The UP Side

I was recently asked by someone in our funzy addiction circles what I love about my marriage -what I love about my husband.

Hearing this question invoked a mental image of my husband's face the morning after he read my blog.
"Do you want to divorce me?" He asked.

I now raise my right hand and pledge from the bottom of this seemingly-man-hating blog... "I do not welcome divorce."

  

via outeriner.com

I can't count how many times I've heard different women say, "Ugh, if he looked at porn I would be gone."
And I nod along not really sure how to say, "Well, you never know REALLY until it hits you broadside..."  Nodding is such a great gesture.  I sing praises to whoever coined The Nod.

I also count how many times I've heard different women say, "You guys are like, so perfect together."
And what do I do?  I NOD!  Because I don't think it would be appropriate to elaborate on our circumstances.  Don't get me wrong: my husband and I don't fake public happiness and then go home and tromp around in scowl faces and refuse to touch or talk or connect.

Let me say honestly with all my heart: My husband rocks my socks.  I am off-the-charts in LOVE with that man.
I fell out of love with him once, and GOSH darn it all if I didn't fall back in.  Even when I wasn't in LOVE with him, I still didn't want out.  I like him.  I respect him.
Even if I didn't want any part of my lover, I still wanted my best friend around.

He makes me laugh... he mispronounces words and uses them at the wrong time and he uses slang like it's his first language.  And his slang just GETS me. He has a certain way about using it that kills me.  Slaughters me every dang time.  He makes potty jokes when I least expect them and I end up giggling in the middle of a bite of spaghetti.  Potty jokes get me every time and he KNOWS it.

He believes in me.  He bought me a lap top so I could write.  He loves the way I write.  He sometimes gives me alone time so I can just sit and write.  He once had flowers delivered to me with a card that read "You can do all of the things you want to do."  He never discourages or stifles or doubts.  He's my biggest cheerleader (sans uniform, unfortunately).

He protects me.  Hell hath no fury like my husband's when someone crosses me and he's there to see it.  You don't treat his wife like that.  You don't talk to her like that.  And what's more: he packs heat pretty much all the time.  I'm not here to get political about gun control... all I'm here to do is say: it's pretty hot.  When we were dating, we spent a summer four hours apart.  I drove to visit him one weekend, and I had horrible car trouble.  I didn't have a cell phone (that was 2004, so it was still pretty normal for a person to not have a cell phone).  It was the scariest, worst trip I've ever taken.  I was single with no form of communication traveling scary roads and night was beginning to fall.  I prayed and cried and prayed and cried... I pulled into my boyfriend's drive and he was standing on the porch, worried sick.  I barely stepped out of my car before I was completely enveloped in his long, strong arms.  I melted into his arms, and I felt safe.  I felt HOME.  The next morning, my husband took me to a cell phone kiosk and added me to his plan.  He didn't give any thought to whether we might break up in the future, he just knew he needed to protect me.  So he did.  And that, ladies and gents, is how he won my Dad over.

He provides for me.  I'm a stay-at-home country mom and I'm ruddy good at it.  I mean, I could work outside the home.  It's physically possible... but I'm much better at home.  I like it here.  Matter of fact: I LOVE it here.  I love our two-bedroom rental.  We're happily shoving three kids and two adults into it, and we love it.  We live on my husband's income (and supplement it with the cash I make teaching piano lessons), and it's enough.  It's steady.  It has benefits.  And my husband has always done whatever he could to get his name on a paycheck somehow... because of me and because of our kids.  He worries about money, not because he wants a boat but because he wants us to have the things we want.  It always overwhelms me how much he wishes he could give to me.  The thing is: I don't want more.  Honestly.  I love my little rental.  I love my used car.  And I love that my husband is driven to provide.

He accomplishes what he sets out to do.  I know that sentence may be *tsk* provoking given that he has set out to conquer porn addiction in the past and hasn't been able to.  But I've been near my husband for 9 of his 32 years of life, and this much I know: if he says it's going to happen, it's going to happen.  If he says he's going to choose _____ for his career, it will happen.  No matter if people close to him are telling him, "Take the grocery store position, more money!" or "That fact that you haven't been hired for that career is probably a sign."  To them we raise our W2 that showed our annual income of (no joke, folks) $12,000 and say... sacrifice brings forth the blessings of heaven.  He has his career, and he's dang good at what he does.   When it comes to life ambitions, he is determined.  I love him for it.

He is a good dad.  He loves his kids.  When I miscarried, he hurt just as much as I did.  He's been known to get baby hungry.  He has to restrain himself on birthdays and Christmas.  He loves to spoil.  He loves to feed his children.  He loves to make his children laugh.  His children inspire him.

Sometimes when he's sleeping, he reaches up and lightly scratches his face with his thumb.  It tickles and irritates him.  So rubs his face to get rid of the tickling sensation.  And it so entertaining.  He has no clue when he's doing it.  But every time he does and I'm awake to see it?  Makes me happy I'm married to him.

 NOW.
What do I love about marriage?

Marriage is the stuff.  Marriage is something to be reverenced and revered.
My marriage is my favorite.  It's messy and funny and sad and bliss and Friday Nights spent playing PS3 with two hyper kids.  It's staying up late on Saturday and sleeping in on Sunday (yeah, we're the "late" family in church).  It's Spring gardens and Fall Harvests.  It's tears in the dishwater.  It's tears in the shower.  It's watching the sunset from the couch.  It's pretending he can't cut tomatoes, so she can come up from behind and "help."  It's three beautiful children -the most commonplace of miracles swarming his n' her ankles and knees.  It's a constant supply of Gatorade and Sprite when he's sick.  It's wearing matching cold sores.  It's being able to buy things like laxatives for the her without even thinking about what they're eventually going to... bring about.  It's talking.  It's trying to explain why a bad hair cut is debilitating.  It's trying -really trying -to understand how that's even possible.  It's paying off a car.  It's knocking teeth when kissing.  It's chocolate on a bad day and chocolate on a good day.  It's one night away per year.  It's experiencing sushi for the first time together. It's traditions of caramel apples and gingerbread houses.  It's family pictures.  It's church callings.  It's prayers and prayers and prayers.  It's hormones and it's pills.  It's wearing the tie tack she bought. It's wearing the necklace he bought.  It's a shoulder.  It's getting goosed.  It's thin ice.  It's emotion.  It's holidays at home.  It IS home.  It's rocky.  It's smooth.  It's predictable.  It's unpredictable.  It's hard, satisfying, gratifying WORK.  It's filing complaints.  It's listening to complaints filed.  It's phone calls to her while he's gone training.  It's swollen ears from hours of talking over the phone.  It's texting him from the bedroom so she doesn't have to get up.  It's sinking into a hot bath at the end of the day.  It's him noticing a tired her under a foot of bubbles and giving her unasked for mood lighting before leaving her alone to zen.  It's about her choosing to make her own self happy.  It's Ben & Jerry's.  It's 7 years of roses on every occasion.  It's her finally admitting that she doesn't like roses.  It's him sending mixed bouquets.  It's her baking his favorite french bread. It's testimonies. It's an unspoken pact that no one will ever know that they watch Hart of Dixie together... and like it.  It's love.  It's love.  It's love.

Our marriage is undergoing a lot of change.  A LOT.  So I'm only telling you why I love my marriage RIGHT NOW, today.  In a few months, my reasons for loving marriage may change radically.  And the list above doesn't include addiction... it's the "other" side of our relationship.  It's the side that's kept us fighting, so to speak.  We don't really relish the idea of buying laxatives for anyone else.  Doing it for one person is enough.


