The CRCG: Part II

I can't put a name on it, how this feels.  It's a bundle of sadness, regret, fear, and just a little bit of hope, but I have to search through the tangle of all those other things to find it.

Yesterday, a meeting was held at the Juvenile Probation Center off of Kilpatrick. You arrive there and you tell the receptionist that you are a parent and you are there to attend a CRCG meeting for your child.  Then you sit down and you wait a long time until the CRCG committee gets to your child's name.

They call your name and you walk into a room that contains about twelve people, most of whom you have never met.  They are representatives from MHMR, from CPS, from Special Education programs at one or two schools (in this case it was Cleburne and Alvarado), School Resource Officers, and others.  Someone introduces you.  You sit down and say hello as each person introduces themselves.  And then they ask you for a basic summary of why you are there.

And you tell them.  You tell them about how your son's behavior has deteriorated over the past year, and what that actually means:  that you often have to take your four year old and lock yourself in a bedroom because he gets in a "mood" and wants to harm you.  How your two older children don't really want to be at home anymore.  How he is too big and you cannot control him anymore.  You tell them about all of his hospitalizations, and how nothing concrete came of that except the knowledge that he functions much better in a regimented and scheduled environment.  You try, in the limited time that you have, to convey the absolute desperation you feel that something must change, and then they ask you what you would like to see happen for your child.

And you have to look at a group of twelve people, most of whom you have not met before this day, and say:

I would like my son placed in a group home.

They tell you they will sign the papers and get the ball rolling.  They thank you for your time.  And you leave.

And when you get out to the parking lot, that's when you absolutely lose it, because you feel like a monster.  You didn't get to tell them about his beautiful smile, or his wonderful sense of humor, or how he cuddles up to you at night, or how he loves the singer Pink and the band Fallout Boy, and you didn't get to list his favorite foods, and how he helps you in the kitchen and helps you clean the house and plants things in the garden.

You don't get to talk about that and you question yourself all the time, every minute, until the next time you have to lock yourself in the bedroom again, or the next time he pulls on his four year old sister, or scratches you on the arm or hits you in the face. Then you think, no I did the right thing.

And you realize that what it boils down to is that this isn't just about you. You, yourself, may be able to endure this indefinitely.  Because you are his mother, and you are genetically wired to sacrifice and to endure.  This is what mothers everywhere do for their children.  But your other children and family members are not wired this way; your other children are just children, and they need you too.  So you make this decision and you do it understanding that this child does not just belong to you, he also belongs to Heavenly Father.  You understand that his life is taking this turn for a reason.  Logically, you know that if you wait until he is thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, something terrible may happen. He may hurt himself or someone else without understanding what he is doing, and then the choice of what happens to him may not be yours to make anymore.

But that doesn't make this any less painful.

My hope is that this will be a positive thing for him and for us.  There is no question that Logan needs more care than I can give to him at this time.  One day, he may be able to return home again, and we can make up for lost time. Until then, we must, as his parents, make the best possible decision for him and for us, and that is giving him access to the care he needs and an environment that he can function in, and giving our other children the peace they crave and deserve.

The CRCG

The next step, before we can place Logan in a group home, is to have his case come before a Community Resource Coordination Group (CRCG).  These groups serve 250 counties in Texas, and they are made up of representatives from different state agencies, such as the Texas Education Agency, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, Mental Health and Mental Retardation (MHMR), the Department of Housing, and private service providers.  While this is not a complete list of the agencies involved with the group, it should give you and idea of what the group is made up of.  CRCGs exist to help meet the needs of individuals who cannot be serviced by just one specific group.  Logan's needs cannot be met by MHMR alone, although they are the facilitating agency for what will happen next.

The CRCG meets once a month, and they discuss several cases in the meeting.  While his service coordinator told me that I didn't really need to be at the meeting, I have it on good authority from Tarrant County MHMR that it's a good idea to be there so you can explain your home situation firsthand, instead of someone doing it for you.  (I mean, that's a no-brainer, right?  Any time your child is involved in something, you should be there!)

Perhaps you're wondering how I can be so matter-of-fact about all of this.  In the past several months we have watched Logan's behavior and ability to cope in stressful situations deteriorate to the point that he needs specialized care.  There is no manual for raising a child like him, no rule book, and even if I had someone standing next to me who had a child like him, their experience would still be vastly different from mine.  As we have moved from one crisis to the next, I have seen doors that I thought I should open stay shut to us, and other doors fall open as if by some miracle.  (Actually, in a lot of cases, it was.)  Through it all the answer has been very clear:  I'm not the one guiding this.  I'm playing a part.  Heavenly Father has something very specific in mind for Logan, and even if I put my foot down, and said, no way, he's not going...he would end up going, whether I wanted him to or not.  Frustrating the will of the Lord is not a good thing; there are so many unforseen consequences.  It's a little like stealing something that doesn't belong to you:  you may have gotten what you wanted, but the joy of possessing it is somehow diminished by the knowledge that you did something you weren't supposed to do, that you knew what was right and chose to ignore it, and by the eventual burden that only a guilty conscience can bring.

The CRCG is simply the next step on this journey.  In the meantime, we are living one day at a time, with the knowledge that sooner rather than later, he will go to live somewhere else and our time with him in our home is limited.  If you think that is stressful and creates a lot of daily heartache, then you would be correct.  It's only alleviated by the fact that prayer has given me so much comfort, and by the fact that Logan himself has come to me, in the midst of one of his upset and anxious episodes, and expressed a desire for something different.

The best and truest way to live your life is by doing it according to what Heavenly Father has planned for you.  Trying to sort things out, all by yourself, is laudable, but it's by praying and asking for direction and reassurance that the decisions you've made are correct that you receive a testimony of an eternal plan that applies specifically to you and those you love.

It's Okay to Not Go Big

The other day, I made a post on Facebook, and went something like this:  "Fall garden planted...sweet potatoes, beans, and tarragon.  Fingers crossed."

It sounds like so much work when you say something like that.  Fall garden, planted.  It implies hours of work.  A sweet lady I know even commented that she didn't know how I had the time to do it.  I told her that it wasn't a very big garden.

And it's not.  It's six squares of raised beds.  The sweet potatoes are actually one sweet potato that I cut in half and rooted in my kitchen window, then stuck in the ground.  The beans and the tarragon were each one seed packet, planted by either poking holes in the ground or digging it up then recovering it.

An hour, spent in the sun with my 12 year old and 4 year old.

I've grown up believing that the only way to do things was to go big.  You made all A's or you didn't do it.  You get first place because if you didn't, you could have done better.  You keep a clean house or you have failed.  The list goes on.

So even planting a garden is something that becomes big in my head:  we need winter squash, and onions, kale, lettuce, beets.  We need to dig holes for fruit trees if we can find the room.  We need.

But we don't.

Sometimes, especially in the darkest days of your life, it's okay to not go big.  It's okay to look at a situation and say, This is what I can handle, and this is what I can't handle, and plan accordingly.  There is a certain kind of peace that comes with acknowledging your own limitations.  

This is a new lesson for me.  One that says, You can afford to wait, and be patient.  You can afford to back off, and let Heavenly Father work for you.  You can afford to rest.