Surrender

Last weekend, I had the blessed opportunity to attend the Togetherness Project! I love this organization so much. Much of my healing has been through classes I've attended and people I've met. I will be forever grateful to the people who put this together and sacrifice so much of their time and energy to help strengthen those of us suffering from the effects of sex addiction.

I haven't been able to stop thinking about one of the classes I attended. Rhyll Croshaw spoke about living recovery one day at a time.

I've been in a kind of pit where I have been so focused on my baby and my family and not spending enough time on ME. I've been working on that and trying to find balance, but it's hard. My needs change on a daily basis depending on different triggers and trauma or whether or not I feel like I can even handle thinking about having this addiction as part of my life (and besides, I have a baby now, so I really can't spend so much time focusing on me. That makes the balancing act more tricky.). Most of the time, my recovery work simply looks like self-care. But if I'm only doing self-care, that leaves out a lot of other things that are necessary for my recovery.

It's like I'm only going halfway to recovery because I know I need some aspect of recovery, but I don't want to think about it. I've let recovery books, programs, blogs, and support groups fall to the wayside because I just don't want to think about it. Not to mention I might be spending way too much time and energy focusing on healing my relationship with Ben. I'm the kind of person that likes to do things myself so I can make sure they are done right. I'm afraid (from fear but also from experience) that if I leave our relationship recovery too much up to Ben, nothing will happen or things will be made worse. So even though I try to be hands off about his recovery and letting things heal as they heal, I really do try to take matters into my own hands way too often. It's exhausting. Because when things don't work as I think they should, I get put in another place of trauma or just feel disappointed or angry or upset.

I have not done a good job at surrendering this to God. Like, at all. I try. I give but take back. I can't commit to fully just letting Him handle it because I'm not really a fan of His timeline.

So during Rhyll's class (which I didn't initially want to go to anyway because I thought, "I don't need this, I know all about recovery and taking it one day at a time... haha), she said something that struck me, and I haven't been able to stop thinking about it. She said something like, "I had to turn to God and say 'Take him. I can't do this anymore.'" She had done everything she felt like she could to help their marriage and family, and she realized she just couldn't do it. She had to focus on herself, and let herself heal. She had to stop taking so much of the weight of their marriage and his addiction and let God handle that part.

I feel like that was the piece I have been missing! I did this life coaching program with Jacy which was incredible and eye-opening and life changing (and if you can afford to do it, do it! Do it do it do it! Because, like I said, LIFE CHANGING, powerful stuff). I learned so much incredible stuff about taking charge of my life and seeing what I can do for me. But I applied it all to my relationship with Ben, and while that is good and all (because there is much in my relationship with him that I DO need to work on because I am kind of mean and blame everything on him all the time because "he is an addict and has ruined my life"...), I still can't do everything on my own. I'm trying to micromanage too much instead of letting things happen on God's timeline. I'm trying to rush my healing, his healing, and our marriage's healing because I want our family to be "perfect", and I want to start thinking about and planning for more kids. I keep going in circles with myself between accepting my life as it is and hating everything and yearning for what I imagined my life to be at this point.

So, while I'm focusing on my self-care and balancing act, I am also working on surrender. I don't really know how to surrender all of this to God, but I am going to figure it out. In the mean time, I am trying to let go of fretting over his recovery so I can focus on my recovery. I am working a program, I'm reading Rhyll's book, I'm doing self-care, and maybe one of these days I will make it to a group meeting so I can have some in-person support.

I reviewed my safety plan and boundaries again, adding some things that needed to be added. And I am going to work on keeping myself safe. Sometimes I just don't. I don't know why, I just don't stick to my boundaries very well. Probably because I'm afraid of change and push-back from Ben. But I know to keep our home a safe place to keep myself on track with my recovery and healing, I need to stick to my boundaries.

So. Deep breaths. Here I go, jumping back into my recovery.