I don't welcome divorce.
I don't welcome addiction either.
But no matter what: I know I will be okay.  I know the Lord has a plan.  I know He's aware of me.  I'm safely tucked in his long, strong arms as well.
 I know that I can do tomorrow.  And for now? That's enough.

Please, friends, if you've read this post in it's entirety: consider writing one similar.  If you'd rather not, don't.  But even if you don't write it, ponder it.
Ponder your up side, if you safe enough to do so.

Miracles

   

via nal.usda.gov

I'm not okay with others not being okay with me.

I'll go to great lengths to make sure others are okay with me at the expense of my own comfort (I hate this.  I'm working hard on this).  In my marriage, I went to great lengths to make sure my husband was okay with me at the expense of my own peace... which is miles of worse.

I wanted to be different than other couples with problems.
I wanted to be tougher than issues.

I wanted to be okay.

So I said I was.  I guess I figured that maybe if I said it enough, I would begin to feel and believe it as well because what I actually was feeling was NOT okay.
But I hated that I wasn't okay, so I escaped.  I shoved the feelings down so I wouldn't have to truly experience them.  I watched a lot of movies.  I ate a lot of junk.
I spent a lot of time online.

And when he asked me how I was doing, I would say, "I'm okay."
And I would give the same report to the Lord, "I'm okay."

For some reason, I was content to have being OK be my goal -probably because I was so torn up inside that truly being okay seemed like a dream.  I'd forgotten what it felt like to be okay.  Just plain okay.

What was I?
I was hurt.  I was angry.  I was confused.  I was reeling.

With each near-daily confession from my husband, emotions swirled around me in a chaotic panic, begging to be unleashed.
But I was stronger than my emotions.
So I resisted the strong pull to give them any credit or reign... and I said, "I'm okay."

Last night, my husband opened up to me and confessed he realized he'd been acting out on his lust addiction in other ways -as in: ways that don't include porn.
I listened.
When he finished talking, his eyes were full of terror, apprehension, shame... I could hear his thoughts.
'How is she going to take this?'

And I answered out loud, "I'm okay."
We put the kids to bed, he went to bed, and I stayed awake.  I wrote and prayed and searched for pain.
Where is it?  Where is the pain and the anger?  Shouldn't they BE here?
I'm ready to give them reign for a little while.  I'm ready to feel them, handle them, learn from them.  I won't stifle them or pretend I'm stronger than them.
I recognize they aren't facts... I recognize that they are necessary... I recognize that they have a purpose.

I close my eyes and focus on what my husband has said to me.  I breathe in and breath out.  My brain hunts for any shred of emotion.
And finds peace. 

This can't be right.
This can't be normal.
There has to be more to this.

I pray and I pray and I feel only peace and clarity and then my thoughts wander and I think about the baby's upcoming blessing, the laundry waiting to be washed the next morning, the chicken that needs to thaw.
I think about a friend of mine who is going through a miscarriage and  has a white-knuckling porn addicted husband, and I think about how I want to save her.
I think about how I want to save everyone.
I wonder WHY. 
Saving is the Savior's job.  Why would I want such a heavy responsibility?  Why would I be so pompous as to presume that I have saving abilities?
I pray, I write.
I realize and write my fears: I'm afraid of my husband cycling because it brings anger.  I'm afraid of anger.
But I can divorce the anger.  I can leave.  I don't have to be around cycling anger, I write.
My fear dissipates.
I'm afraid my friend will endure unimaginable pain unless I intervene.
But she is in God's hands, I write.
Be still, I write.
Know that He is God, I write.
Let Go and Let God, I write.

I read a talk about serving for the right reasons because I found myself serving a woman yesterday and wanting to save her from the physical pain that was ailing her.  I wanted to jump in and start controlling certain aspects of her life.
Do I serve to save? I write.
Do I serve to serve the Lord? I write.

And I read a talk that gives me clarity.

"Observing and then serving is not always convenient and doesn't always fit our own timetable...Sometimes we are tempted to serve in a way that we want to serve and not necessarily in the way that is needed at the moment...ask, "Am I doing this for the Savior, or am I doing this for me?" [and] our service will more likely resemble the ministry of the Savior."

~Linda K. Burton

 And then I sit back.  I exhale.

I take in my miracle, let myself believe in it... I let myself believe that there isn't pain around the corner.  I let myself believe that I'm not a victim.  I let myself believe that I am more than okay.

And I FEEL it because it is genuine and true.

I feel genuine and true forgiveness -I hadn't even sat down to search out forgiveness.  I sat down to absorb, to meditate, and forgiveness found it's way to me as I put my pen to paper.

I feel forgiveness, I write.  It stops me in my writing tracks... and I realize that I didn't forgive IN that moment, but that I had forgiven him months ago.  Is that possible?  Is preforgiveness actually a THING?  

I stop skeptically searching for pain, and I bask in soft peace.

Miracles make it easier to sleep.

The Weight

The past few weeks have been loaded with recovery and admissions and discussions and addiction.

Tonight, I'm just exhaling.  And all I can think about is Miss Fanny.  Or Miss Anny.  Or whatever.




I feel like the Lord is reaching out to me through The Band.  Why do I believe that?  Because I believe the Lord speaks in tongues.  And that means he speaks German, French, Greek, and Alicia.
Take a load off.  Take a load off.
"Put the load right on me," He says.

It's amazing how easy sleep comes when you take a load off.
Good night.

Chasing the White Rabbit

 

I remember the first time I heard the word "codependecy."
It sounded SO therapy labelish.  I hated it.  I didn't know what it was, but I was pretty sure I didn't want any part of it.
But I DID want a part of healing, and it turns out I couldn't heal without accepting -once and for all -that I was codependent.

What is codependency?
I've read a few books about it.  But what is codependency to me, personally?

It's Wonderland.

It's leaving real life -real living -reality -and plunging DOWN into a different realm where nothing makes sense.  Everything seems dramatic and hazy.
How did I get there?  I followed The White Rabbit.
Why do I stay there? I'm chasing The White Rabbit.  I've got to find it, ask it where it's going, what it's doing...
The chase is obsessive.  Nothing else matters enough to take precedence.
I come across singing flowers, ugly twins, and a bat-crap-crazy tea party, and I believe I'm going crazy.


At some point -somewhere around meeting a vanishing cat, probably -I want out of Wonderland.
I long for Reality.  I can see clearly in Reality.  There's no smoking caterpillars in Reality.
The White Rabbit isn't worth it.

I try to find a way out, but I can't seem to.  The pathway home is swept away from my sight, and I blunder along in the haze... The White Rabbit never far from my thoughts.  I don't want to think about him.  But I can't seem to stop...

The only true way OUT is to wake up.

Reality is still there, waiting on the other side of Wonderland.
The White Rabbit is not in my Reality.
And though I spent six years chasing him, I've never been more thrilled to lose.  I'm free.  I'm free of the chase.  I'm free of a life trapped in obsession.

The haze is gone, and I can see clearly.
It isn't me that's crazy.
It's Wonderland.

Comeback Kid

  

via posterpal.com

When I was 18, I lived with three other girls. 
I was enrolled in 21 credit hours.
I was in marching band.
I worked as a writing tutor.
I lived on a diet of tater tots and canned spinach.

I was stressed.
I threw that stress into my house.  I cleaned that old beater pink college house like you wouldn't believe.  I'd dust and scrub and scrub and scrub.
My roommates had a pow-wow one night.  They pulled me down and told me I had to STOP.  I was making them feel lazy.
They thought was getting frustrated because they weren't cleaning enough.  They thought I was mad.
"No," I said, "I'm just stressed.  When I'm stressed, I clean."
"Oh!  Never mind.  Carry on..." 

