Running From Pain...And Waking UP

These past two years or so have been an intense period of personal growth for me.

I've had some serious revelations about life, motivation, faith, etc.

I've come to realize that ever since the Milestone Church "incident," I've been running.  I've been letting pain drive me, spur me on.  I've let anxiety, grief, anger, and despair make my life choices for me.

This is a common thing, I think, for those recovering for spiritual abuse.  The pain is so great that you don't do a whole lot of thinking.  You.  Just.  Run.  You run away from it, try to squelch it, try to emotionally hibernate it away.  That's what I did.

I realized the other night, while working through the workbook for The One Thing that I have spent five years or so not taking control of my own life but merely being driven, in a reactionary way, by the intense pain that I felt.

I am not sure that there was another way.  I don't see how I could've changed things much or that things could've been different.  Maybe this is just a part of the process of some people.

I feel as though I've been hibernating in some way, letting life roll me along its current.  I've not been doing a lot of steering the boat.  I've let one emotionally dysfunctional group of people at one church define how I've felt about Christians, God, church in general, the scriptures, myself, my spouse, my kids, my life.  I've given control of my decisions and my life over to them, and to some extent, given my family's experience over to them as well, via my hibernation.

I picture this process like the scene in The Matrix where Neo awakens inside his "real self" and has to go through the tremendously un-fun process of being flushed out of his hibernation and back to reality.

This is a good sign.  Taking control of my own life, awakening once again to my own decisions and destiny, rejecting the influence of dysfunctional people are all really, really good things.

If you have walked this walk, I encourage you to hang in there and to work towards your own awakening.  I pray that this will happen for you as well.