Discovery Part 5
story resumes from here...
The year that follows is also a haze. So I'm simply going to list in no particular order the highlights: our son leaves juvenille detention and goes to an in between residential adolescent type home for several weeks, he is on probation, he goes off of medicine, he begins to hang out with the wrong crowd again, runs away, agitated, manic, doing things like taking large pieces of cardboard and laying them all over the backyard and painting in the middle of the night, drawing all over the back of his door, has grandiose ideas about himself, just to name a few things.
Yet, in God's gracious mercy, somewhere in this time frame our son places his faith in Jesus Christ as his Savior. The world of psychiatry calls this being "hyper~religious", but I know differently. I was with him as he prayed, and I've seen fruit and evidence of a believing faith and relationship with God ever since. For this I am beyond grateful to God!
But the tornado resumes. And it gets bigger. Our son is increasing in mania. Whether he hears voices or not, we do not know, because he has no insight into his ever increasing disturbing behavior. He does not believe he is ill. A phenomenon defined as "anosognosia", we later learn.
And so I come to that day. The day that the next phase of our nightmare begins. Our son is now 18. This age is significant and I will share more about why that is shortly.
I believe it was a Wednesday or Thursday, my father calls me on the phone. He had just taken a nap earlier in the day and he had a sense from God that he needed to wake up and turn on the television. Now what I'm going to share next might result in a chuckle from my liberal reader friends...but hey, don't laugh...he turned on the Glenn Beck program. Glenn was talking about his upcoming "American Revival" in Phoenix. My dad called to see if I wanted to go and bring someone with me. Actually, he insisted I go. I said I would speak to my husband but we were in the thick of things with our son and I didn't think I could pull it off. My husband tells me I should go, but he has to work. My father buys two tickets for me and I ask my sister and law, who is also one of my best friends, to go with me.
Because our son is not doing well, we finagle a plan to have one of our older sons come over to the house that weekend morning of the Glenn Beck conference.
In case you didn't believe me, just had to share this picture of the conference ;O).
In the middle of the conference, Glenn Beck runs into his daughter's neurosurgeon from Phoenix at the break. Yea, that's Glenn way down on the floor...he begins to cry, as only Glenn can do, and retells the story of his daughter's first days of life. He begins by saying, "I knew there was a reason why I came to Phoenix to do this show".
You see, his daughter was born with cerebral palsy. When the doctors did a scan of her brain, they brought Glenn and his wife into a room to view the results. This particular doctor told them before he showed the pictures that every where they see black on the screen, that will be blood. He then placed the photo up to the lights and her brain was completely black.
They were devastated.
But then he gave them a beam of hope..."the brain makes a way...the brain can create new pathways"....
even as I type this I am crying...I knew I had to be there, if only to hear this one particular story. The whole theme of the American Revival to me was that even though the news is bad, and I was about to hear some very bad news (though I didn't know it)...God makes a way.
There is hope.
The year that follows is also a haze. So I'm simply going to list in no particular order the highlights: our son leaves juvenille detention and goes to an in between residential adolescent type home for several weeks, he is on probation, he goes off of medicine, he begins to hang out with the wrong crowd again, runs away, agitated, manic, doing things like taking large pieces of cardboard and laying them all over the backyard and painting in the middle of the night, drawing all over the back of his door, has grandiose ideas about himself, just to name a few things.
Yet, in God's gracious mercy, somewhere in this time frame our son places his faith in Jesus Christ as his Savior. The world of psychiatry calls this being "hyper~religious", but I know differently. I was with him as he prayed, and I've seen fruit and evidence of a believing faith and relationship with God ever since. For this I am beyond grateful to God!
But the tornado resumes. And it gets bigger. Our son is increasing in mania. Whether he hears voices or not, we do not know, because he has no insight into his ever increasing disturbing behavior. He does not believe he is ill. A phenomenon defined as "anosognosia", we later learn.
And so I come to that day. The day that the next phase of our nightmare begins. Our son is now 18. This age is significant and I will share more about why that is shortly.
I believe it was a Wednesday or Thursday, my father calls me on the phone. He had just taken a nap earlier in the day and he had a sense from God that he needed to wake up and turn on the television. Now what I'm going to share next might result in a chuckle from my liberal reader friends...but hey, don't laugh...he turned on the Glenn Beck program. Glenn was talking about his upcoming "American Revival" in Phoenix. My dad called to see if I wanted to go and bring someone with me. Actually, he insisted I go. I said I would speak to my husband but we were in the thick of things with our son and I didn't think I could pull it off. My husband tells me I should go, but he has to work. My father buys two tickets for me and I ask my sister and law, who is also one of my best friends, to go with me.
Because our son is not doing well, we finagle a plan to have one of our older sons come over to the house that weekend morning of the Glenn Beck conference.
You see, his daughter was born with cerebral palsy. When the doctors did a scan of her brain, they brought Glenn and his wife into a room to view the results. This particular doctor told them before he showed the pictures that every where they see black on the screen, that will be blood. He then placed the photo up to the lights and her brain was completely black.
They were devastated.
But then he gave them a beam of hope..."the brain makes a way...the brain can create new pathways"....
even as I type this I am crying...I knew I had to be there, if only to hear this one particular story. The whole theme of the American Revival to me was that even though the news is bad, and I was about to hear some very bad news (though I didn't know it)...God makes a way.
There is hope.
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