I'm not a great housekeeper.  It's something I have to work REALLY hard at.  I stress clean, yes.  But my house isn't always clean or in working order.

For years after I was married, I couldn't figure out what was wrong with me.  I felt stressed, but I wasn't up for cleaning.  Maybe it was the kids.  Maybe having kids changed me.
I was tired.
But other women had kids.  Their houses were in somewhat working order.
The other women's kids had proper fitting clothing.  Mine were always one size behind, and I never seemed to have them dressed warmly enough.
Something was wrong with ME.  I was a bad mom.
I was constantly apologizing over the state of my house.  I brought my newborns home to clutter -never properly prepared to bring a pure baby back home with me.

I knew my husband was looking at porn, but I didn't know he was an addict.
HE didn't know.
If I didn't know he had an addition, how on earth could I have known I had an addiction to HIS addiction?

I hit my rock bottom big time.
But the great thing about rock bottom?  It's bouncy.  ROCK sounds so hard, and it is hard.  But it surprised me.  After I smacked it, I started to feel myself slowly rising.
Slowly.
Slowly.
Slowly.

And on the way back up, I found treasures all around... it's funny: I didn't see the treasures as I was falling.  They MUST have been there.
I grab one, then another.

I look at my kitchen counter and finally SEE what a mess it is.  I throw myself into it.  I replace stacks of paper with a wire basket.  I place my vintage cookbooks in a neat line in the basket.
I put homemade cake plates next to them.

After that, the counter stays cleanable.
Then I do something I've never done before: I create a routine. 
I clean all day Monday: sheet-washing, floor scrubbing, shelf dusting...
I cook all day Tuesday: freezing, rising yeast, crock potting...
I do laundry all day Wednesday: wringing, folding, movie-watching (my favorite!)...
I shop every other Thursday, and set this day aside as the day to focus on church callings...
I take Friday "off".
I spend the weekend with my family.

It was a glorious routine, and it proved something empowering to me: I was okay.  I was living.  I could keep a house in somewhat working order!  I wasn't a bad mom after all!  I just an actively addicted mom.

Pregnancy threw things for a loop, but I clung to the fact of my routine: I couldn't work my routine while pregnant, but I would be able to someday.

This Friday, I was stressed. 
Without realizing what I was doing, I'd let some boundaries slip.
I didn't know how to handle it or what to do... and I found myself in the laundry room, chucking every item of clothing OUT into the hallway.  I was sorting and scrubbing and washing.
And then my wonderful sponsor called.  She asked all the right questions, and in the middle of a filthy laundry room with a dirty blanket draped over my left shoulder, I had an "ah ha" moment.
The stress that had plagued me vanished, and I looked around me.
I was stress cleaning.
I!  was STRESS cleaning!

It was glorious!  What's more: I was cleaning clothing that FIT my children.  They were properly, warmly dressed (or would be, if their clothes had been clean, which they are now).

The weekend continued suit.  I embraced my empty womb and cleaned hard-to-reach places with ammonia.  I raked leaves, moved a rotted out horse trough (it's going to make an amazing planter box, just you wait and see).  I helped my husband paint.  I crafted something for the now-clean laundry room.

And today.  MONDAY.
I've been cleaning all morning, and I can tell before the day's out that the house will be clean.
Before I started cleaning, I logged online and bought Easter Dresses for my girls.  I usually don't think enough in advance to buy my daughter an Easter dress (and I end up at my sewing machine whipping something up from my imagination and fabric scraps that fits snuggly for one whole day).

And you know what?  I've been confessed to -told of slips.  And I'm okay.  I don't hurt.
I can say that honestly: I don't hurt.
Maybe I will hurt later.  Maybe the next time he confesses, I'll take my place on the couch with a bowl of cookie dough and a roll of toilet paper and I'll cry... and that's okay.  But for now: I'll take NOT hurting.  I'll take it and run with it.
I'll clean with it.
I'll bake with it.
I'll fold laundry and shop with it.

I'm not 18 anymore.
But I'M back.

Man: noun

  

via etsy.com

I've been thinking a lot about what it means to be a man.

I'm not a man, nor am I currently undergoing gender confusion.  I'm just working to define what it means to be a man.
I don't know WHY exactly.  Sometimes I think the Lord leads us on journeys we don't understand the purpose of.  He uses the Spirit to point things out, we use our hearts to listen... and in the end we use what we've learned for good.
For some reason, right now the Lord wants me to know about men.

Maybe it's because I have a son and I'm missing the mark with him.
I don't know.
And frankly, I don't care much WHY I'm learning about men.  The journey has been rewarding and enriching.
I recently read an article on wikipedia about Gene Kelly.  I found a quote near the end that has stuck with me ever since.  It has helped to change my definition of manhood.

"Unfortunately people confuse gracefulness with softness. John Wayne is a graceful man and so are some of the great ball players...but, of course, they don't run the risk of being called sissies." ~Gene Kelly

When my husband and I were first married, we got some free passes to the local movie theater.  We used them to watch "The Notebook."  We were both in a really silly mood -we were more interested in poking and tickling the other than we were about what was going on during the movie.
We laughed at the cheesiness of it all, and after it was over we both agreed that it was a terrible movie.  Women the nation over were obsessed with the movie, and I never understood it.  I avoided anything Nicholas Sparksy for years.

A few months ago, a friend of mine loaned me a movie.  It was a movie based on a Nicholas Sparks novel.  I decided to watch it.  Maybe I was being stupid and too quick to judge Nicky Sparks.  I decided to give him another chance.  So I watched, "The Lucky One."

via innocentdaydreamer.wordpress.com

aaaand I hated it.

I hate movies like that!  I hate Twilight!  Want to know why?  Porn is why!  Women watch those movies!  They watch the movies where the "man" is a VAMPIRE (for heck's sake) who glitters and understands and says all the right things!  They romanticize the idea of a man in a woman's room watching her sleep (hello, scary) and "The Lucky One" only validated me.
It's about a soldier who has done three tours in Iraq.  He comes home with PTSD (understandably) and a picture of a woman he found on the ground.  He carried her picture everywhere and was never hurt (except for the PTSD, which apparently doesn't count?) so when he comes home, he goes in search of her.
He finds her.
He works for her.  His PTSD is suddenly gone (still confused about that).
He beats up a bad guy.
and he helps her son play his violin.  He plays the piano.  He GETS her and understands her and does everything right.

Okay.
I know a few men who have been to Iraq three times.  They aren't sensitive men.  They're good men.  They're everything soldiers should be.
They are also imperfect.  They're rough and they don't always say the right thing at the right time.
None of them play the piano, but whatever.  That's beside the point...

My point is just this: so many women are watching these movies and then going home and smacking their husbands on the shoulder and saying, "Well why don't YOU ___________?" (fill in the blank with things like "play the piano and beat up bad guys without completely losing your temper OR cool?")

I'm not okay with it.  I'm not okay with it because I've put myself through the other end of it.
I've known that my husband looked at porn and wondered WHY I don't I _________?
Why don't I look like that?
Why don't I move like that?
Why don't I attract like that?
Ultimately: why don't I fulfill expectations like that?

It hurts to feel like less than enough.  I don't like to think anyone out there is going through it.

