What's Not in the Holiday Letter

Image credit: Photo by egorsechin on Flickr Licensed under Creative Commons

I got together this week with a dear old friend of mine and caught up for the first time in a long time. She's been busy with work and family crises. I've been busy with the perpetual too much that I always heap on my plate. But she got our annual holiday card and letter a while back and made the New Year's resolution to get back in touch, which was one more resolution than I made. And she even kept hers. Impressive!

Knowing she'd read the annual update, I figured there really wasn't much she wasn't aware of, but as we talked, I kept coming up with this one more thing and that other one more thing to tell her that hadn't been in the letter. (Actually, I haven't — for reasons of privacy and anonymity — blogged about them either. Now, you may well wonder what a woman who blogs about sex addiction has to keep private, but believe me, there's plenty.)

At the end of our lunch date, she said, "Wow, you guys have been through a lot this year." And it was something of a surprise for me to realize that, when I laid it all out like that for someone else, it really did seem like quite a lot. I knew there had been bad news and setbacks this year, but I hadn't fully realized it because, for once, we'd been able to handle it. None of it felt overwhelming. Five years of hard work on mental, spiritual and emotional selves helped. We've been working those muscles hard, and they're stronger, able to carry what used to crush us.

Earlier this week, at a 12 Step meeting, I listened to the secretary reading the promises of the program, and when she asked, "Are these extravagant promises?" I had joy in my heart as I wholeheartedly joined in the chorus, "We think not."

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This post was originally published at The Second Road.