Connor has been gone 6 months now. It seems so strange to me, how this is. Ian has been gone 2 months & 10 days. I would have walked over hot coals to keep my chilren with me. Then, I had to let them go to help them get better.
You don't foresee Cancer, Mental Illness, etc. You don't forsee divorce. Birth & death you know. You don't get married to lose or to have a sick child.
My mother says God gave me my children (illnesses & special needs) because I can handle it. She said she never could have. But for what purpose are they given? Is it for me, to have a bigger or better purpose? Or is it for them?
I have a friend who says if I truley believe in God that they will come home healed. It isn't that I don't beliece He can, but I believe in the scripture when Jesus said, "...Isn't it I who made the blind man blind?"
There is a purpose for all things. So, do I say that because I do not believe enough? I have told my sons they are like they are for a reason. I have told Connor perhaps he will be the one to find a cure for Bi-Polar so that other children will not have to suffer like he has. Perhaps a medicine to make them able to live like other people who do not have it.
Do I say these things because I believe they are true? Or do I say it to make myself feelt better? Or to make a child feel better at the time of despair?
Do you know what it is like to see a child in despair? I don't mean a girl crying her eyes out over a boy & her saying she would rather be dead, or that she will never love again. (It feels like that then.) Or a young man betrayed by a friend. I mean despair true enough that their only hope of relief is death. A death they are prepared to exact on themselves. These children are between the ages of 5 & 12.
Five & twelve! A thought process that figures out a way for them to take their own life even at the age of five? We are not talking about a drug overdose or a gun to their head. Most children with these illnesses do not have access to those items; not even to knives or tools.
One child hung himself & his feet still touched the ground. Imagine the power not to just stand up?! One of my sons leaped out of a tree to "stop the voices". Breaking a lightbulb to cut his arm was his latest. A boy, age 5, tried leaping for a moving child. He also wanted to use a blunt object to stab himself. This was my other son. How would you stab yourself with a blunt object? Think of the pain. Think fo the pain they must feel inside to want to do this!
I have, as an adult, lay on a floor & sobbed until I could cry no more. This is as close to "despair" as I have ever felt. This does not even come close to what their pain must be.
The United States is the most medicated country in the world. A bunch of stressed, pill popping people. I struggled with the thought of putting a little child on medication. My mother pointed out that if my son could be happy, it would be worth it. My son would be physically violent even at 4 years old. He still feels guilty about the pain he has inflicted on his brother, who was 15 month younger.
Drugs. Tested on adults. These are not usually tested on children. There is no way to know the long term affects at this point. Not only about the results of one drug, but many. Many of these children have other co-existing illnesses which require more than one type of medication. Not all medications work for the same illness for each child. Many have trials & trials to find the right ones(s). There are blood tests, side effects. Any change in hormones & or growth may mean a change in medications or amounts. How do you follow the affects of 1 medication then?