Maybe the Lord wants me to study up on Manhood because He knows that a true man is, in very fact, exactly like Edward Cullen.  Maybe I'm so set in my own ideas of Manhood that I'm refusing to open the door and believe that men can be baby-hungry chiseled cops/cowboys/firefighters who have a complete understanding of the working of the female brain.

All I know is that I recently read a blog post about "The Notebook" and it took me off guard.
What?  Someone whose opinion I trust actually watched it and liked it because it helped him (yes, HIM) see what he believed a man ought to be.
There it was again!  MAN.  What a man should be!
My curiosity was peaked, and I decided I was going to watch the movie I'd sworn off.  I kept teasing my husband about it, and it became an inside joke.
"Honey," he'd say, "Want to kill some zombies with me?" (the gaming kind, not the actual kind... just fyi)
"Sure!" I'd say, "And then we can watch The Notebook."
"Nevermind..."

Well he bought it for me for Valentine's Day because he knew it would make me laugh.
We watched it together for the second time in our marriage.

And my opinion changed.  I mean it REALLY changed.  Nicholas Sparks is redeemed (a little).
Because the main man in the movie actually really IS a man.  He's confident and flawed.  He loses his temper, and he works with his hands.  He develops his God-given talents and uses them.  He dreams.  He works to fulfill dreams.  He reads.
He falls in love.
He fights for love.  He fights with his love.  He tells her the truth.  He knows HER and he encourages her to dream, to develop her talents, to seek for happiness...
They fight together.  They love together.  They laugh together.

  

via fanpop.com

Noah, to me, is a good man and he's good at being a man.

A few days ago, I watched a John Wayne movie I hadn't seen.
Hondo.
That movie made me swoon so hard I nearly toppled over.  THAT hardly ever happens.  I'm not big on swooning.

Hondo, to me, is a good man and he's good at being a man.

And so my search continues.
I walk my days with the lines of Rudyard Kipling bouncing around in my head.

If

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too:
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream---and not make dreams your master;
If you can think---and not make thoughts your aim,
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same:.
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build'em up with worn-out tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings,
And never breathe a word about your loss:
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings---nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much:
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And---which is more---you'll be a Man, my son!

Rudyard Kipling

Great Full

  

via artfire.com

As in, Full of Great.

Step 2 tells us we can reach a state of gratitude in the which we can be grateful for trials IN THE MIDST of enduring them.
Can't that be optional?  I mean, life throws us all curves, jumps, bumps, scrapes, scorns... and they really suck.  Being grateful for sucky things is just, well, not expected of anyone anymore.
We embrace suckiness, and there's a million or so facebook status updates out there to prove it.

This trial doesn't make me want to be great-anything except maybe MAYBE world's greatest consumer of chocolate.

I find myself saying, "great."
But "full" never follows it -and joy never accompanies it (I just gained ten stress n' chocolate pounds.  grrrrrreeeeat).

There are days when I'm greatly tired, greatly discouraged.

Today, for example, I'm greatly confused and wish my husband came with a great manual.  For that matter, I wish each of my kids did as well. Wouldn't it be so handy to have a diagnostic receipt print out their bottoms when Mom is greatly lost?  We live in the Age of Information, for greatness sake.  Why aren't answers printing from butts?

I digress.

Two years ago, I did the best I could.  Some days the BEST I could do was simply stay married that day.  I was not grateful for porn.  I was not grateful for addiction.  I was not grateful for anything.  I hated the bed I curled up in because I could FEEL it telling me I needed it because of porn.
I hated the sweats I wore because PORN made me wear them.
I couldn't even be grateful for food.  Even food was porn-tainted.  I ate it to cope and porn made me need to cope.  It was all porn.  Porn food.

If someone had come into my bedroom, took my carton of ice cream away and told me to be grateful, I might have gone slightly ballistic.

Today hasn't been awesome.
It hasn't.
But I have jeans on and I'm wearing mascara, so that's something... and this evening I turned to my Step 2 in the Healing Through Christ manual and read the words
"We choose to be thankful for everything in our lives;
for what we have and who we are. It can be a life
changing experience when we sincerely express
gratitude to our Father in Heaven in prayer for the
trials we are currently experiencing. We express our
appreciation for His wisdom in allowing us to learn
from our own experience. We trust that He will guide
us through our trials, and that He will help us learn
the lessons that will allow our challenges to bless our
lives."

In the past, I've wallowed.  I believe that in my own life, a certain amount of honest wallowing is vital.
My wallowing is usually followed by a "fake it 'till you feel it" phase in the which I break the habit of negativity often created during the wallowing phase (note: I can skip faking 'till feeling if I have tamed my wallowing to the point of not allowing habitual negativity to form).
Faking 'till feeling is often followed by gratitude, but never gratitude for trials -only gratitude for other things that bring me joy: sunsets, John Wayne, F. Scott Fitzgerald, electricity...

By then my head is usually cleared of enough wallowing to be able to finally realize how grateful I am for the trial I had been given.
Never ONCE have I been grateful for a trial in the midst of it.
Never.
100% of the time, I am grateful for the trial after it is over.

Today I was given the gift of a trial.  Today I read the words written above.  Today is my chance to express gratitude for a trial while I'm still grappling with it, but I only want to do it if I can do it honestly.
I don't want to fake it 'til I feel it with my Father in Heaven.
I want to come to Him and honestly be able to say that I appreciate the trials in front of me because even though they are hard and confusing and make me involuntarily consume mass amounts of comfort food... they have a divine purpose behind them.  They have a point.
What doesn't kill you... and all that.

It's time for a gratitude experiment... and may we all meet together come November in a Cyber Thanksgiving Feast and express -honestly -what we are grateful for.
We will be among friends when we say, in unison, "I'm grateful for pornography addiction."
We'll know what we mean by it... right?  No one's judging.
And just so you know, I make a mean Butternut Squash Bake.

And you know what?  I'm thankful for that recipe.  So to start off my forming a new habit of expressing gratitude in written form:
#1) My recipe book that stuffed to the brim with old family recipes and new recipes that I dug up with a huge hand from Google.
#2) John Wayne movies that make me swoony, even when they weren't made to.
#3) Baby sneezes.
#4) Chalkboard paint.
#5) Honesty.

Empathy Now!

  

via

I grew up with three older brothers which is to say: I spent my entire childhood playing the part of Victim.  I always screamed louder than I needed to in order to attract the attention of my parents, and I always made sure my theatrical retelling of events was embellished with words like:
VERY!
so so SO!
SUPER!
REALLY!

Nothing was ever bad.  It was only ever SUPER bad.  REALLY bad.  HORRIBLY bad! 
No pain was ever uncomfortable... it was only ever UNBEARABLE.
Mild irritations were actually volatile explosions of crap and bad hair days were so far beyond inconvenient... they were debilitating.
F'serious.

A few months ago, I realized I've been using this developed character trait to force my husband to have empathy for me.  His lack of empathy was something I was going to train out of him.  I knew I could convince him to feel empathy for me.
"How was your day?" He would ask.
"The WORST thing happened... I went to Wal-Mart and your daughter SCREAMED like a banshee the ENTIRE time and I'm SO EXHAUSTED that I can HARDLY function.  I'm seriously SO tired right now."
Groan, moan... sigh.

Surely with a speech like that, the empathy would come.  Right?  I mean, how could it NOT?

Well.
Addiction trumps acting.  I think my acting skills are fairly fabulous *insert exaggerated bow*  but addiction trumps them.
How many times did I put myself through the Empathy NOW cycle?  Countless.  Something would upset me.  I'd share my upset with my husband in such a way as to really DRIVE my point home about just how upset I was... he never seemed to understand, so I had to be really articulate about the whole thing... and then?  Inevitably, I'd hunker down in Victim Land.
He NEVER really understood.  It wasn't FAIR.

