Today is the Feast day of Saint James

Prayer to the Holy Spitit
Come Holy Spitit
fill my heart with you holy gifts.
Let My Weakness Be Penetrated With Your
strength this very day that I may fulfill all the
duties of my state conscientiously, that I may do what is right and just.
Let My Charity Be Such As To Offend No One
and hurt no one's feelings; so generous as to pardon sincerely any wrong done to me.
Assist Me, O Holy Spirit,
in all my trials of life, enlighten me in my ignorance, advise me in my doubts, strengthen me in my weakness, help me in all my needs, protect me in temptations and console me in afflictions.
Graciously Hear Me, O Holy Spirit,
and pour Your light into my heart, my soul and my mind.
Assist Me To Live A Holy Life And Grow In goodness and grace. Amen.
Fr.Larry Hess

I have been telling you the story of my son and our journey with his illness. I don't really like the term illness because I don't think of it as something that comes as an uninvited guest into your life like a cold or cancer. Whatever this is, it is apart of him that can no sooner be cut out than an internal organ. No it is not an illness any more than Down syndrom is an illness. My third child who is also a son was talking to me last night about the effect his brother has had on him in the past and in the present. He told me that he can understand him better than anyone that it has also been a gauge as to how he has come to understand the rest of the world and relate to people. This can either be a good thing or a bad thing it all depends on what kind of a mood he is in. I asked him if he thought his brother was getting better or if he was the same or worse. He said that it doesn't really change its just him isn't it always the same. He also added that he thought he had developed some of the traits of a schizophrenic because he had spent so much time with his brother over the years. I feel that way too I said. Sometimes I'm not sure what is real and what isn't. I'm not saying that he is contagious that would be absurd what I am saying is that all the time I spend in dealing with him sometimes I become confused between his reality and mine. He was telling me how he wanted to commit suicide when he was in middle-school and high-school and how he worked it out and got his life back on track. I asked him why he did not come and talk to me about what was going on? That I could have helped with some of it. He told me I had more than I could handle with his brother. I could feel my heart twist inside my chest to think that I could have lost a child and spent the rest of my life wondering what went wrong. But as he talked about why he wanted to die I heard a lot of self loathing and frustration that he didn't think anyone would understand or he didn't stop to think about what it would do to the rest of the family we were not a concern because he was so wrapped up in his own misery. How many times have I felt like that? How many times have I been so involved with my own pain that I could not see what it was doing to those around me? We talked until four am and then there was nothing left to say for the time being so we just said good night. This is not the first time I have had to digest this information from him and it won't be the last I just hope that I can be there again for him.
Remember Saint Monica
Come Holy Spirt, Come by means of your powerful intercessor the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
Amen.

Continuation

Let's begin with a prayer:
Dear Heavenly Father, watch over and guide our loved ones and ourselves as we go about the business of living. Ever mindful that we are not alone because you love us more than we can possibly imagine. Dear Father, you know our hearts and our minds may they always be in tune with you and not with this world. Let us keep in mind that we are holy because you created us and you are holy and so all that you create is also. Thank you Father for all you have done for us this day and all you continue to do for us. Amen

I was looking at my journal that I am currently writing in and like most of my journals I don't fill one before starting on another so some of them may have entries going back three years or more. The one I am speaking about now is like this and sometimes I will read what I had written to see how I have grown. The date is sometime in 2001 and I am writing about being alone and spending a lot of time in the house. I write that my older daughter is sugesting that I find an outside intrest possibly a job and I am upset because noone understands what I am going through and why just getting a job wouldn't do the trick. As it turns out I did get a job that only lasted a few months before the let me go for lack of business. Then I suprised myself and kept looking until I found another one that I kept for two years and only left for health reasons. Soon I will be starting yet another job when school begins in August. What i realized after reading my entry was that I was wallowing in self- pity and my daughter was right I needed to get out and do something. So here is to my oldest daughter.

My story is an on going process as I am sure all of yours are. Just when we think that we can stop and catch our breath we are faced with a new challange. I was writing about how lonely I felt because of my situation with my oldest son. How isolated I thought it made me and this is probably what caused my depression. However during all of this I never stopped going to Mass or stopped teaching Religious Education that I had started doing in 1977. I don't know what I would have done it had not been for the church and my faith. I have always found comfort in my religion even though it has been hard to understand how God could love me as much as the Priest said that he did and accept the eucharist knowing that it was pure love meant for me. Sometimes I felt like I was hanging on by a thread and at any minute I was going to fall and never get up again but the Love he had and still has for me did not let me do that.

