This is My Son, Justice

Today seems like an appropriate day to introduce you to my son, Justice. He builds my faith. I love my son not for just being mine, but for being who he is and who he will one day become.

It was a year ago today, that I checked him into a behavioral health hospital. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do.

I really felt I had no choice, but looking back, I’m so glad I did. It has changed 12 years of living. It has changed everything.

My son lives with a mental illness that affects the whole family. From the time he was an infant, we have been held hostage.

He never, ever, liked to be touched, or cuddled. He cried. There was no soothing him.

As he got older we would tip toe around him. Anything could and would set him off. I called him a baby dinosaur.

By the time he was two, he was already terrorizing his older brother as well as his new baby brother.

I thought for sure he was going to kill his baby brother. While I was pregnant I started carrying around a doll in a car seat and calling him by name.

Everywhere we went the doll came too. Grandma’s, restaurants, babysitter’s…

We practiced feeding the baby, and washing the baby, and holding the baby. As well as, not hitting the baby, or sitting on the baby, or my favorite, not throwing the baby.

In grade school he would turn into what I would call the little Hulk. His anger escalated as he reminded us daily, “I don’t want to be apart of this family! I wish I was dead!”

Jr. High…I have no words. It was the worst. There was no one to help. Doctors didn’t have any answers.

Now he was beating things, throwing things across the room, threatening, “Call the cops! I’ll make them shoot me. I’m going to kill you!”

The day he shoved me, he whispered through a door, “You don’t understand, mom. I hear voices. They tell me to do things I don’t want to do.”

Our darkest day came a year or so after he was diagnosed with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), and Mood Dysregation Disorder (DMDD).

Doctors had been playing with cocktails of medications that brought only a short respite of symptoms before they came back with a vengeance and crushing our hopes.

Our darkest hour came on Monday, October 27th, 2014 at 4:30pm, when a nurse called and informed me, his doctor wanted him to be admitted to be evaluated, and I was to take him RIGHT NOW.

He was there for four days.

The terrorism had stopped, but we wait…we all know it can start again.

The voices are quiet, but the demons are still there.

So, this is Justice. This is the child that brings me to my knees, more than any other child. I praise God for that and for him. He makes me strong and he makes me weak.

Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid or terrified because of them, for the Lord your God goes with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you.” – Deuteronomy 31:6

But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. – 2 Corinthians 12:9