I found this old post that I never published last year around this time. I wrote it before my father became ill and I don't know why I never published it but I will do so now.....
Written Spring 2014 Regarding Fall 2013....
6 months since the last time I wrote so much has changed. I went back to school in the fall and was laid-off shortly after. It was a surreal experience. I knew since the acquisition it was only a matter of time but the way it came about was odd and secretive and unprofessional. First, my colleagues and contacts from the other branches stopped communicating with me all together. Clearly they had been told I would be laid off and ordered not to talk to me about it. Then I kept finding out about emails I was excluded from with important announcements or meetings that were being made to my region. I was floating around the office anxiously for weeks with a lot of free time on my hands just waiting to be summoned or something. I finally lost my patience when a colleague sauntered into my office with another office mate to check out her new future space. I grabbed my purse, left my key in the drawer and marched over to my manager's office. He had been ignoring my phone calls and queries. He wasn't in so I told his office mate to tell him I was "very upset and that I was looking for him". I got in my car and left knowing it was probably the last time I'd set foot in there.
The phone call came. My manager was completely robotic and void of any expression at all. He made the required polite apologies for my distress and said all the legally-correct things and told me I did not need to return on Monday.
In the meantime I had taken a second job as an elder care giver in anticipation of the lay-off but that lasted about 4 weeks. There was another crisis brewing at home. So I quit. Quitting the second job led to a mixup with Unemployment and I had to face a very uncomfortable hearing with my former latter employer (and friend) to clear my name and get my benefits reinstated.
I can't even think back towards this past fall without anxiety and sorrow. The lay-off, the hearing were nothing compared to the crisis that ensued. October, especially, brings about a deep abiding ache in my soul.
My beautiful sweet daughter had been struggling in isolation with deep depression and anxiety that led to serious suicide ideation. She had kept this hidden for over a year.
When I finally took her to a psychiatrist, the medicine she was given exacerbated her suicide ideation. She was having break downs and panic attacks in school sometimes three times a day. We decided to hospitalize her. She was relieved to be able to fall apart in a safe place after holding herself together for so long. I can't even write about it without a resurfacing of pain and tears.
If you knew Izzy you would know that she's a tough stoic 15 yr old who allows herself no excuses to indulge. She's used to pain. When she suffered with excruciating heel pain during field hockey (from a temporary condition called Severs disease) she would push herself to run harder or when we walked endless miles on the boardwalk on family vacations, she wouldn't say a word about the pain. She would keep walking. She thought that if the rest of the world could walk so effortlessly then she had no excuse.
I imagine this is what she told herself when anxiety started to creep into her thoughts. She would push herself through the conflict or the test. When depression would cloud her thoughts she probably wondered why everybody else walked around contented and so she withdrew into herself with no excuse to absolve her. Living daily became painful. Anxiety about future events plagued her thoughts months in advance. She was stuck in an obsessive thought patterns that turned to self loathing. Eventually death seemed like a welcome relief.
So we hospitalized her, we medicated her, we loved her, we fed her and held her. We prayed for her and over her and then we did it all over again.
It was a painful time mixed with God's beautiful grace. Because I've never been one to hide my family's "dirty laundry" I told everybody. This ensured me that we would be judged, I'm sure, but equally, if not more, covered in prayer. I've never understood the Christian's need to appear unbroken. We are all so broken. People fed us, they prayed for us, they brought prayer shawls for her, they visited her, they anointed her. When we chose to be transparent, people started confessing their struggles with depression too. It was a bittersweet time. I honestly don't understand how people go through crises when they don't believe in God's sovereignty. To think that there are poor afflicted souls who believe they are fatherless and they have to summon the strength from within themselves to get through tragedy is heartbreaking. Life is hard enough!
This ongoing journey has not been an easy one and it's not over but I look at Isabel today and she's changed. She's not cured, that will be a lifetime journey, but she has tools now to help her. She's growing as Jesus walks beside her in the dark valleys. My mother's heart yearns for the day when she will be filled with joy and light for more than moments at a time...until then I will pray.
