It started over the weekend. Over breakfast on Saturday he told his mother he was cutting himself. It went simultaneously very well and horribly wrong. To his mother’s credit, she didn’t get angry. She burst into tears and confessed to having done it when she was younger. She showed him some scars on her arms where she had cut/burned herself over the years. That sums up the good part. Within two minutes, however, she pulled the conversation back to herself and her problems. That morning needed to be about him, but in the hour+ the three of us spent out, only about 5-10 mins total were about anyone but her. I won’t enumerate the troubles she laid on his young, delicate shoulders. They’re big to the point of overwhelming, and will have their own post so I can react to them.
Victory: After breakfast, he and I talked about how it went. I asked about how he felt, and he blew all of her problems off with:
“I’m out of that, and I can’t worry about it.”
When I asked if he thought he would ever be strong enough to go back:
“If it’s just my mom, yes, but not yet. If her boyfriend is there, I don’t think I’ll ever be that strong.”
WOW
Just … WOW … I know he is worrying about them … but it’s a start!
Sunday we went to church. There we discussed Lenten failures (no details) and refocusing on where God is leading us. We put together an offering for Haiti. Topher took some of the change from his pocket and put it in.
Victory: He’s feeling comfortable enough about his own situation to start being generous to others!
Then yesterday rolled around. He had girl problems … again. He texted me, telling me he was done. He was going home, and didn’t want to talk. I told him I was proud of him for walking away from the situation (I was), and that I was going to be giving him a big hug when I got home. He cursed back at me, said no more hugs, no more talking, he was just going to deal with it his way. Then he stopped texting me back.
Small Victory: He started calling our house home last week, and I’m calling that a victory.
BIG VICTORY: He didn’t “deal with it his way” … he didn’t cut himself. He played a video game all day. He went in his room and chatted online. He cried and slept. He got lectured over the way he treated me.
But his skin is whole! No new cuts, no red lines.
Congratulations, kiddo. You survived another day … without hurting yourself.
aka: goofdad
7 comments:
Keep working it man. Every small victory leads to a championship win
Doesnt matter the final score or how you won
All that matters in you got the W
If you both feel like your winning than you are doing right
praise God for those victories.
Thanks! I'm working on the big W ... but I'm taking all the little W's along the way.
I'm working hard to focus on my goals for this blog. There have been defeats along the way, too, but I'm determined ...
A couple more things to remember:
1) it's not linear (crap)
B) The big W may not look just as you imagine it.
iii) Time, grasshopper.
Definitely more steps forward than backwards. You have faith, hope, and love. And the greatest of these....
You haven't said much about how the other kids are handling this - I am particularly concerned about the middle group (to young to UNDERSTAND - to old to not understand). I'm praying for all of them.
They're all handling it very well. Sylvia, Douglas, and Annika don't have the emotional baggage attached to cutting, and don't understand that it's a symptom. They just know they're glad to have an older brother and that it's sad he's hurting himself.
Ethan and Topher have been going at the same girl, and thus aren't getting along too well. I'm gonna blog about that shortly, so you'll see that in a minute.
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