A dear friend who's feeling totally lost from herself right now emailed me recently. As I replied to her, it felt more like a letter to everyone who's ever lost themselves. Especially in a relationship.

So for all of you, for all of us, here's what I wrote:

My sweet, sweet friend, I promise you one thing, it's all still in there somewhere, it is. Trust me on this one. There are very few things I can say for certain, but this I know. Those vanished pieces of you are not lost. Think of them as hibernating or dormant or sleeping.

I have no idea what it will take to wake them, but I'm pretty sure it can only be some radical act of trust. Self trust.

If I learned anything with the whole separation, blah, blah, blah... (and somedays I'm pretty sure I did not) it is this: Take a giant leap of faith and you will land safely in your own skin.

Whatever that leap is for you, do it.

If nothing ever comes of my writing. If nothing ever comes of my relationship with Sam. If nothing ever comes of my widespread, dreaming mind. I don't care.

I have myself back, the self I trust. She is smart and kind and funny and intuitive. I accept her (many, many) shortcomings and I like her. I really, really like her.

She is so much cooler than the miserable pile of terrified that was holding space in her body until she returned.

Whatever it is, sweetie. Take a big breath and jump!

We're all here to ease the landing.

I've been thinking a lot about the theological aspect of divorce. I can't be the only one who thinks this is a big issue to consider when contemplating divorce, but if any church talk turns you off then I'll apologize right now. If, on the other hand, you're concerned about divorce and how it pertains to your faith, then maybe my thought process will help you a little.

I attend a Christian church. Even though the church I go to is pretty liberal there are very few people there who are divorced. The demographic is mainly families like mine, with young children, a husband who works outside the home, and a wife who stays home and cares for the kids during the day.

Divorce isn't really an issue that comes up in sermons at all in our church, but it's supposed to be something we try to avoid. We're supposed to keep the family unit intact. The husband is supposed to love the wife like Christ loved the church, and a wife is supposed to honor her husband.

That's a tall order when all you want to do is pack your bags and leave.

Here is the thing I realized: Okay, divorce is a sin. Sure, I can buy that. We're not supposed to get divorced. Here is the other thing I only recently started to think about with regard to this topic: We all sin. One sin isn't greater than the other, and we'll never be perfect because we're human.

Divorce isn't supposed to happen, but then again neither are a lot of things that go on. If I do divorce my husband, even though it's considered a sin, it's not unforgivable. According to Biblical principal, I'll be forgiven.

I'm not trying to spark a theological debate, but this was a huge revelation for me. Some readers have expressed concern about how a divorce might affect their standing at church. Perhaps they can begin to rationalize a marital shift, too.

"Love actually is...all around." When Hugh Grant's character narrates the opening of the movie Love Actually, he admits love — the love in evidence at the arrivals gate of Heathrow Airport — is not particularly dignified. It's awkward and pedestrian. But it's pervasive.

Shot after shot of homecomings and reunions reveal something profound in everyday love. Siblings, grandparents and their children, and old friends reach out for each other, smiling and crying. They hold each other dearly.

By nature love is exponential. It multiplies to the beat of a steady drum. It keeps families together, protects us, and makes the world go round. It is quiet and vital.

Love actually is also...terribly hard work. Things get in the way — like thinking love should move me and elevate me to star status. For years I suffered under the girlish delusion that love means having it all — drama, attention, and romance. Even older and wiser I haven't truly let go of what I think love should be long enough to see what love is.

Instead, in my head I created the perfect man by adding bits and pieces of memory to a smattering of emails from a former beau halfway around the world. I haven't seen him in 15 years, but on the skeleton of a boy I once knew, my imagination draped all sort of grown-up traits, creating a man who would put me first, would match my intellectual curiosity, and who would attract me and play with me exactly how I wanted him to.

But that man didn't really exist. And as I dreamed of him, of how being with him would change my life, I missed out on what I already had: Rob. He's imperfect, unspectacular. To be sure, ours is no dramatic romance. But it's comforting. 

Love actually is...all around. But we must wake up — grow up — to see it.

Oh the ups and downs of the holidays. In Portland we called the two week stretch from Dec. 14 to last Sunday Snopoccalypse, and those of us with small children at home and without big SUVs in the driveway? We became snow prisoners.

We pulled our children on sleds to the bus stop, and then through downtown streets and sidewalks to do the last-minute shopping. Those of us who shopped at all.