When I was pregnant this time around, I decided to try something new.  I decided to take my upsets to my Father in Heaven first.  I could lay it all on the line with Heavenly Father.  I could tell him every. little. thing.
He knows about the broken dish, the laundry (stupid stuff keeps coming undone.  SUPER rude), the pain in my knee, the pain in my back, the endless streams of pregnant emotions that overtook me at any and almost all given moments :)

And when I quit talking to him, when I quit laying it all on him, I would just sit quietly on my knees with my eyes closed and FEEL.
I could FEEL empathy.  It was wonderful, pure, loving, and FAIR!

Now I'm working on catching myself when I'm inserting unnecessary adjectives while talking things over with my husband.
The thing is: I can't manipulate him into feeling empathy.  I can't force him to hurt like I do, feel what I feel, KNOW EXACTLY what I'm going through.  I can't.  And that's what I was trying to do.

I didn't realize I was being dishonest in my own way, and I wasn't being malicious.
When the word "manipulation" is used, it conjurs up mental images of soap-opera villians rubbing manicured nails together and raising one single, solitary eyebrow... but it wasn't like that for me (I can't raise just one eyebrow anyway).  It was just me.  being a confused girl.  not knowing how to train a husband the way I wanted to.

It's really interesting trying to catch myself in the habitual act of exaggeration.
When my husband asks how my day was, I now have to focus on what I'm saying, making sure I give him the honest truth and not blown up story embellished for the purpose of forcing empathy out of the man.

It's getting easier.
As time goes by, it is getting easier.

I've discovered an untapped mine of Empathy in my Father in Heaven.  It's mine for the taking.  It's free.
It's saving and grace and wonderful and love all rolled into one beautiful experience waiting for me to tap into it.
Heavenly Father is so loving.  Jesus is so loving.

I am so lucky.

But Not For Me

  

via saturdayeveningpost.com

I recently confessed to my older brother that I procrastinate on purpose because my best work comes from last minute hustle.  This principle doesn't apply like a Blanket to my entire life... just certain aspects of it.
In high school, I wrote research papers the day before they were due. I would study and research and mentally prep and then WRITE my buns off.
And I always got full marks.
I had a really patient English teacher who would let me turn in crappy outlines and note cards because she knew I always wrote my paper last minute the day before and THEN wrote the outlines and note cards based on the paper -not the other way around.

I was a member of our High School's Academic Decathlon.  We were such a small school that our team was by far the smallest in the region and none of us took it seriously (to our discredit).  In Academic Decathlon, we're required to give prepared speeches in competitions.
I never once prepared a speech.
Ever.
I did, however, walk in and GIVE speeches.  I took home a 3rd place Speech medal once and felt pretty awful about it.  There was about 300 other kids that had actually PREPARED and PRACTICED a speech, and I was careless and silly about the whole thing.  I didn't deserve that medal.

Confessing to my brother felt good. 
"I once forgot about a science project," my brother told me after I confessed to him, "I put something together the night before and got the highest grade in the class."
We bonded that day.  We shared a moment, and he went on to confess that he's been "blessed" with procrastination as well, and he had fairly fat package of supporting examples.
"What do we do?" I asked, "Fight it?  FORCE ourselves to believe that procrastination is BAD?"
And we finally came to an agreements.
The phrase "When we fail to plan, we plan to fail," is great.  It's great.  But it's not for me -not always.  Even today, some of my best Sharing Times come to me Sunday morning (which is SUPER convenient with three little kiddos to feed and bathe and dress for church).  Sometimes I will plan.  And last minute: something better comes to my mind and I toss my plans out and go with my last-minute ideas.

Living with addiction (both my own and my husband's) has taught me that there's SO many great tools and resources and books out there... but they're not all for me.  Not right now.  Not with the dynamic I'm living with.

But I didn't know that 8 years ago!  I didn't!
I thought the sex books WERE for me!  Surely, if I got sex "right" porn would cease to be a part of our relationship!
I thought Dr. Laura WAS for me!  Surely, her advice about taking perfect care of my adoration-starved dragon slayer would "help"!
I thought more sex!  better sex!  sex!  sex!  sex!  and DATES!  dates with sex!  Fun, creative, dates that ended with sex!
I thought dating blogs were for me!
Dating advice!  Spice up your marriage blogs!

I've taken a leap back.  I big leap.  A Texas-sized leap.
Those resources are great.  Those are great for other people.

But a woman who has become addicted to her husband's porn addiction?  Is MORE SEX really the answer to her broken brain?  Not for me.

I'm finding this applies to me in so many ways.  I need to be able keep my mind open and aware -I need to be able to feel my gut speak to me, so when I come across a lesson, a tool, a resource I will be able to FEEL and KNOW if it's for me.
The Lord will let me know.  I just have to ask and listen and follow.

Years ago, I was invited to a Girl's Night Out.  Based on the invitation, it looked like a consultant in a multi-level company was going to be there... selling sex stuff.  The invite didn't go into details, but it left a website.
I thought maybe I'd go!  I got the invite from an LDS woman I knew -a good Christian woman.  Surely the party would be tasteful and it would give me the opportunity to improve my sex life.  I was ALL for that because it meant I'd be able to fully indulge in my addiction: helping my husband overcome his sexual addiction through more sex with me!
I logged on the website just to make sure I wasn't getting into anything too grody.
And I'm glad I did.  The minute the main page flashed on my screen, my gut screamed at me.
"NO.  Get outta here."
So I did.  I felt weird declining the invite.  I followed my gut, but my head was standing by going, "Why aren't you going?  It will help everything in your marriage get better!  LDS people just don't have enough sex.  It's nothing we have to be ashamed of.  It's normal.  Other LDS people will be there improving their marriages..."

Oh, the lies.

Those parties are not for me.
Sex has been scrambled in my brain.  I don't understand it.
I over think it.  I don't want it.  I do want it.  I'm nervous.  I'm anxious.  My belly has jelly.  Are my legs shaved?  What's he thinking?  Am I a fix?  Is there a new episode of Hart of Dixie on tonight?  If I was paralyzed and couldn't have sex would he love me?  Would he stay?  Did I remember to buy "Hold on Little Tomato" on iTunes?  I need to have sex with my husband.  This is necessary.  He's worked hard today.  He deserves sex.  I need to perform.  I love him and this is how he understands love.  But can sex addicts HAVE sex as a need?  That doesn't make sense.  Does it make sense?  Is it my job to separate his addiction from our bedroom?  He does.  I can't.  I won't.  My gut tells me I shouldn't have to separate.  I won't.  I can do this.  If I feel safe, I will.  If I don't, I won't.
Stop thinking.
Stop THINKING.
What time is it?

And THAT, people, is the effects of medicating codependecy with sexudcation.

Sexudcation is for healthy couples.  It is not for me.

Prayer is for me.  Turning things over to the Lord is for me.
Honest sex -sex that doesn't violate my gut -that is for me.
Books on Abraham Lincoln, books of Robert Frost poetry, my Healing Through Christ manual, my scriptures... THOSE books are for me.
The simplicity of the gospel is for me: faith, love, the Atonement -THOSE are for me.
And uplifting music?  That's for me too.

I'll get through this sex tornado in my brain.  I will.  Okay, I won't.  But I'll hand it to the Lord and he'll get rid of it.  I don't know how to hand it over.  Not yet.
I'm working on knowing how.
I just have to hold on.

