Sunday, December 6, 2009

I went to write one thing and it turned into another...

Involuntarily I have been off klonopin for about two weeks now. I take klonopin to help manage my anxiety. However, one of the side effects of klonopin that I have never enjoyed is memory loss, the same effect that seroquel had on me as well. I also joke around about my short-term memory problems but in reality its not so funny. Unfortunately medication is necessary and in these past couple weeks I have remembered that.
I don't know if I can blame this on the lack of mind altering drugs lately, or on the recent assault, but I have unfortunately been remembering many things from my childhood that I knew I had forgotten for a reason. Remembering them seems to do more bad then good but here is me trying to put a positive spin on things. I recognize that my fears and anxieties didn't just materialize out of nowhere and now, finding the source of these inconvenient feelings, I am able to work on them in a more efficient manner. Also, I know realize that the two completely lifestyles I grew up with really ended up giving me two frames of mind which I toggle between seemingly involuntarily. I have a rational, reasonable, predictable side of me where I need to calculate the outcome before I make any decision. Then, I have the side of me that will literally say eff it; no matter what I do the same patterns will repeat over and over.
Well, they have repeated for about 20 years now. Same cycle, same feelings, same endings. Over and over again. Yet, there is a force much stronger than me working harder than I ever have. For every mistake that has been made, over and over, there has been a lesson, over and over. Until recently, I didn't get why I always fell into the same traps and how, like clockwork, that cycle would come and go. I see it now, and I understand it. God can't transform me, He can't work from the inside out, until I'm ready to face my fears, to learn from my mistakes, and consult God in every thing that I do. For the past few years I thought I had been doing that, but I see that I was just bargaining with God saying, "Alright God, I'll let go of this if I can just keep this other thing over here." That's not how it works. God doesn't to bargaining because He knows me better than that. He knows I need to give it all up. To deal with it and to finally hand EVERYTHING over to Him. Including things that happened fifteen years ago that I can barely remember. If I want to stop the pattern, and if I want God to work wonders in me, I need to be more willing, more sacrificial, and more reliant on Him.
I thank God for the clarity and I thank Him for the strength He gives me to do the things I know I have to do. If I can predict next year, I know it will be hard. It will be full of cleansing that I have never experienced before. It will run wild with tears of both pain and joy. Most importantly, if I continue to learn, it will be a wonderful year of growing closer to my maker and a year closer to permanently getting myself off these meds. Who knows, by the end of next year, I may be medication free. What a wonderful day that will be.

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