K
KLHarper7
Guest
I’m hoping some of you have some ideas here, my husband and I are in unknown territory. Some background might help…my son is 15 and is the middle of 6 sisters. He has always had the most tender heart, but has also been attacked by the evil one since a child. He would wake in the night screaming like he was on fire from about age 3 to 14. He has always slept with night lights (some years it was his full on bedroom light). He told us a few years ago that he, “couldn’t tell us” why he woke screaming…he said we would never understand and that he couldn’t describe the creatures in his room because they didn’t really exist anywhere. We spoke to a trusted, very enlightened priest, who told us that we had to bless his room and BELIEVE HIM when he tells us things. He also said we needed to get our house blessed. We’ve lived in three different houses since the night terrors started. He couldn’t verbalize to us until he was about ten (in this current house). I might add, when my son was very little, he found some brown scapulars and tied them to the posts of his bed and slept with a rosary.
But in the last 18 months, he has changed. He sunk into a deep depression, he tried to kill himself, he had been self-harming. Our priest friend was killed in a car accident a few years ago. I cannot talk about evil affecting my son to the outside world…people will think we are nuts. The night terrors stopped. We had to temporarily place him in a treatment facility and begin anti-depressants. We thought things were ok and he wanted to wean off his meds. He was involved with public school activities, homeschool friends, Church youth group (even went to leadership camp), but in the last month I’ve seen him withdrawing more again and caught him self harming last week. We are again looking at treatment centers and chose one where he can do school during the day and be home at night and also put him back on the anti-depressants. I feel we are in a cycle though, that will not break, unless we can get the evil to leave him alone. When I tried to talk to him about “I don’t mean to dismiss your pain or demean it in any way. Teenage years are hard, but when you grow up you’ll realize that your stresses, your pain, is little compared with what the adult world has to deal with.” I did not expect this response. “I don’t believe in God, I hate you (well, I did expect that). There are people dying, suffering, pain, wars, famine, disease, hatred, evil, death…It is too much. God can’t exist in all that…” I know he has NEVER been able to come to grips with redemptive suffering. He gets physically pained when he sees others suffer. If my husband and I are talking about someone, my son will interject and say, “don’t talk about people” and walk off. He sees us as hypocrites, but it is so much worse every day. I would like to get him in with a monk or religious community that might help him make sense of it all. In my mind I have him spending spring break, working, eating, praying and living alongside a community of religious who are aware of the evil in the world and are practicing redemption for the world. Anyone have any ideas?
But in the last 18 months, he has changed. He sunk into a deep depression, he tried to kill himself, he had been self-harming. Our priest friend was killed in a car accident a few years ago. I cannot talk about evil affecting my son to the outside world…people will think we are nuts. The night terrors stopped. We had to temporarily place him in a treatment facility and begin anti-depressants. We thought things were ok and he wanted to wean off his meds. He was involved with public school activities, homeschool friends, Church youth group (even went to leadership camp), but in the last month I’ve seen him withdrawing more again and caught him self harming last week. We are again looking at treatment centers and chose one where he can do school during the day and be home at night and also put him back on the anti-depressants. I feel we are in a cycle though, that will not break, unless we can get the evil to leave him alone. When I tried to talk to him about “I don’t mean to dismiss your pain or demean it in any way. Teenage years are hard, but when you grow up you’ll realize that your stresses, your pain, is little compared with what the adult world has to deal with.” I did not expect this response. “I don’t believe in God, I hate you (well, I did expect that). There are people dying, suffering, pain, wars, famine, disease, hatred, evil, death…It is too much. God can’t exist in all that…” I know he has NEVER been able to come to grips with redemptive suffering. He gets physically pained when he sees others suffer. If my husband and I are talking about someone, my son will interject and say, “don’t talk about people” and walk off. He sees us as hypocrites, but it is so much worse every day. I would like to get him in with a monk or religious community that might help him make sense of it all. In my mind I have him spending spring break, working, eating, praying and living alongside a community of religious who are aware of the evil in the world and are practicing redemption for the world. Anyone have any ideas?