(Don't you dare fast forward through that awesome-sauce clarinet solo...)

Thinkin' of You Today

Contemporary Palsy

In Step 2 of the Healing Through Christ Manual, we read:

His hallowed hands allowed the
blind man to see, blessed the lame to walk, and gave
life once again to those who had died. These same
powerful hands will restore our sight, and allow us to
walk free from the paralyzing effect of despair and
hopelessness. His loving grace will resurrect our
hope, restore our spiritual and emotional health and
heal our wounds.

I felt prompted to read the scripture passage in Mark 2: 1-12 in which Christ heals a paralyzed man. 

I have felt so paralyzed in the past.  My spiritual progression was paralyzed when I was working to save my husband (which is impossible) instead of focusing on my own progression. 
Despair and hopelessness were a part of my daily life, and they were paralyzing -they ARE paralyzing.

Four men carried the paralytic to the Savior.  Despite the man's inability to move himself, I'm sure he had to consent to be moved... to WANT to be carried to the Savior... he just didn't know how to get himself there.
I feel much the same way.  In the midst of my paralytic state, I knew I wanted to be moved -to make the journey to the Savior, but I didn't know how... not really. 
A group of strong women carried me.  I know some of these women personally -others brought me to the Savior through their written words.  I've never met some of them personally though I feel as if I know them.
The journey to the Savior required perseverance.  The four men that carried the paralytic weren't deterred by a crowd -they raised the roof!
The paralytic had faith that he would be healed.
What was that like?  He entered a crowd in his paralyzed state which must have been difficult.  He put himself out in a gigantic crowd at his worst -all in the name of faith. 
What must the crowd thought when they saw him?  They must have stared. 

How many times have I let my fear of the crowd dictate my willingness to come to the Savior? 
How many times have I feared the crowd -what they might think of me -more than the Savior?

There's a paralytic in me, and the 12-step program has taught me how to overcome the fears that are keeping me from the Savior.
I've feared what others might think as I'm healing... my house, my kids, my diet... everything seemed to fall apart while I was paralyzed and hurting.  I didn't want anyone to see me at my worst, and that included my Savior.  I wanted Him to be proud of me.  I wanted Him to be able to trust me.  How could He trust me if I couldn't take care of myself?

I couldn't exist like that -I couldn't exist like that and remain sane.  I hit rock bottom and turned to any healing source I might have: recovery books, recovery blogs, recovery groups, recovery manuals.
And I became willing to be taken to the Savior to receive his healing.

It's a circling journey, one that I ought to take daily (if not more).

"The ultimate and only true and living change agent is the Savior.  He is the source of all change.  He changed water into wine -bringing the very best liquid refreshment to the celebration.  As you turn to him, he will bring the very best out of you.  He will indeed rescue all that is finest down deep inside of you.  And what a celebration that will be!
Ask for his help.  Asking for the Savior's help is another way to come closer unto him...
He changed limbs that were weak.  And he can change your mobility and direction to help you move to the next level of your life and help you in your efforts to shore up the feeble knees that are around you.  Ask for his help."
~Wendy L. Watson

It's Real Love

 

My husband has never made a habit of lying to me.

In fact, when I uncovered a lie about porn for the first time, we had already been working to fight porn for a few years.  But then awhile later, I discovered another lie.
And then another.

And that's when I pretty much lost my sanity.  I can handle the fact that he looks at porn more than I can handle being lied to.  The lies scared me more.  The lies hurt more.

So when my husband tells me that he keeps our intimate life and his addiction completely separate, I believe him.  He hasn't lied to me in over 2 years.  About anything.

The problem I'm facing now is that I DON'T keep our intimate life and his addiction separate.  I don't know how to.  I'm running into all kinds of problems where this is concerned, and I'm working through them as best I know how.

*It weirds me out to pray about my sex life.  It truly does.  But practice makes it easier.*

In Step 2 of the Healing Through Christ workbook, we are asked to list our fears.  If we write them out and face them, we can begin to heal from them.
I had to face my fears, and I needed to confess them to my confused husband.

"I'm believe if I put on weight, you won't love me." I said, and he quietly listened.
"I'm believe that you love me for WHAT I am (someone you can get your "fix" from) and not WHO I am." I said, and he quietly listened.
After I had finished, he told me how my "beliefs" (they are really fears) are off the mark.  And I know he's not lying. 

But how do I retrain my brain?

I want to know that he loves ME me, the person inside my body.
He told me he'd try harder to show it.
I told him I'd appreciate that, but ultimately this was something I needed to handle.  My husband can't fix my brain, only Heavenly Father can do that.

But my husband would like to help.  I can tell.  I can see that he wants me to know he loves me.

In the past, I've viewed his expressions of love as investments... for later... for the bedroom, and they didn't feel genuine to me.  With his promise to try harder to show more love, I felt a sort of defeat -not in him, but in me.
Surely no matter WHAT he did, I would still feel he was investing in a romp.
So I took it to the Lord... I prayed about sex.  I prayed about love.  I prayed to be able to recognize truth in my husband's behavior -to distinguish investments from simple declarations of love.

Last week, I took my kids up to my parent's house to borrow a movie ("A More Perfect Union" -the BYU movie about the Constitution.  I love that movie).  I was going to bring it home to watch it with my husband and kids for Family Home Evening, but my Dad mentioned he would like to watch it.
I called my husband to see if he'd like to drive up to my folks' to watch it with us. He declined. He was in the middle of a paper-filing project and didn't want to quit.  He'd also had a particularly rough day at work and didn't feel like socializing, even on a small scale.
It was fine by me. 
Sometimes time alone is what we all need after a bad day.

Late that night, I came back home.  He was sitting on the living room floor surrounded by stacks of paper and a filing bin.  He showed me where he had filed various paper, and then pointed out a file in the front of the filing bin.
"That," he said, "Is your writing stuff.  I just couldn't throw some of them out."
"My writing stuff?" I asked.  Earlier that evening, I had told him if he found any of my old papers from college to just throw them out.  It turns out I'd saved almost every homework assignment from my courses.
"Some of the stuff you've written is too good to throw out," he said.

I've been writing since I was in sixth grade -it's how I express myself and what brings me happiness.  My husband loves it about me.  He believes in my ability to write, and he's constantly encouraging me.

It meant a lot to me.
The next day, he brought home a bouquet of daisies. 
Early in our marriage, I'd written a story about how I fought a wolf spider in our studio apartment.  I was terrified of the huge wolf spiders that lived in that place.  They were monsters.  In my story, I turned our tiny kitchen into an Old West shoot-out scene, and it ended by my husband coming home and killing the spider for me.  My husband has always loved the story.  He once printed it off and read it to his parents on a long drive to Disneyland.
And he found it again the other night while he was filing.
So he saved it, bought pretty parchment paper to print it on, added a banner to the top and a loving message to the bottom and gave it to me.
I was a little dazed... it was as if the part of my brain that was programmed to believe that my husband loves me for sex and sex alone was baffled.
I found myself asking myself, "He does love ME me?"  The geeky writer me?  The geeky writer me who doesn't do anything with her writing except blog and write goofy cowboy poetry?

Yes, he does.

Sunday night, after Andrew's AMAZING fireside, I was packing up my baby and putting my coat on.  It was snowing outside, my outfit was very plain, my make-up was faded... and as I pulled my coat over my head, my long hair caught on one of my buttons.
I couldn't get my coat on over my head, I couldn't untangle the button... and I looked at him for help.
He laughed at me and said, "You're still pretty."
I finally yanked my hair loose, and he laughed as he reached up and put my hair back in order (because it was a mess).
"You know..." he said, as we got in our car and pulled onto the road, "You were the most beautiful woman in the room tonight."
The WAY he said it -there was something different about it.  He wasn't investing.  He wasn't flattering.
He was just stating a fact.