Okay, the sled detail was just Sam and me (but it sounds so Norman Rockwell and many people I know really did drag their kids to the nearest grocery store that way). Also, full disclosure, the 11th hour downtown shopping spree was more about getting out of the house than getting presents.

We're so broke we'd already agreed to exchange only a little book of the 12 things we would give the other if money and the time-space continuum were no objects. 

My Facebook status that morning after we trekked downtown on sleds said "Red Rum, Red Rum" over and over to the edge of the update space. One of my friends gave me a lot of crap about that. He said it was overdone and I needed to dial down the The Shining references.

He does not have hyper-active children. He was not held against his will by the weather for than a week with a six-year-old, a four-year-old, and a partner whom he recently reconciled with after a two-year separation and near divorce. He does not know. I was not joking.

That morning, and several before it, all I wanted in the whole wide, whited-out, world was my little apartment. And not for temporary refuge, either. Forever. I wanted it forever. I fantasized about being snowed in all alone, about being snowed in with just my kids, about being snowed in with anyone who wasn't Sam.

My neighbor and I were talking about our perplexing positions in life. We are both in the same boat, contemplating divorce for a couple of years now with young children involved. She revealed to me that her husband had been physically abusive to her a few times throughout the marriage and that he continues to verbally assault her in front of her kids on an almost daily basis. 

When I told her that I think my husband may be either cheating on me or planning on cheating on me, she said, "Oh, that's where I draw the line. If he cheats on me, I'm out of here."

This got me thinking about the different thresholds we all have as women. Before I was married I always assumed that my threshold would be "If I'm unhappy in my marriage, I'm out of here."  After we were married and we had kids my threshold evolved into something like, "If he ever lays a hand on me in violence, or becomes verbally abusive, or cheats on me, then I'm out of here." 

I would assume that most women in my position have similar thresholds, but talking to my neighbor (who has been married longer than I have), butapparently it's completely possible to have the threshold pushed further to "If he cheats on me I'm out of here, but everything else is just annoying."

Why do we allow the threshold to change?

It's almost as if we are numbed by situations as they come. My neighbor is pretty numb to her husband's verbal abuse. I'm pretty numb to the way my husband twists everything into being my fault, and I'm afraid I'm completely capable of becoming numb to worse things.

I've written about our happy days and sad, our intimacies and lack thereof, our dreams and traditions, and how those things have changed. Rob and I have both enjoyed each others' families and been hurt by them. Sometimes we've put each other first, and sometimes we've neglected each others' need entirely.

Rob has drunk himself near to death, stopped drinking altogether, and then found a balance. I've both searched for apartments so I could move out on my own, and gave my all to couples therapy in hopes we'd find the key to a happier marriage.

I've written extensively on my doubt, and shared my wavering heart as honestly as possible, even when my wishy-washiness seemed a terribly embarrassing mark of weakness.

In the throes of the holidays, with the New Year approaching, I've been playing my part as usual. Rob and I are having family and friends over tonight.

Who knows how we'll seem to some of them who don't know the troubles we've had, and who don't know we have a sexless marriage. Perhaps we'll seem the perfect hosts, with the perfect demeanor, with the perfect relationship.

But play-acting has never suited me, and I believe it's time for lasting change.

I'm not leaving Rob, and I'm no more sure about this marriage; I'm getting ready to leave you readers.

I joined First Wives World believing that through writing I would come to a better understanding of what was wrong with my relationship, and I would change it. Indeed, comments both online and off from readers have brought new perspective to my marriage, and I've felt both more empowered to take from life exactly what I want, and also more settled in present circumstances.

Overall, this is still an ill-fitting marriage. Perhaps I just need to grow up and let go of certain ideas about identity, or selfish dreams. Perhaps I need to learn how to better recapture the joy of youth here in present circumstances.

Turns out, in Portland, the joke is on us. That, and about a foot of snow.

Last week the local news weather types cried wolf for days and with every flurry we were sure Arctic Blast '08 was bearing its abominable teeth. And we, in our fair city of three snow plows, responded by closing everything. On one of my kids' snow days it didn't even snow.

By Friday, everyone knew the hype was nothing, but the week was already a wash, so no point in having school or doing anything else really. On Friday, the whole week seemed like a nice excuse to slow down and take a couple lazy at home days before revving up for the holidays.

Then came Saturday. And it snowed. It snowed and kept on snowing straight through the night and all day Sunday. Biggest snow Portland's seen in 40 years. Suddenly, it was not just an excuse. There was a foot on the ground and we really were housebound.

