Reflection

The days run on one after the other in our household, each one almost the same as the last. Days of tedium and monotony, days that would drive many men to tears from boredom, are periods of welcome bliss for us. We have had much too much unpredictability in the last six months, what we crave most is peace. By  God’s mercy, it has finally come.

I can hear Alphonse running downstairs, his shouts echoing throughout the house. And yet, they are no longer shouts of anger and despair, of fear and anxiety; these days, he shouts in glee, his squeals and laughter music to our ears. He has been angry and afraid for far too long that the sounds of his laughter now make us weep with joy.  These days, everything is wondrous to him, it seems, as he savors with delight the pleasures denied him all these months.

And me, I am braver. Stronger. Whole. My heart no longer lurches inside my chest in constant dread. My hands no longer shake in trepidation. For the first time in a long time, I am quiet and still, the nagging voices inside my head gone silent.  I no longer ask; I listen.

Thank you, Lord, for the wonders of Your mercy.

A Mother’s Prayer

Tonight, as I wait for Alphonse to go to bed, I sit in a darkened room, away from him. My heart still longs for those nights when my husband and I would put him to bed and he would sleep, his hands in our hands, secure in the comfort of our constancy. These days, as our presence continues to cause him anxiety and difficulty, we are forced to withdraw to give him calm and peace. In these moments of separation, I reach out to the heavens in prayer, imploring Him who listens to hear our pleas for mercy and healing.

I found this beautiful prayer online, written by a mother whose son has schizophrenia. I was moved to tears by the sincerity of her prayer and how her prayers echoed mine in many ways. As we struggle to make sense of our son’s sudden descent into neuropsychiatric hell, prayer has been my refuge and solace. Allow me to share this with you, from the blog Politipidity  and pray with us, please.

A Mother’s Prayer for Mental Illness

As I stumble from my bed this morning, help me to remember to be gentle and kind.
My child’s mind is shredding into a million pieces. He lives in a constant state of atrocious fear. I can see it in his eyes. Give him peace.

Guide me as I hold him in my arms. Help me to know what to say. What to do. Fill my heart with healing love, understanding, and empathy.

Give me the strength of a thousand angels to hold back my tears. My heart is broken and a tidal wave of grief is overwhelming me with the need to cry. Give me the strength to bear it long enough to keep it from disturbing my child. Help me find someone I can safely bring it to.

Help me answer my family’s questions with the same amount of compassion I would want for my self. Help me remember they are hurting too. This is an unwelcomed assault on an entire family. My heart is not the only heart that is broken. We all need time and each other to heal.

As my journey becomes more and more isolative and lonely, remind me that the lack of involvement on the part of family and friends is not always because of the stigma and the ignorance. For many, it is because they are hurting too. They have the privelege of turning to their own lives. This is my family’s life now. I must deal with it whether I am hurting or not.

Send me your best physicians and healers. Give me presence of mind, as I walk through the exhaustion of my grief to not settle for just any one no matter how tiresome the journey becomes.

Help me adjust to the idea, that although it appears my son is gone, there will be no goodbye. And that he is still inside somewhere waiting for us to find him.

Infuse the creative part of my mind with solution oriented thinking. Give me hope. Even if it is just a glimmer of hope. A mother can go for miles on just one tiny glimmer. Let me see just a flicker of the sparkle of joy in his eyes.

Guide my hands, calm my mind, as I fill out the multitude of forms for services. Then help me do it again over and over.

Provide me with the knowledge. Lead me to the books I need to read, the organizations I need to connect with. As you work though the people in my life, help me to recognize those that are here to help. Help me trust the right ones. Shine a light upon the right path.

Give me the courage to speak my truth; to know my son’s truth. And to speak for him when he is unable to do it for himself. Show me when to do for him what he is not capable of doing for himself. Help me to recognize the difference.

Help me to stand tall in the face of the stigma; to battle the discrimination with the mighty sword of a spiritual warrior. And to deflect the sting of blame and faultfinding from the ignorant and the cruel.

Preserve my love for my family. Shield my marriage with the wisdom of the love that brought us together.

Protect him from homelessness, loneliness, victimization, poverty, hunger, hopelessness, relapse, drugs, alcohol, suicide, cruelty and obscurity.

Lead us to the miracles of better medications, better funding, better services, safe and plentiful housing, meaningful employment, communities who care, enlightenment. Help us to find some way to replace all the greed with humanitarian work and intrinsic reward again.

Most of all, give me the strength to deliver whatever I can to the work of unmasking the man made ugliness of this disease and revealing the human and all of it’s suffering beneath.

Finally, when it is my time to leave my son behind, send a thousand angels to take my place.

~0~

Just Believe

This morning, I woke up my husband and kids to some good news from Jude’s mom.

Jude’s Mom’s FB Update: The doctor came by to tell us they found no traces of leukemia. Although he only has 400 marrow cells present (and wants to see at least 10,000) and cannot be “officially” in remission. Jude will be retested in two weeks. It’s still good news because if there had been any cancer, they would’ve started him again with chemo tonight. Thank you God!!!

Thank you to all who prayed with us yesterday. Jude’s fight is not over yet and we ask you for more prayers for the coming weeks so God will work more miracles in Jude’s life. Right now, it’s hard to wipe these silly grins off our faces as we savor and relish this piece of good news.

I believe in miracles and let me tell you why.

