Painful journey

This is a very painful journey.  I am not saying that for myself, although it is true as well.  Watching a mentally ill child try and make sense of what is happening to them is truly difficult.  It is also extremely painful to watch your healthy children deteriorate before your eyes because of all they have gone through, and not know how to help.  It is painful to realize you yourself have been the cause of too much of this pain, because you have tried to handle things yourself instead of "letting go."  


Recently, I bought myself a print to hang on my wall.  It shows a winter scene with a barren tree along a fence, and says, simply, "Be still, and know that I am God."  I bought it because it is a reminder to me that I need to "let go."  I can trust God, especially when things are immensely difficult.  The winter scene reminds me of how we are barren, and come spring, the tree will bloom beautifully again.  It is a season of difficulty, not a lifelong state.  


I am able to cling to God during this time.  I have been able to do so since I was a little girl.  Of course, there were plenty of times that I strayed from God, and others that I thought I knew better, but in the end, I know I can trust God.  I am having a hard time convincing my children that they can trust Him, too.  My son, unable to cope with how he feels, is angry, sad, scared and frustrated.  The last thing he wants to do is believe that there is a plan for him.  I try to gently remind him that God has a plan for each of us, because God is in us.


I don't know what these coming days will bring.  My son is being released from the hospital after 43 days, and he isn't better.  He has the same issues that brought him there, and has not made much progress.  The doctors feel that they will be able to get through to him better in a partial hospitalization, because he only wants to talk about going home.  This is not setting well with most of us here.  Those in denial are happy he is coming home, the rest of us are uneasy.  So many long years of chaos, stress, unsafe behavior, torment and threatening have left me empty.  I don't have much strength to muster to have him returning already, but I also don't have a choice.


I can definitely empathize with the many families that have traveled this road before me.  Even as terrible as the state of mental health care is today, surely it was much worse before.  The feeling of being alone is an enormous burden it itself, and all the other challenges are next to impossible to effectively deal with.


I am heavily in prayer today that as unaware as I am of what the "plan" is for my family, that God will hold us through it.  Being "still" isn't easy.