All the packages full of Christmas gifts from my in-laws are holding on some UPS snow route and they, the in-laws, are due in tonight on Christmas Eve.

I'm secretly hoping they don't make it. The gifts, not the in-laws. My fantasy is the whole family, Sam's, here and hardly a package to open.

The over-the-top-ness of this holiday, not even my holiday, is too much for me. Call me a Grinch, every year I have a little less tolerance for all the stuff, stuff, stuff, stuff.

Like the Grinch, I want to see how they react to Christmas without all the ribbons and bows.

My kids rip into the shiny paper and I see boxes of pieces of stuff that will by spread all over my house by the beginning of January, and swept into the trash by spring.

How can anyone appreciate anything when they have so much crap?

None of these things are special. They are just more. What my kids know is if they break or lose something, it's okay, there's more in the closet and another one coming.

I'm probably a really big idiot. You know how some women are completely blindsided when they find out their husbands are cheating? They never saw the signs and then one day something abruptly happens and husband's escapades are revealed while the wife stands there befuddled and betrayed.

I'm in a different situation: The signs are there that my husband may be straying — or thinking of straying — but I can't believe that it's actually happening. I just think I'm paranoid or hyper-vigilant. You tell me if this sounds off to you.

I planned a trip a couple of hours away for the kids and me to go visit some friends for two days while my husband stayed home. (He had to work.) Our babysitter (an adult woman) asked me what night I was leaving, and I told her Wednesday. She then turns to my husband and asks if she can swing by Wednesday night so he can help her with her college homework. He says sure, and I start to think about how the situation could be potentially inappropriate but then I bury the feeling because, after all, we're trying to save our marriage.

Halfway through the week I get a text from our sitter. Have I left yet? I reply that we hadn't left yet, and the unease comes back. I bury it again because, after all, why would my husband cheat on me when he's begged me to stay?

The kids and I wind up changing our plans to leave a day later because of the weather, which means I would be home for the homework session. An hour or two before our sitter is supposed to come over, my husband nonchalantly mentions that she cancelled because she figured her homework out all by herself. I raise my eyebrow, he explodes at me and says I don't trust him, and it all turns into a fight where I wind up apologizing.

In bed the other morning, we're laying there talking or arguing, whatever you want to call it, about the same old issues that never go away. Because they don't. And the thing that's worth bringing up here has nothing to do with the issues. At this point, they're all just blah, blah, blah.

What's different is how we start talking and keep going and no one walks away before we're done. That was how we used to do it. Walk away. Hold it in. Spit little sharp nails of spite at each other, that passive-aggressive bullshit. But never talk about what we weren't talking about.

When I have to tell the truth, Sam and I still have a lot to learn about the finer points of using our words. But give some credit for trying. Now what I recognize when we fight is it's the words not the ideas we're reacting to, the words and their delivery make it more argument than discussion.

I can stop the whole thing and talk to Sam about not knowing how to talk about it. And I do; it's a new thing I've been doing. When I say I don't know how to talk about whatever it is, suddenly the idea becomes the focus, and we're trying to figure out what that idea is and what we each believe about it.

We still have the same problems, they're the kind you can't talk away, and at the end of three hours taking them apart, we weren't any closer to resolving them, but I left the conversation satisfied. It's a huge improvement.

Any progress is good progress.

You don't KNOW if you don't TRY. So I'm applying myself to my marriage to see if it might work. And things are shifting.

Then at our last counseling session Rob spilled to our therapist that I had complained our work with her had been overly focused on him. I had told him that in confidence! I was horrified when — apparently unaware this would be a problem — he let on. I was left sitting there sheepishly, making excuses as to why I said what I said ("It was in jest!"), trying to convince her I had no problems with how things were going.

Anyway, I didn't mind the neglect. Rob is paying for these sessions; I guess the unbalanced attention allowed me to feel okay about not contributing to the fee. So as the therapist spent our time week after week asking Rob about his relationship to drinking and encouraging him to work on communication and connection, I didn't argue. It's not like I wouldn't benefit immensely from his improvements in those areas, so I watched patiently and hoped the work would stick.

And I assumed she felt it important for me to witness his determination and growth. Why else would she kinda ignore me for him all those times?

Whatever we're doing there, it seems to be working. I've felt more kindly and warm toward Rob. We're both more quiet and calm — with each other and others. I mean, I didn't even blow when he told our therapist about my complaints. It felt like a betrayal for him to embarrass me like that, but whatever. Perhaps I've finally learned not to sweat the small stuff.