In 2003, my dad had two consecutive hemorrhagic strokes, his sixth and seventh in ten years. Inside the Intensive Care Unit weeks after his initial confinement, his stats suddenly plummeted. When they worked him up, they found a leaking aortic aneurysm. Because he was very unstable, they worked on him medically for days before finally scheduling him for surgery. During those days, he hovered between life and death, between long bouts of sleep and brief moments of consciousness. Dad’s surgeons were not hopeful but were willing to brave the odds. When the surgeons opened him up, they found out the aneurysm had not leaked. It had burst, and by their estimation, it had happened days earlier. The doctors also found a fistula on a large leg vein which siphoned off the blood spilling from his aorta. Without this anomaly, my dad would have died on February 9, 2003, my son’s tenth birthday.

I believe in miracles.

It happened to us and it can happen to you.

Just believe.

Faith

“Faith is a knowledge within the heart, beyond the reach of proof.” ~ Kahlil Gibran

In August of 2008, my husband, son Alex, and I watched a concert. As is our tradition, I kept the tickets as souvenirs of the night. I left them on my bedside table and kept a mental note to remember to store them in the family memory box. A few days later, however, I noticed the tickets were damp; one was completely wet. I had inadvertently left a glass of water unattended. The condensation had dripped off the chilled glass and onto the things I had on the table. Not wanting to throw the tickets out, I left them face up to dry.

The next day, I found this.

What do you see?

I got goose pimples when I first saw this. I am not a superstitious person and somewhere in the back of my rational mind, I believe that the figure I see in this scrap of paper was created by nothing more than happenstance or coincidence. And yet, my heart believes otherwise.

What do I see, you ask? I see a man, with his head slightly bowed, his arms stretched upwards.  In my heart, I believe the man to be Jesus, as He was on the cross.

I will not try to convince anyone else of what I see or what I believe. I show this only as a reminder that even in this most ordinary world, some things still cannot be explained except by faith.

To the Man who died on the cross for us, may we always be worthy of Your sacrifice, Lord.

Have a blessed Holy Week, everyone, and see you next week!

The Gift

Two weeks ago, I was absolutely strapped for cash. For the first time in a really long time, I lost track of all my spending and ended up not having a lot to spare. Yes, it would have been very easy to ask my husband for more money, and I know he would have found a way to give it too, even if it hurts (he is that kind, thank You, Lord), BUT having just a smidgen of pride left, I decided not to. I thought that since I created this problem, I ought to learn from it. For the next two weeks, I decided, I would have to be content with having less than P300 in my pocket, and I would have to tighten my finances and curb any impulse to buy anything.

It sounds rather silly, thinking about my predicament, especially since so many people in our country actually do subsist on so much less. I think that was what put it in perspective for me. And so, while this little worrying thought (the persistent what-if?) nagged at the back of my head, I was able to put it aside and not dwell too much on it.

One Friday, as I did my normal thrice-weekly run, I was drawn to a chapel along my route. I heard voices singing and I felt compelled to come in to listen to mass. When Offertory came, I got what I was carrying on me (PhP200) and dropped half in the collections basket. “God, please, just take care of me,” I whispered a silent prayer. As mass ended, I felt incredibly lighter and worry-free. For the first time in days, I could even smile about my last P100 bill.

When I got home that day, my inbox was filled with news of sales and new items for Hello Kitty collectors. I enjoyed looking at them as I browsed through pictures. I opened my network accounts, reading through news of friends and relatives. One item caught my eye and I hurriedly clicked on the link. One of my generous friends, Sonia, had held a special raffle of Hello Kitty items in honor of her birthday, and to my surprise, I had won! First prize, can you imagine that!

I’ve never really been lucky in games of chance and  raffles; I’ve never won anything remotely interesting in my life from any of them (well, except for a golf cap I got as 15th consolation prize  from a Tropical Hut promo when I was 13), so this was both a blessing and a surprise. I was so giddy  with excitement that I called everyone in the house and showed them the lovely HK cosmetic carry case I had won. We jumped up and down and shrieked and laughed. Judging from our reactions, you’d think I’d have won the lotto.

That night, before I went to bed, I thought about how God really took care of me that day. Of how he gave me a gift to remind me that His love heals all worries. My troubles seem silly and petty when seen against the backdrop of the world’s greater problems, but I think of this incident as a little nudge from God, reminding me to be faithful.

So thank you, dear Sonia, for your generous gesture of sharing. And thank you, dear Lord, always, for Your gifts of friends and love in my life always.

Silent Reflection

Just one of those days when nothing seems right. I burnt my laminator to a crisp while making PECS cards last night. A brought it to the repair center today and it set us back a tidy sum to have it repaired (I think I fried the heating element). Then, after 40 minutes of Wii Fit this morning, I forgot I left the game disc when I turned it off. When I turned it on again, I heard a popping sound and the Wii won’t start anymore. I have to wait for A to come home to look at it. I’m hoping it isn’t broken…

I’m complaining, I know… which is pretty bad considering the circumstances of the world today. Gas is at an alltime high. The cost of energy has significantly increased just in the last few months. Food is so expensive (imagine, a can of luncheon meat costs 1/7 of the minimum daily wage in the country!). People line up almost all day just to get a kilo or two of cheap rice (I see them everyday; I live rather near a government rice depot.) The list goes on…

And just when I am feeling low, along comes this beautiful reminder of hope. That while there are many things out there that can hurt us, He is always there to shield us and protect us from the hailstorms of life.

I’m hanging in here, my friends. Hope you all are too.