I think God made a mistake when He made me...

Those are the words that I heard from my daughter not once, but twice today. Talk about heart breaking! What do you say to that? I tried to reassure her that God made her perfect and that He has big plans for her life. She is here for a purpose and that we love her. She is beautiful inside and out. But I don't think that much of it got through the fog of depression that is settling into her brain.

I know it has been a long time since I updated this. I have thought of lots of things to write about, but have found that life is rushing by at the speed of light and I just can't find the time to sit down in front of the computer. It is funny, I went to a ladies conference this past weekend and one of the speakers was a comedian who was just great. She did touch on birth order in her routine and made mention of the "baby" of the family who had probably come with their mom and was sitting by them right now. Of course I am the baby of the family and I was sitting with my mom. That was all great until she said that it was time for the babies to go out and get a job. It was all I could do not to stand up and say but I do have a job... not one but two part time jobs, plus I am going to school, being a wife and mother, oh yeah, and raising a bipolar child. I could still laugh at the stero-type of the baby in the family. But it did get me thinking.

So the short version of what has happened in the past month is that we were able to get hospital/homebound services for Mary, and she is attending school part time (for the last 2 classes of the day). We are up for re-evaluation on those services now and have to make some decisions as to what to do. If we add in any more classes, we lose the homebound services. But if we don't add them in, she will be disappointed (she was looking forward to art and creative expressions) and will have to wait 9 weeks before we can think of adding them again. She is not stable enough to handle a full day of classes, so that is not an option. We are still adjusting those medications to try and level out the anxiety issues. Obviously we are not there yet.

One interesting (or terrifying?) thing we have learned about the way that Mary thinks... when ever she becomes uncomfortable with any situation, no matter how minor, her brain automatically jumps to the "I don't want to live anymore" thoughts. Most kids would think that this is the worst day ever, maybe tomorrow will be better? Or that person really upset me, I am mad at them. Or I am really uncomfortable/unhappy about this, I want it to change. But with Mary it is an automatic I want to die. Or another one that we hear- I will never trust that person again. We are working with her therapist and here at home to try and help her brain not jump to such dire conclusions. Obviously we are not there yet with that either.

So, back to her comments to me today. She is really struggling with depression this week. It could be all kinds of circumstances that have led up to this. I was gone this past weekend (and I am almost never gone). Mark left the day after I got home for a couple of weeks. School could or could not change in the next two weeks? We went up on the anxiety medication and the last time we did that I noticed an increase in suicidal thinking for a couple of days. AND... it is October, a historically hard month for her. I guess it is just a matter of watching, waiting, and praying for improvement. And preaching to myself the same thing that I am telling her. God has BIG plans for all of this!