Tick Tock

Thanks to
http://qmsrepair.com/around-the-clock-service/
for the photo

Several people in my life, at one point or another, have asked me one simple question:  "Just what makes you tick?"

I never knew how to answer that question. The reason for that was that I was too busy trying to be and think and behave the way everyone else wanted me to, in order to either have them like me, be impressed with me, or not hurt or leave me.  

Who I was changed with the person I was with.  And so - to be brutally honest - I didn't even know who I was, much less what made me tick.  I was incapable of answering the question.  So I'd say whatever I thought they wanted to hear.  And that would satisfy them.  Then I'd breathe an internal sigh of relief after they stopped that line of questioning. 

I never knew why I didn't know who I was.  Not until I started my journey.  And it was so weird when I kind of stumbled upon myself when I was trying to help my husband recover from his addiction.  I was desperate and things had gotten so out of control that I reached out for help and - I firmly believe - God put one hand on me and the other on my therapist, and brought the two of us together.  

That was in late January 2009.  By the end of February, I realized that my husband had his own journey to travel and that the one that I must travel was my own.  And that I DID need to start a journey into freedom.  I was so bound up tight inside, living in fear of so many things - including even getting to know myself - that it paralyzed my relationships with people.  

Over the course of the next year, the attitudes and behaviors I had accumulated in order to survive life started to drop off, and I started to LIVE life.  

Source:
http://lostegypt.wordpress.com/

It was like I'd lived all my life in mummy wrappings ... thinking I was living but so restricted by all the things I was wrapped up in.  Some of those things were made up of stuff others had put on me: an abusive childhood, labels that some folks would never let me shake, criticism, judgement.  Some of them I had put on myself while trying to survive my life: perfectionism, religious zeal, the victim mentality - and so much more. 

And then - slowly - the wrappings started to come off.  I was powerless to take them off... I needed help.  And I found that it was God - through the things I was discovering in therapy - who unwound the filthy things off me and let me breathe, stretch, grow, and walk freely in my faith for the first time in my life.  I didn't quite understand all that was happening to me or how it was happening.  All I knew was that I was happier.  Freer.  More serene.  Every day, more of those wrappings come off and I am getting to know myself (and my God) far better than I thought I could.  And through it all, I hear a sound growing stronger and stronger - the sound of my heart (my spirit) receiving new life.  If this is what makes me tick, I guess I have a new ticker.

Tick.  Talk.