The End with a New Beginning

I know I should be in bed but it's been an eventful day.  I feel like I just finished a very long book and I am ready to begin a new one tomorrow.  With that comes a sense of loss and hope for a new beginning.  Enough of my vague and probably rambling sentences - on to the details!


RR was hospitalized tonight.  Unfortunately not before the kids witnessed a violent end to the evening.  Thankfully everyone is ok physically but it could have ended differently. We knew this could happen. We knew that RR would be very difficult to stabilize after having to remove him from the medication that has reduced his violence and kept it at bay for the past five years.  


I can say with peace and a strong sense of conviction that this was the last time RR will live at home and be able to victimize his family members.  It's the last time the kids will watch the ugly events unfold and fear for their safety and ours.  It's been a lot of years and a lot of work but our part in "hands on parenting" of RR is coming to an end.  We will continue to be family and continue to love him but it won't look the same. It is with a sense of sadness for all of us and a sense of peace knowing that it's time to be done.  Done with the anger and the violence.  It's probably long past due but the time is right.  


We have many things to be thankful for tonight.  Things could have ended much more seriously.  I'm thankful for the Rochester police department that responded in the time they did, in the middle of a snow storm.  I'm thankful for Scott, who walked in the door at the last possible second as I don't think I could have held things off any longer.  I'm thankful for the 911 operator that stayed on the line for what seemed like an eternity.  I'm thankful that AJ was taking a nap and missed all the excitement.  I'm thankful for the fact that RR got a bed in the hospital unit as it was the last one available in a 75 mile radius. I'm thankful the kids are asleep knowing they are safe.  I'm thankful tomorrow we are able to spend the day together and work through the events of this day.  I'm thankful it's done, finished.  For this I am confident; We have loved RR well, we have parented RR well.  We have shown him Jesus.


There are many that have helped us over the years with RR. You know who you are. You have provided many roles; respite provider, personal care assistant, crisis worker and friend.  You helped and listened even when you may have thought we were crazy to continue.  I am thankful for all of you.  You were so important in helping RR and in helping our family.  We could have never done it without you.  I am so thankful for you and hope you know that what an important role you played.  It allowed RR to live for nine years with a family that loved him.  Some days I never thought we would make it that far but we did; together.    I hope you can know, with us, that the time has come for a different setting for RR. Not a different family as we will always be that, but a different environment, one that can provide the level of safety he requires.

Ecclesiastes 3:1-14 (Today’s New International Version, ©2005)

There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens:

a time to be born and a time to die, 

a time to plant and a time to uproot,

a time to kill and a time to heal, 

a time to tear down and a time to build,

a time to weep and a time to laugh, 

a time to mourn and a time to dance, 

a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them, 

a time to embrace and a time to refrain, 

a time to search and a time to give up, 

a time to keep and a time to throw away, 

a time to tear and a time to mend, 

a time to be silent and a time to speak, 

a time to love and a time to hate, 

a time for war and a time for peace.

What do workers gain from their toil? I have seen the burden God has laid on the human race. He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end. I know that there is nothing better for people than to be happy and to do good while they live. That each of them may eat and drink, and find satisfaction in all their toil—this is the gift of God. I know that everything God does will endure forever; nothing can be added to it and nothing taken from it. God does it so that people will fear him.

I'm heading to bed with no regrets.  

Goodnight,

Barbara