I couldn't believe it.  But I DID believe that he meant it -he truly believed it himself.

He loves ME me because if he were basing his attraction on my physical appearance alone, he would never had said that.

I didn't think my husband would be able to help retrain my brain.  But it turns out... he can.  He can't do it on his own and it's not his sole responsibility to help me see that he loves ME me, but I'm seeing small miracles and tender mercies abounding.

I want to write them down so I won't forget, so I can return to them when I start to forget.
It IS possible that I am lovable, that I can love properly and be loved properly.

And if praying about sex and sexual things is what helps to being this realization around, I CAN do it.

The Baggage Company

I spent so many years looking down.

I looked down on addicts. 
I looked down on recovery books.
I looked down on groups, therapy, even the language of recovery.

How many times did I crack the cover of recovery books only to slam them shut because they didn't agree with my logic?
Oh, my broken logic.

Surely those methods were for OTHER people that actually had problems... that were ACTUALLY screwed up.
I was okay.  Prayer would do it for me.  Prayer, scriptures, and a trusty journal.

Because I was special and strong.
I was a strong case of special.

Yes, I was STRONG.  I didn't need anyone.  well.  except for my husband...
I needed him at night.  I needed him when he was gone for work trainings.  I needed him to tell me if my outfit was okay.  If the food I made was acceptable.  If I should go to the store or not.  If I should buy Girls Scout Cookies.  If I should start walking in the morning. 
Am I okay?
Are we okay?
Is our future okay?
Am I making you happy?
Are you happy? 
Are you comfortable?
Babe?  Babe?  Babe?

He didn't ask for me to need him.  I simply reasoned with my broken logic that if he was okay with everything I did, WE would be okay.  He wouldn't need to look at porn because I would make him happy.
My food, my outfits, my activities, my sexual offerings: they would all be his favorites.
And then.  The porn would be squelched.

I was STRONG enough to squelch porn with one simple solution: self-sacrifice.

I placed myself on the Altar of Porn, and my Father in Heaven waited patiently for me to rise up, remove myself, and start my journey to another altar.
He patiently stood by while I took two steps away from the Porn Altar, ran back, took two steps away, ran back...
"They will be done," I said in my prayers... silently attaching "later" to my prayer.  But He heard.  He always does.
He held me anyway.  He never gave up on his sheep.
The more distance I put between myself and the altar, the more sense the recovery books made.
About ten months later, I took my shaking self to a PASG meeting.
I literally SHOOK.
I knew by then... I wasn't strong enough to squelch anything.
Strength has nothing to do with it.

Strength is THERE, but it is only found in submission, giving up.
I read a few days ago in the forum someone laying the first three steps out in this manner:
1) I can't.
2) God can.
3) I will let Him.

And I quit asking my husband if my food was okay.  I quit asking him if my outfits were okay (though occasionally I have to check because I have an inability to match, and my husband is great at it -his Mother raised him right.  I mean: his shoes always match his belt.  I didn't even know that was a thing...)

I started directing my questions inward.
"AM I okay?"
"Is this food good?"
"Are you comfortable?"
"Are you learning?"
"Alicia? Alicia?  Alicia?"

For years, my husband was more my father than my husband.
It's slow going, but our marriage is balancing out.
It's a huge adjustment.  HUGE.

But no longer is he the ox at the helm of My Baggage Wagon.
And no longer am I the ox of HIS Baggage Wagon.

We're both riding' the trail, Wagons side-by-side.  We're sitting pretty on the hard wooden seats of our OWN wagons, and the Lord is at the helm of each of them.
I don't always feel good about it.  I mean: it IS my baggage.  I should be the one to manage it -not dump my STUFF on someone else, right?
I can't.  I can't do it.  I can't handle my own stuff.
And why should I, when someone else has already handled it?  I just have to hand Him the reins, hop off my seat and chase my kids around the wagon.

Someday we hope to hitch our wagons together, push the baggage out onto the dusty trail and leave it behind.

And we're not special.  There's eleven or a million other wagons with us.

We call ourselves The Baggage Company.

  

via user.xmission.com

Our leader is FEARLESS.  Our members are pioneers.
We laugh, we cry, and we don't pretend to have it all together.

We move on with hope, and there IS strength.
We are strong enough because our leader is strong enough.

I have my Girl Scout Cookies, and I don't look down anymore.
Hope holds my head high.

Unseen Walls

When I became pregnant with my first-born, I heard so many mothers express their excitement.
"The minute they're placed into your arms, you'll feel so much love... it just overwhelms you," they said.

I'd heard my own Mom talk about the love that comes with the birth of a child, and I was anxiously awaiting my turn to feel the Mother Love.  And after laboring for 18 hours under insurmountable drugs and pushing for almost an hour to get my posterior-positioned baby out... I didn't feel much of anything except RELIEF and TIREDNESS.
I didn't want to hold my baby so much as I wanted sleep. The drugs made it impossible to fight off sleep, so I drifted off -no baby in my arms.

The minutes, days, weeks, and months that followed were full of gross amounts of anxiety, virtually no sleep, and a cute-but-colicky baby.
When our baby was three days old, my husband left for the police academy, and I spent the next four months at home with our very fussy baby.
My husband was in the thick of his addiction.  I was in the thick of my addiction TO his addiction.  The distance (and the fact that he was in a dorm room) only increased my addiction.
I was also in the thick of new mommy.
I spent my day getting screamed at.
My husband spent his getting screamed at by academy instructors with a background in military boot camp training.
At the end of each day, we'd connect on our cell phones, and our conversations were pretty pathetic.
Because I'd lost my bubbliness and can-do attitude, my husband began to worry about me and the way I was handling our new one.
"I'm just worried that you don't love her," he once said.
He shouldn't have said that.  I think he realized it a few minutes after I turned into a Lioness.
But anyway. 
I DID love my daughter, despite her talent for screaming for -I kid you not -7 hours straight.
About 22 months later, I found myself in labor again... this time there was no drugs.  Labor was 2 hours instead of 18, and I pushed twice... instead of for nearly an hour.
This time -I thought -THIS TIME I will feel the Mother Love -the washing over, the overwhelming, unable to put into words MOTHER LOVE.
Instead I felt shock (he was a month early).
But I DID love my son.

Behind the mothering scenes, I was busy.  I was actively policing my husband, checking his phone, knocking on the bathroom door, checking browser histories, asking, snooping, prying, accusing...
I had an addiction.

There were no children for a few years.  During those years, I hit rock bottom and detached from my husband's addiction.  I started the road to recovery.
I quit trying to "help."  I quit policing. 
I went through a period of half a year where I cried, erupted at any given moment.  Sometimes I couldn't get out of bed.  Sometimes I couldn't fold laundry.  Sometimes all I could do was eat cookie dough and bless the person who invented the idea of instant movie and television streaming because my kids were getting bored of watching their movies over and over and over...

One year later, my husband told me he felt it was time to have another one.  I disagreed.
After a lot of praying, talking, praying, talking... we decided to try.  I wasn't ready, Heavenly Father knew it, and it took us almost a year to get pregnant for which I will forever be grateful.
I wasn't strong enough to stand my ground and follow my gut that was telling me, "Not now -not yet."
Those eight months gave me time to prepare -mentally, physically (I'd gained 10 pounds during The Cookie Dough Year), spiritually...

