Well, I finally gave in to temptation.

Our friend Paul has been bugging me for years to join one of his monthly role-playing game sessions. I had been RPG-free since 1991, thank you very much, and hadn't played D&D since 1989. I'm not sure if my sense of sobriety has weakened, or simply that I felt compelled when Paul's wife reminded me that I would never have time for such frivolity once I'm a mom.

I can't say D&D has the hold on me that it did when I was in high school and my pal Becky and I would spend Saturdays playing on the phone, she as dungeon master and I controlling 4 or 5 characters. I think it used to make me feel powerful, something unusual for a skinny 14-year-old who's the youngest of 5 kids.

The game also doesn't have the hold it did in college. On a Christian college campus, playing D&D was considered equivalent to joining a coven, even though all of us players were Christians and none ever played evil characters. So it was kind of thrilling to have such an "underground" hobby. I also became more and more enchanted of trying on new roles and being in this pretend realm something I'd never be in real life--like a well-armed tough or a seductress. Theatre and writing became other outlets for those urges as well.

I sometimes wonder if it was actually theraputic for me to work though the unhappiness in my life, like growing up with a mentally ill parent, though these fairly safe outlets for fantasy.

I know now that I don't really need to be someone else, or even find any enjoyment in being someone else, because I've reached a certain sense of contentment with my life as it is. Who'd have thought I'd reach the day when I'd prefer to be a 30-something bookish editor with morning sickness who wears glasses and hates her thighs over a 22-year old half-elf paladin with gorgeous red hair, super-strength and charm galore? Call it a comprehension of grace.