Peace at Any Cost?

Our sweet boy who chews has been undergoing extensive psychological testing in an effort to figure out how to help him.  I’ll admit to hoping for a magic pill.  Every time I dropped him off or picked him up from the office, I would pray quietly “Just let there be a pill, an easy fix.  Please let there be a magic bullet.  I know his life never works this way, but just once let it be simple. Please, please, please.”

We got the results yesterday, and for part of it there is a little magic pill.  A pill, or combination of pills, which will calm down the worry and anxiety in his young mind.  It works on the part which causes anxiety which is the part which causes the chewing.  It’s never that simple.  The part of the mind which causes anxiety is also the area which houses the imagination.  To calm the worry would quiet the wonder.

He is my imaginative child.  He’s the boy who takes a box and builds a castle, takes some old clothes and a cape and becomes Zorro, takes paper and assorted odds and ends and creates an elaborate collection of toys and scenery.  You cannot separate the boy from his imagination.  I simply cannot envision #3 without a cape.  He would no longer be the boy we love.

There is a magic pill, but it would take away from him all that he is.  We refuse to live without him. There is no magic pill for him.  He will have to work at it.  But he will have the help of a family who loves him and thinks that all that he is is too wonderful to live without.  We will have to help him to work at it, all of us together.  Please pray that we will be enough.