2010? It's gonna be great!

I can remember sitting in my psychiatrist's office for my first appointment of the year in early January 2008. Steve had just moved back to Tamworth with the kids and I had spent New Year's Eve, Day and the following week in Mirrabook.

Anthony (my Dr) sat with me and discussed the events of the past 18 months and trying to paint a brighter future for me for the coming year.

As I left his office he mentioned to me that one of his schizophrenic patients had been in to see him earlier in the day and he was really fired up for 2008. In fact - I believe his words were (which Anthony related to me) Its gonna be great in 2008!

I internally (and maybe visibly) cringed and I think I even rolled my eyes. After all of the crap that I had been through in the past 18 months - how could the coming year be great?

2008 - upon reflection - did turn out to be great. I hooked up with a lovely Christian counsellor who decided that 2008 was going to be about me discovering myself. After walking away from university studies, a promising vocal career and so many other dreams to marry and have children, I had lost my path. I didn't know how to do anything else but be a mother and a wife. In fact, in some of the circles that I had begun to move in during the later years of my marriage, the prevailing theology was that it was God's desire for me to do nothing more than be a wife and a mother and to be the very best at that alone.

While I now understand the heart of that theology - "And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him." Colossians 3:17 and "If anyone does not know how to manage his own family, how can he take care of God's church?" 1 Timothy 3:5 - children and family can be completely all consuming - especially before they go to school - I came to understand in 2008, with Kerrie, Lee and Janet's help, that God created me for other things as well. My family was effectively "gone" (well, at least in Tamworth) and the almost 10 years that I had devoted to my husband and my children all seemed to have been in vain.

So 2008 helped me to rediscover my creativity, my voice *lyrically and individually), my dreams and my desires, friendship, love and most of all my desire to draw closer to God. Through being still and resting - some of that medically induced, but restful nonetheless - I started to see myself emerge once again. I struggled with illness, suicidality and emotional pain - but little by little - with God's help - I grew stronger...

2009 has been full of fits and starts. A failed romance, failed study aspirations, a failed attempt at being part of a musical once again... but in the long run it has been an amazing journey. I was only hospitalised once in 2009! Back in April. While it was the most serious of all of my hospitalisations and climaxed with a suicide attempt that saw me in ICU and intubated, it was a watershed moment in my life. It was finally revealed in this time that the diagnosis of Bipolar to all intents and purposes for all of those years was wrong. Yes, there may still me a hint of Bipolar II, but primarily, it was confirmed that what I as struggling with was in fact Borderline Personality Disorder. Which totally revolutionises treatment. No medication - therapy based - 85% (conservative estimate) recovery. And for that 15% that somehow falls through? There are new therapies that are being trialled and having great successes too.

So I am finally off the drugs! And have lost almost 10kg in 2 months! Watch out world here I come! And at the end of December - on a mercy dash to Canberra for treatment and intervention as I watched myself emotionally deteriorate once again - I found SO many new insights! I have drawn SO much closer to God in this past month than I thought was ever possible. I have found a job and a home in Canberra - I will be establishing myself there from Australia Day... And because of this wonderful new job that I have... I will be able to afford to see my kids more often and to take the pressure of travel away from them by being able to fly them and myself around!

I cannot underestimate how much God has done in my life this past two years - and more specifically in the past month or so!

So 2010? Its gonna be great!

Stay tuned for updates and photos of the kids at Steve and Bec's wedding and from their January visit to Nowra!

Love you all!
Fi