Announcing a weekly drop-in "God With Us Telephone Chapel" on Mondays at 9am PDT/10am MDT/11am CDT/Noon EDT. Marsha and Coach Jodi are joining in inviting you to join them for an hour on Monday mornings to explore the concept and possibility that God just might be available to be with us in our lives in a tangible, comforting, satisfying way. So if you want to explore the "What If" questions posed in Marsha's Easter newsletter, please join us for this one-hour no-cost, drop-in, interactive call to explore these concepts. We would love to talk to you there.

How real is God to you this Easter? Is he still on the cross in your mind? In the grave they buried him in two thousand years ago? Or did he really come back to life after three days in a tomb and is now in heaven preparing an eternal home for you?

Though we didn't plan this painful journey of betrayal and heartache, in our desperation for hope some of us encounter a living, loving, caring God as we grieve the losses of our husband's addiction and seek to heal and reorient ourselves and our lives. I remember so well the night I encountered him in an amazing new way. It was Christmas Eve 7+ years ago and I was sitting on a bed in southern Brazil.

Okay, so what do you think you and the sex addict you love have in common—besides the home, bills, kids, and the life you share? Any ideas? No? Then we'll tell you because the answer is extremely important to both you and him. In fact, you could say it is nothing less than the Secret Ingredient for Healing and for Life.

The Secret Ingredient for Healing & for Life

Here it is in six little words: You are both powered by joy. And just as a battery-powered toy will not run with a dead battery, neither can a human being heal or live a reasonably happy life without joy. In fact, being human and wanting joy are inseparable. Our Creator made us with brains that want to operate with joy in charge.

The sex addict—or any addict for that matter—has the same human needs as everyone else: the need to belong; the need to be loved; and the need to feel joy. These needs form the drives that fuel our addiction. And though I know it's hard for a wife to understand, your husband's addictive behaviors have nothing to do with his love for you.

His addiction is independent of the people in his life. Whether single or married, it is there, running in the background most of the time. Sadly, the ordinary pressures of life can trigger his need to escape pain and return to some kind of normalcy and joy. Because we addicts have not learned healthy ways to "return to joy," we use our drug of choice, whether it is alcohol, heroin, religiosity—or sex.