It's So Much Fun Watchin' God: That Moment in Time

I can see in my minds' eye the time I realized how unreasonable and damaging my screaming rages were.

We had recently acquired a computer - our first. My son talked me into buying it so he 'could use it for school'. How many parents of children in the 90's succumbed to that particular logic? The only school use I recall is his request to take it to school for a dance because he had so much music downloaded on it. I was a bit protective of the machine, and refused. Wish I hadn't.

A very intense romantic relationship had just illogically blown up when the following sad incident happened. I was frustrated, hurt, angry at life in general.

My 16 year old son was on the computer, and it was time for him to do something. I told him to turn off the computer. Whether he didn't do it immediately or not, I don't recall. What I do recall is that I screamed at him to shut it down NOW!

The look of fear and hurt in his eyes as he said 'mom, I did but it takes a while to shut down," still causes tears to run down my now much older face.

That was the beginning of the end of the yelling. It didn't stop, but I saw myself in that moment, and I didn't like it.

Life got more depressed, because the doc asked me to stop taking my 'happy pill' supplements for 6 weeks so he could run some tests.

In the meantime, we moved. By then I was so severely depressed that I didn't even think about the happy pills.

My son did something - probably related to a video game or something (I hate the things, because they are to me, and are according to me, as bad as drugs or drinking or gambling.) I promptly started screaming at him, arms flailing in the air.

With something akin to compassion, with a bit of hurt mixed in, (or maybe the other way around) he looked at me and calmy asked if I had been taking my happy pills.

A light went off in my brain.

Immediately I calmed down. To this day, when I get unreasonable, that question from those I love immediately diffuses an undeserved tantrum.

'No...'

God was so good to me. Still is. I happened to have part of a bottle of those happy pills, and I knew where they were. Even though we barely had enough money to live on, when that bottle ran out, I found a way to buy more.

The rages became less frequent and less intense rapidly. I didn’t stop taking those supplements again until just recently, also for a test, when my wonderful husband helped me through it. (And I didn’t ever get to the rage stage! Thanks Lord!)

I'm not sure my son has forgotten or forgiven those rages or if the effects have been mitigated. I can only pray that God will work in his life in such a way ‘all things will work together for good' for him. I hope he knows I love him, and that he saved my life more times than he will ever know, both literally and figuratively.

May I live to see the day I can say of this devastating problem...

It's so much fun watchin' God!

This post was precipatated by a facebook link to this article.

I wanted to add these pictures in the post, but didn't want to distract from the seriousness of the post, so here they are now.