Finally, Sunshine

It has been a long, difficult road - especially for my daughter - but the sun has begun to shine again.  Through absolutely no fault of her own, she has struggled for a long time with darkness, sorrow and frightening thoughts.  In her desire to be the good and precious child she truly is, she covered it with smiles and laughter.  But that only worked for so long.  Everything began to fall apart this year.  We endured a lot and it took it's toll.

We lost the only home she'd ever known to foreclosure - something I never thought we'd experience.  My mother, her grandmother, passed away and three weeks later, our dog of nine years did, too.  Jay's behavior had been appalling for far too long and so we separated after letting things go on much longer than it should have - but I couldn't walk away from the mentally ill man I love until then.  He abandoned us in his anger and would not speak to his own daughter while only yelling at me.  And her sickness began to show itself because it was bad enough she could no longer hide it.

She's been afraid of this illness because of what she's seen from her father.  She can scarcely remember the time when things were good; when we laughed a lot and enjoyed each other as a family unit.  He'd been seriously ill with his disease since she was 9 years old.  And that's what she was afraid of becoming.  So in trying to deny it, she hid it until she couldn't.

But things have brightened.  Jay had a medication change that had been desperately needed for 5 years.  He knew he could not live on $9.00 an hour on his own, so he made it happen that he could begin driving again.  He spent time alone on the road and realized some things about himself that three stints in marriage counseling and two trips through the church marriage classes had not helped him see.  He began to regret and felt ashamed of what he had become.  And he began to talk to me without anger, without yelling, without blame toward me.  He just admitted what he'd been responsible for in this mess we'd called a marriage the last 5 years.  And we have reunited - though he is driving over the road, so we only see him for a few days once every month or 6 weeks.  But for now, that's fine.

And I pulled myself out of my shell of denial that this was all happening again, but this time to my sweet daughter, and sought the help she needed.  She's been seeing a therapist, but it was clearly not enough.  I made an appointment through Children's Hospital and she saw a psychiatrist.  What a huge relief to finally have a diagnosis - anxiety with depression.  And a huge relief to find the answer to what she needed - medication and less pressure at school.  I pulled her out of Honors math.  She's still in an advanced math class, but at a much calmer pace.  She'll remain out of honors math through the rest of high school.  We've already mapped that path out with her school counselor.  All her other classes remain Honors, but they are easy for her and she enjoys them.  And we started medication which seems to be working very, very well.  For the first time in a long time, I have my ray of sunshine back!  My little girl is smiling - genuinely smiling - and laughing and happy and so much more relaxed.  She's not all the way there yet as we're still adjusting the medication level, but she is very well on her way.  And I cannot thank my Heavenly Father enough for protecting her until I could get the help she needed.  I thought I was going to lose her and that, I could not endure.

So, we are moving forward instead of backward again.  We are working on all the right things at all the right times in all the right places and I look forward as the light grows around us again and the darkness fades.

We survived.  We persevered.  We endured.