Surfacing the Depths On Top of a Mountain

In love life is sweet. Alone and desperate for love, life is an amazing struggle. Should we be in love with a person, a job, a passion, place, thing or role? Should we simply be in love with life and God? Deeply caring about something or someone benefits our cause for happiness greatly, but what if we just can’t find it? What if in our pursuit all we are left with is devastation, disappointment, pain, or resentment? How can we begin to break this cycle and emerge somewhere on the beginning of a path filled with satisfaction and love? This world is dark, and has many means of breaking our hearts, but we must learn to heal and get past these bitter moments, somehow, someway.

I do believe that free will is the answer. To have a choice, and realize that you do always have and participate in this small simple fact is the key to unraveling one’s unhappiness. It is a huge burden to bear, because we all wish that someone almighty would snatch from us our hurt and suffering. But to me, giving my life over to Jesus came second. First I became in touch with my free will and had to swallow the heavy as well as freedom ringing reality that I am in charge of creating whatever I have manifested in my life. My actions, thoughts, feelings are all a product of free will, and a momentary choice. I choose to throw the lighter across the room, I choose to scream and cry. I can choose to close the faucet of my grief  to release a manageable and less overwhelming flood and flow of water from my eyes and heart. I choose to indulge in every symptom that I suffer from with bipolar disorder and psychosis. Yes drugs are necessary and help me, but I can learn to be stronger than the disease by realizing that I have power, free will and the ability to choose. Most of all I have a responsibility and accountability to all that I do. I must take responsibility for my actions, no matter how difficult this feels to do. I don’t doubt that God is the reason that I was able to take responsibility for my actions and emotions that seemed so far out of my control, because it took an amazing amount of endurance, strength, and actually a lack of pride. Ultimately, I chose the more challenging path, instead of the easy excuse that all the doctors tried to tell me, though nobody but the inside of the mental health system could ‘understand’ the illness. There are some folks with compassionate hearts that have family members that struggle with the disease, but unless you have the disease yourself, it is an incredibly hard thing in our society to accept. So once I had accepted my fate, to be told that I was responsible and had the ability to choose my way out of the illness felt like a huge betrayal. But ultimately it was the best moment of my life. What it did inside of me was turn the key to a hopeless lock, to a story that I had accepted by falling into a dark pit of grief. I had taken the illness on as my identity. Accepting back my own power and free will was an incredibly large and uncomfortable pill to swallow.

Seven years later I accepted the Lord into my life and that has taken this journey to an entirely new level. Every choice I made to resist indulging in a symptom, every choice I have made to develop a good habit has built on itself, and I have climbed many mountains since. Sometimes in a sad moment I ask myself why I was cursed with climbing a Mount Everest, only to appear to surface at sea level, with an average ability to work and cope with life; with an average countenance and ability to succeed. But in my better moments I realize that this climb, this journey has not been a waste. I am free of so much and have pursued the truth to so much that others hide under the skin of their successful lives. It has been a greater than average climb to catch air, and I am stronger for it. God was with me all these years, and accepting the now coherent and clear reality I have searched long and hard for, knowing that He sees inside me to all of my levels, I do know that I have never been alone. I just need to see, accept and know this truth. My free will and strength have brought me to a place where I am free, in love, and flourishing at God’s side, and with many friends and family who accept me for who I am and that I share countless moments of love with. So choose your path, every moment, every day. Choose to be good and happy; choose to know that you are loved. Choose acceptance and forgiveness, choose life. Let it in.