And I found myself in labor again.
It was three hours long, no drugs, two pushes (? maybe one?  maybe three?) and so. much. pain!  Again, I was trying to give birth to a baby in the posterior position... when I was handed my new baby girl, I was in so much pain I couldn't FEEL anything through it.
But after the pain meds kicked in... after I'd had a chance to eat something and take a restful power nap: I was moved into another (quieter) room.  My husband left with his mother for a while, and it was just My Mom, My Baby, and Me.
And THERE it was.
It washed over me, and I looked at the perfect and precious spirit in my arms and I was completely overwhelmed.
I couldn't believe it.

The Mother Love has continued to wash over me -time and time again.  When I wake up in the morning and see her tired, squishy face... when we nap together, when she smiles, when I smell her...

My mom told me she could always feel our spirits -how they felt so much bigger than our little bodies.
"But you know what I mean," she said, referring to my own kids and mothering experience.
"No," I shook my head.  I'd never felt it.

But that day -12/12/12 in a sterilized hospital -I felt it.  My baby wasn't actually a baby.  I felt it -her spirit is bigger than any physical containment.
I felt a little guilty over the difference I'd felt with this one -was she my favorite?  Would I treat her like a princess and leave my other two kids in the dust?

But as the days and weeks have gone on, I've felt washed over not only with my new one... but with my other two as well.  I can feel their spirits like I never have before.

My addiction had put up walls of protection.  I'd felt like I was protecting myself when I was policing... if I stopped his addiction, I could stop the pain.  It made perfect sense... except.

I didn't realize that as I was trying to protect myself, I was building walls.  I build walls of protection so high -so thick... that I inadvertently kept out love.  I had lost the ability to properly love others, to properly love myself.

I'm knocking those walls down now.

And it's harrowing to see what I've missed out on.
But thank goodness -thank GOODNESS -the walls are coming down. 

Love is worth pounding down every wall in it's path... no matter how painful, no matter how much cookie dough and weight gain, no matter the cost:

Those little fingers are some of my biggest blessings.

Be Still My Heart

 

Credit: a site that posts real pin up pictures.  let's just leave it at that.

Dream Weaver

  

via askville.amazon.com

I'm finally "back."

My baby is almost 8 weeks old, and regular life is swirling around me.  I'm "back" to my calling.  I'm "back" to teaching piano lessons. 
And with everything going on, I've dropped the ball on a few things, most of them relating to my kiddos (she didn't NEED that cavity filled right away, right?).

I feel badly about it.

And the past three nights, I've dreamed about missing recovery meetings (that I facilitate), forgetting about ward counsel, being extremely late for church because I can't physically move as fast as I need to, missing doctor appointments... and last night I dreamed that I got the wrong date for the fireside Andrew is coming to put on and I missed it.

I wake up feeling defeated, like I haven't even put my toes on the ground and I've already messed up.  It's a super fun feeling.

Anyway, this morning I was so happy to wake up because if I'm going to drop the ball anywhere I DO NOT want it to be on Andrew's fireside.  It's going to be a little bit of a drive to get there, and I need to get a sitter for my older kids (my parents know about our situation, so I can ask them but it's never terribly comfy to bring up porn addiction with anyone that isn't, well, People Like You)... but it's definitely an event I refuse to drop the ball on.

Here's to one more day of adjusting "back" to real life... it's getting easier with each passing day.

Pre-Recovery:

Thank goodness for recovery.
Thank.
Goodness.

Love Lessons

 

via 
It's February.

Wal-Mart is bursting with pink and red and bins full of gigantic heart-toting teddy bears...

Valentine's Day is coming. 

I loved Valentine's Day when I was a little one.  I loved to give and see the pleasure my giving gave in the eyes of those I loved most.   But then I got a little older. A boy gave me a big envelope FULL of every kind of Toy Story valentine he owned.  I didn't know how to handle his BOLD gesture... we're talking SIX valentines from ONE boy.
That's the grade school equivalent of a marriage proposal, folks.
I handled it the best way I knew how... I HID the stuffed envelope and lied when he asked me if I'd received his valentine that year.
"Nope, never saw it."
"Really?"... the poor kid spent a good 30 minutes searching our 6th grade classroom for it while my cheeks flamed red with shame over my untruth.

High school raised Valentine awkwardness to an all-time high.  High school sort of has a way of raising EVERYTHING awkward to an all-time high.  But anyway...

By the time I made it to college, I was indifferent toward everything Valentine's... except for the cheap bags of conversation hearts.  Gosh, they're so good.

Once I met/married my husband, I had a total eclipse of the heart.  I was in LOVE with LOVE.  I made a shirt with puffy paint and wore it all over campus for my first Valentine's Day with my husband...

 "This item belongs to: [insert husband's name here]. 

 If found, please return to: his arms."

He waited outside marching band practice with a dozen red roses and made all the other piccolo players jealous.

It was Valentine's Day when his addiction first hit our marriage.  I'll never forget it.  It's another one of those ratty anniversaries that I try to forget but can't, no matter how much I want to.  After that, I became devoted to the study of what-I-thought-was love.  I read books on marriage and love and how to be a marital success.
I put into practice methods that I knew -I KNEW -would bring us closer, improve us!  I studied up on sex.  I scoured the Internet for dating ideas for married people. 
We would be the BEST EVER at being MARRIED and IN LOVE and porn, no matter how strong it was, would never break us.

But porn DID break us. 
It broke us physically apart.  I didn't want him to touch me.  I didn't want him near me.

Two months after his biggest disclosure and my rock bottom, I walked into Wal-Mart and I saw pink and red and teddy bears and I sneered a great sneer.
Love.
H.A.

I'd invested so much into Valentine's Day's version of love, and I was through -absolutely spitting-mad THROUGH.  My investments had given me a corral full of crap in return, and every good cowgirl knows when investments go bad, you check out.

I was able to find recovery in small steps, and recovery DID help me check out -not from my marriage, but from his addiction.  I appreciated that, but I still didn't bother with love.  I liked my husband well enough, but I wasn't about to Valentine's Day LOVE him.

And it was okay.  I knew it was okay because when I prayed about it, I felt love.  I felt my Father in Heaven telling me my feelings were okay, I was a good person, and He loved me very much.
There.  THERE was Someone a cowgirl could trust and put her faith in.
I went to Him in prayer more than I ever had before, and He led me and guided me through my emotions... and something unfurled... something very unexpected unfurled.

It was love.

It started in low, and it started to grow.
(can't resist throwing in Dr. Seuss whenever possible.)

It wasn't the love I knew before... it was different.  There was a sort of purity to it, and it was limitless.  I felt it toward my children, my mother, my father, my Bishop, my friends, the woman in line in front of me at Sam's Club, the crying baby at the end of the church hallway...
and yes.  I felt this unadulterated love for my husband.

It's Christ-like love.
I feel as if I've only tipped the infinite iceberg of Christ's love.  It's the most beautiful unseen element on earth. 
It's the point.
It's why we're here -to prove our ability to love.
It is the greatest commandment, yea the SUBJECT of the first four commandments.

And it is February.

I find myself a little more like the child I used to be -the one who understood Christ-like love better than I ever hope to again in this life.
I'm so looking forward to giving valentines to my parents, my grandparents, my kids, friends, neighbors... and my husband.

There is only one kind of love. 
There are not different versions. 

This is what He wants me to learn.
This is what He wants me to put into practice.

Love is what He feels for me.