There have been many times in my life when The Serenity Prayer has been my mantra.
Once again, I find myself repeating it to myself silently.
God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.
With Josh, I've had to accept the things I cannot change. I cannot change the fact that he refuses to seek treatment for his Bipolar.
From where I sit, the solution to almost ALL of Josh's problems lie in finding the correct medication for him. And I'm convinced that his condition is mild enough that the dosage would likely be very small.
He is NOT the person he was a year ago. While he had become increasingly difficult to manage during the last two or three years, he WAS functioning well in general, with his schoolwork and extracurricular activities. He was happy much more often than he was difficult. The person I sent packing is not functioning well in any area of his life, and that makes me so sad, because I know it doesn't have to be that way.
I found the courage to change the things I can, and it takes a lot of courage (and just the right amount of total, utter frustration) to send the son you love packing, but that's where "the wisdom to know the difference" comes in.
Eventually the wisest course of action was to allow Josh to struggle against himself, and he is struggling.
It is heartbreaking to me when he comes over and I see the longing in his eyes, the longing to return to what is "normal" for him. But "normal" isn't going to move him forward and I pray that Rootie is right, that someday he will be able to see that by setting him free, I was giving him legs to walk into a better place.
But I think the most difficult aspect of all of this is that there are some amazingly wonderful changes going on in my life right now, and I would have loved for Josh to have been a part of them, to have benefited from them. Unfortunately, his perspective is that I've made him leave BECAUSE of these changes, and that simply isn't the case, but he's probably always going to look at this time as a time when I selfishly kicked him out so I could have the life *I* wanted. The truth though, is that I truly felt the changes in my life could move him forward.
I pray every night that God will walk with Josh and guide him; that he will lead him to a better place, and I keep asking for courage and wisdom and help with acceptance for myself, because I know that what has always carried me through difficult times is finding Serenity.
1 comment:
If Josh is as smart as you say he is, he'll find his place. He's young yet, and as hard as it is for any adult person to recognize and deal with something as intense as a mental illness, it's exponentially more difficult for someone his age, who still has a bit of that young person immortality thing. He's going to have to do some growing up- and I mean that literally. The frontal cortex of a person's brain (deals with cause and effect and decision making skills)doesn't fully develop until their mid-20's. He's almost there, but not quite. I've seen it in my own 23 year old...he's just now (after 4 years later) starting to recognize and make sense of himself. It's frightening, and you (as a mother) hope and pray that they won't do something horribly rash before sense takes hold. My handle to hold on to has been Proverbs 22:6-"Train up a child in the way he should go, And even when he is old he will not depart from it" because it doesn't say "when he is 16-24 he willnot depart from it". So lean on the upbringing you gave him. take confidence in knowing you did it right and that will come back eventually. Look at his brother and see that you did it right.
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