe in God, and I felt comforted by the higher power I couldn't and wouldn't call God.

The years passed, and although I didn't quite lose my bitterness or resentment, I lost my fear that I might somehow end up back in the arms of the church that hurt me. I began to see that having spirituality in my life didn't mean I had to have religion in my life if that didn't help me. I began the search for something to call that spiritual connection, and with my fear of the church gone, my fear of the word God began to leave me too. Intellectually, I began to explore the idea that maybe it was a word I could use as a shorthand for something in my life that was beyond words.

By the time I started working the 12 Steps, I felt I had already come to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity and had lost my resistance to the word God. I don't know that I expected much to change, and yet, Step 7 (in which we humbly ask God to remove our shortcomings) shattered me all over again. Prayer wasn't something that fit well with my conception of what my God is and what my God is not and healthy humility wasn't something that had been a part of my experience. And yet, kneeling down in my bedroom facing a wall, hung up on all of these ideas and unable to ask God for help, in a sudden flash like a ray of sunshine breaking through cloud, I was inspired to ask God for help asking for help. In that moment, as I cried and begged for help, I felt something melt away, something new form and my connection with what I called God strengthen beyond anything I ever felt or expected.

So, when I reached Step 12, I had to admit that I had had a spiritual awakening, just as that Step promised. And I went off to carry the message, and started talking about God all the damn time too.