The Great Equalizer

Eight years ago over Easter weekend, I sat in a chapel in a gigantic hospital, two hours from home.  It was the ONLY quiet corner of the hospital where I could go to think, to process what had just happened.

I had lost a pregnancy.
My only pregnancy.

I found myself suddenly part of a club... a club I didn't want to be in, but one that left me so grateful for the other members.  It seemed only they knew exactly what to say.  The professional help could only go so far.  Family only understood a little.  But my new club?  I still find comfort when I think of the sorrow in the eyes of women who knew.

They didn't try to comfort me so much as they tried to be real, honest, and empathetic.  Scratch that.  They didn't TRY.  They just WERE.  They were real, honest, and empathetic.
"You'll never forget the due date."
"You'll see kids the same age and wonder what if..."
"Just cry.  Don't stop.  Just cry and don't stop yourself."
"I am so sorry."

Their words meant more to me than any other words.

A few months ago, I attended the General Women's Meeting and made it clear until the third note of the opening song before I burst into tears.  
Simply being a woman puts me into a bigger-picture kind of a club.  President Eyring hit the nail on the head when he said, "You are more alike as daughters of God than you are different."
Yesterday I attended a baptism and sat next to a elderly widow.  She opened a locket around her neck and revealed it's precious contents to me: a picture of her most-loved and missed husband on one side, and a younger picture of her on the other.
"I vear it always," she said in her beautiful Dutch accent.
In that moment, I was her equal... a beautiful daughter of God who has known love, who has cherished it, and who was traversing this angry and wonderful world AND MOVING FORWARD.

Being a wife of a porn addict has put me -yet again -in a club.  The kind I never, ever wanted to be in... but the kind that makes me so grateful for the other members.
This is the kind of club where all sense of popularity goes wildly out the window, and we all meet together in soul and SEE and KNOW and LOVE.
It doesn't matter how we got here, how old we are, what language we speak.
There's no "who's who" of porn addiction.

I recently read an article that detailed Tori Spelling's recent marital chaos. 
"No amount of sex was enough," she says.
Ah, welcome to the club.  Celeb status can not separate us, Tori.  I know your pain.

As I've dwelt on This Club, I felt such a pull, such an urge to simply say

REACH OUT.  Please.  If you find yourself in This Club, REACH OUT.  We are the same.  I understand your pain, I understand your world.  I know what THIS feels like, and you
YOU

My sweet sister,
Are not, nor will you ever be

Alone.

We are the same.
Equal as daughters, equal as wives (or partners) of addicts.
As equal in the eyes of God as we are equal in pain.
Share it, declare it.

I'm here.  A entire circle of women are.  This club is filled with women who have "...tender, caring hearts, backbones of steel and hands that are prepared for the fight." ~Stasi Eldredge 

It's such a privilege to know the women I do, to share in their reality and to see them rise up from their darkest hours... an unbreakable, immortal hydra: roaring, unconquerable, bursting with courage and confidence and absolute determination.