My son had been abused by the school he was attending and looking back on it now I wish I had, had more information about home schooling because I would have done it in a heart beat. Even though I thought about it, my low self-esteem was getting in the way and I did not think I could undertake such challange. So there we were, teachers and students all trying to cause my child harm. It became so bad that by the time he was in second grade he was punishing himself. If a child saw him out on the playground and did not want him there he would tell my son that the teacher was mad at him. My son did not question this remark instead he would go back to the classroom and either put his head down on his desk or stand in the corner facing the wall. The teacher who found him this way did not understand how a child would come to punish himself simply on someone's word. There were a lot of similar incidents throughout his school years. It was in ninth grade that someone other than myself actually confirmed what I knew. It was at the end of the year and a boy in one of his classes who had been picking on him all year finially decided to fight my son. Well after eighth grade when someone broke his collar bone we had put him in Karate so he had confidence that I had not seen in him before. The story goes that during class the kid kept taunting my son to fight so right there in front of the teacher no less my son said,"Come on." The kid charged at him over a few rows of desks and all my son did was what he had been taught in karate class, he put out his hand so that the kid hit his open palm with his forehead and was sent reeling backward. Not understanding what had happened to him, he charged again and with the same result. By now one of the students had left the classroom to get help and someone stopped the boy who was still intent on doing harm. When I got the call I was as usual on my guard. What did he do this time? Yes I will speak to him. The same old stuff. But this call was different the counselor who spoke to me was quite upset at her discovery. It seems that after speaking to the students in the room she was convinced that my son was and had been socially abused. I was in a state of shock because I forgot to get her name a big mistake on my part as it was proof as to what I believed and what I had been telling anyone who would listen. Needless to say that without that name my husband still would not listen to me on the matter. It wasn't until our son was diagnosed that he began to see a pattern and decided that after all that time it was not me that was at fault.

Let's close with a prayer: Saint Monica you know what it is like to suffer at the hands of your own spouse. You know what it is like to see your child turn away from the faith and flounder in this life. Teach us how to have your strength and patience. Teach us how to rely on the power of prayer and the Love of the Lord to face each and every day. Amen

Remember always Saint Monica. God Bless

July 13th

Where to begin? There is so much I would like to share that beginning is hard. Lets begin with a prayer that I found out on the web.
Exemplary Mother of the great Augustine, you perseveringly pursued your wayward son not with wild threats but with prayerful cries to heaven. Intercede for all mothers in our day so that they may learn to draw their children to God. Teach them how to remain close to their children, even the prodigal sons and daughters who have sadly gone astray. Amen
At the age of eighteen my oldest son was diagnosed with Schizophrenia. This was not a shock to me as you might think it would be. I was told that I was exhibiting unusual behavior toward the news. The reason for this was that I had known something was different about my child from the day he was born. Noone would listen to me they all said it was just first time mother syndrome. I have started to write down all the things that happened to try and make sense of everything. I even thought of writing a book so others would understand who he is today but it is in the process of becoming for now. The reason I am telling you all this is because that his behavior kept me in isolation. I believed that I could only associate with others if they did not know my son or they had not experienced what they might view as troubling to them after being with him. Let me put it this way he was one of those people whose behavior was not predictable or comprehensible and people especially other children felt uncomfortable sometimes even frightened around him. He was not dangerous nor did he do things that were bizarre. He just seemed to make them uneasy by staring or twitching he did not show any emotion and he watched people and sometimes copied their behavior but nothing that would scare anyone. Still the days he went to school I lived in dread of the phone. Other mothers would not let their children play with him and they did not like the idea of me babysitting because it meant exposure to him. This put me in a difficult possition since I was part of a babysitting C0-Op. My other children were viewed with suspicion until people realized they were not the same as their brother then they took pity on them and invited them out so they ended up spending a lot of time away from home. It became tiresome for them when they were asked endlessly how they could live with a brother like theirs As they came into their teen years they resented him so much that they did not want to bring friends into the house and they began to stay away more and more. Our fourth child is ten years younger than her brother so she was blissfully unaware of a lot of what had gone on before she was living like an only child especially since her other siblings were not around her that much. This was a lonely time for me as it was hard to make friends and I was not an outgoing personality at that time. I had noone to talk too since my mother had died when he was five and all she told me was that I was going to need more patience with him than with the others. Little did she know what an understatement that was. I had stopped worrying about what other people thought of me and had started praying for someone to talk and be with. My husband was away much of the time so he did not understand what it was like on a day to day basis nor did he want to believe that anything was wrong with his son he just thought that I was turning him into a mommies boy. It was during this time that I began to blame myself for what was wrong and this wasn't hard because the school was blaming me and family members were blaming me everyone was sure that some how even though my other children were fine I had and was messing up my oldest. When puberty hit his personality changed and that was when his religious education leader called me and told me that I needed to get him to a psychiatrist. After the doctor saw him and talked to him he asked me a series of questions and I discovered that he had all but one of the symptoms that the doctor was naming and the doctor turned to me and said he only needs five. It was at this time that I found out that my son was in the 3percent of schizophrenics that are born with it. His is more commonly known as a personality disorder called schizotypal (this may not be the correct spelling).
I am going to stop here for now if you have any comments on what I have said so far please feel free to express them.