July 18, 2012 Greetings My Friend, I have more Prozac moments to share. Junior and I were talking and again he thanked me for not listening to him about going on Prozac. He then told me that he was very discouraged with me and I sense he wanted to pull away emotionally. That is a huge struggle for me the emotional detachment. I think I have been in many relationships through the years where we tend to leave each other long before we say our last good-bye. I want to worry something to death as well. I ponder all the various ways I should have or could have avoided the struggle. I struggle a whole lot in my mind why I am not wanted by various family members and will ponder what I did wrong till my brain is sore from all the thinking. I want to change to be what people want me to be only I can’t figure out what they want from me. Prozac is helping me to let go of all that thinking and pondering and worry. I remember a line I was given as I struggled frequently “this is how I am.’ I always felt people stated that because they were not going to change and if I didn’t like it well….. I would try to tell people that line but in my heart it just didn’t seem to work. I wanted to change to be what they wanted me to be. At this point though I think I am finally starting to live it. I am who I am. My goal is to be who God wants me to be. When I feel at peace with God my life in general feels peaceful. The older I get the more I want God to be pleased with “who’ I am. The more I live my life for God then I find the wholeness I have been seeking. I keep learning how to pray more, for many years I mainly prayed at night with occasional “popcorn” prayers throughout the day and of course praying over my meals. I have a FB friend who has stepped beside me and is mentoring me. It is so helpful and she has taught me to sit in my chair, my real comfy chair and pray. Now that I am not nodding off to sleep every other minute I find I can pray. I am enjoying this additional prayer time. I have my morning routine fairly much in place. I like to wake up with the computer. I FB, journal and do my e-mails. If I have paper work I will do that as well. Then I go to prayer. After prayer time I read my Bible and do a Bible study. I love my morning routine and I can see as our home is more settled that writing time will be in this time frame. I no longer want a full time job. A part time job does appeal to me so if writing became my part time job, I would be content. With the Prozac I feel that I am starting to be comfortable in my own skin. I do not need to be what others want me to be but I am who God is creating me to be. To be honest it feels wonderful. I guess this change myself dysfunction appeared early on in my life. I wanted to figure out how to not get smacked all the time. I wanted my parents to notice me. I wanted to be “good.” Good to me meant that I did the right thing all the time. The right thing though may not have been healthy. The “right thing” in my growing up years may have meant I would have given in to sexual abuse….to make others happy. Somewhere down deep I knew that was not “right.” I did hear about my parent’s sex life over and over. Day after day I heard how Mom would not….. Years later I realized that this was not something that you should discuss with a child. I am who God is creating me to be is a wonderful way to see myself now. I like learning to Agape love. God Agape loves me and I am learning how to Agape love others. Agape love is seeking another person’s highest good. In general that is what Junior gives me. Sometimes his “truth in love” can be a bit overwhelming. I am not a person who learns from being talked to harshly and I definitely don’t learn by being slapped up against the head. I learn best by example, by gentle encouragement. It is the way I learn. God has been very gentle with me as I have grown in Him. I have been hugged and at times I even feel God wiping the tears from my face…not literally but figuratively. I learn the way I learn and you know “that is ok.” Again I am who I am and I can’t begin to change every detail of my life to be everything to everyone. It isn’t going to happen. I love our current church family, even the old one. I am “me” and people have accepted me. I am not Junior’s wife and a non-entity without him. In a previous life I always felt I was my mother’s daughter, my husband’s wife and my children’s mother. No one ever seemed to see me as the unique person I was. I love to write. Today in Sunday school my teacher called on me regarding the book I wrote. That felt nice. My book had bearing on the lesson and I had an insight to offer and you know what? That felt real nice. I love being Junior’s wife. I love being a mother and I also love when I am seen as “Janet.” Each of those roles is sweet and to only be identified as only one can be hard. I am a person with different roles and abilities and when I am acknowledged in that way, it feels real nice. Who are you? Are you what you are or what others want you to be or are you what God wants you to be? May God bless you and keep you, make His face to shine upon you. Love Janet