That’s right! Use Duct Tape.
So here’s a question to people of faith? If you are reading this, I assume you have had your life turned upside down due to the sudden changes of behavior in a child you love. Your child’s behaviors tend to be high risk and dangerous. Logic has failed you. For the life of you, you cannot understand why your child is doing/saying some of the things they do or say.
Then they cross a line: they have become either a danger to themselves or to others. You find yourself being dragged, kicking and screaming, into the world of mental health services. Your child has been hospitalized in a psychiatric hospital. Your life will never be the same.
You enter into the strange world of denial. This can’t be happening to my daughter. She’s taking meds that will make her better. My job is to hold her accountable: chores at home, grades at school, to name a couple. But that doesn’t work, does it?
Anger begins to creep into your everyday life. You’re angry with your daughter, with her school, with her mother, with your extended family that seems to visit or call less often. Your anger slips into depression. You seek to comfort yourself with alcohol or substance abuse. You are desperate.
You are angry with your church for they say nothing. What happened to all the cards? … Meals? …Visits?…when cancer stuck its ugly head into the life of your family just a few years ago?
If you are a person of faith, you find yourself sitting in church surrounded with life as it should be… and you become angry with God. Why me, God? You soon begin avoiding the very place that once gave you such comfort. Your life is totally upside down.
So, what moved? Better yet, who moved? You did. And you feel justified in doing so. IF the church doesn’t care, I don’t care! And God? What evidence is there that He cares?
In hindsight, it is such a predictable path we follow. The sad thing is that some of us never realize that it is a path to self destruction.
It’s amazing what hell we will put ourselves through before we fall to our knees and call out for help. When we do, we are surprised to find out that He was there all along. We had moved! God did not.
So how can you use Duct Tape to heal your anger with God? Follow His first great commandment: ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ Matthew 22:37
Someone challenged me! “ If you claim that God is the most important entity in your life, don’t you think you should be talking with God and not ignoring him?” As I wrote earlier this week, how can you help if all you do is fight? Ignoring God is a passive form of aggression. It doesn’t work, does it?
The day I got on my knees before God was the day I began to use Duct Tape: to talk with Him each and every day in focused reflective prayer. It was the beginning of the end of pain for me. It was the day I began to acknowledge my own role in my daughter’s acting out: she was afraid of me. How could I help her when she feared me? It was the day that I finally acknowledged that my daughter suffered from a mental illness: Bipolar Disorder. It was the day that I discovered a new hope: her recovery. It was the day I began to search openly for answers. It was the day that miracles began to happen in my life.
If it moves, and shouldn’t … use Duct Tape. You can read the whole story in my book, Duct Tape and WD 40 … a parent’s guide to the mysteries of a bipolar child”.
Tags: Add new tag, bipolar, children, faith, mental illness, parents
