bye bye to another phobia

I find this morning that I am unexpectedly ready to move past a very strong fear - a phobia, really - and it is so unexpected.

Back up a bit.  The deal is, my allergies are still being a major pain.  Even with the meds, even with the hot water, even with the honey.  They are about 90% manageable.  The unmanageable part is:  in the middle of the night, after I haven't been drinking any fluids for several hours. all of a sudden all the gunk accumulates and I am choking, coughing, yucko ptooey.  The way I solve it is to prop myself up with pillows and sleep sitting straight up - this lets the drainage run in a way that doesn't choke and cause that coughing that gets so strong it is almost upchuck time.  

But enough about that.  I am BEYOND tired of talking about my allergies! 

There is another solution, absolutely doctor-recommended, that gets a ton of positive review in these cases:  the neti pot.  If you never heard of them before (and if you never did...HOW?!), it's like a little teapot.  You fill it with warm salt water and then pour that water in one side of your nose, letting it run out the other side.  It washes out your nasal passages, which I guess helps remove the pollens and stuff that are stuck in there causing the misery.

I have been very, very adamant:  I would NEVER try that.  After all, water up the nose equals drowning.  We all know that!!  Why would I drown myself?!  And no amount of reasonably pointing out that people use them all the time without drowning could touch my extreme neti pot phobia.

But all of a sudden this weekend...the fear seems to be gone.  I didn't ask God to remove it.  I didn't do any mental exercises to change my mind - wasn't even thinking about neti pots at all.  

And then all of a sudden I WAS thinking about them, and it wasn't making me afraid.  So strange.  Apparently God's been lifting another phobia off me without me even having the faith or ambition to ask.  

So probably today I'll buy one on the way home from work, and probably tonight I'll try it, and it doesn't even give me butterflies in my stomach to imagine that. 

Weird, weird, weird.  

Be sure of this:  I'll let you know how it goes.  :-)