My Heart Breaks

14 March 2014

I knew that the easiness of the last two days wouldn't last forever I just didn't expect what happened today.  Instead of open arms running towards me with smiling faces I saw a boy with a heavy heart, slumped head and shoulders with tears rolling down his face.

My heart breaks at times for Josh and all he experiences. When we got home Josh continued to cry for another 30 minutes, he struggled to express his feelings. He went to his iPod and typed a short paragraph of the way he was feeling and gave it to me to read. This is exactly what I saw:

After a long evening of homework and then dinner we had some one on one time and he opened up with me like he never has before.  He told me all about what happens at school and inside my heart was breaking but outside I had to put on a brave face. Kids pushing him down, taking his hat and throwing it in the opposite direction over and over. Name calling, teasing, swearing (he told me about some of the things the kids say and things they talk about, I can't believe it's already happening this young).

I realized that along with the feeling of 'not fitting in' he is dealing with new worldly issues that he otherwise never had to back home.  Things that Josh knows and feels are not right and he is learning how to deal with it. Boys talking about video games, movies that have naked women, taking the Lords name in vain and much much more. These boys are seeing Josh a different way and teasing him for it. He is intelligent, a deep thinker, not afraid to ask questions and much more emotionally in tune with his feelings. He communicates at a much more mature level and sometimes it irritates the other boys, we've seen this happen a couple times.

Today it all started with a girl (same girl that has been teasing him since school started) she pushed him down to the ground twice. Then a boy he thought was his friend is swearing at him, telling him he never wants to play with him again and he gets annoyed by him. Another boy begins teasing Josh saying he is in love with a certain girl and begins a chant in the classroom that the teachers don't do anything about. He then begins crying at his desk and they only feed into that even more.

My poor boy, how do I help him? We talked about his feelings for an hour and he kept opening up about more things. He said how he feels the teachers don't care as they don't ever do anything to intervene. We started writing a letter to his teacher together but he expressed his concern that he wasn't sure anything would change.

Our conversation turned in another direction and we began speaking about the gospel. About satan and his plan to bring Josh down. This is exactly what he wants when he is focusing on the negative. Josh asked "why is Satan attacking me and not Rachael? She is doing so well in school and has so many friends" I waited a minute before responding and he said "it's because I have been baptized isn't it." Our conversation continued on for another hour, it was such a deep and heart felt hour. We were able to connect and open up in ways we never had before. Josh shared feelings that he otherwise has been afraid to and we were finally understanding each other. It was beautiful.

At the end of the night he said over and over the words "I love you so much mom and have enjoyed talking to you tonight so much, let's do it again sometime." These words have stuck with me for the past few weeks. As we have continued on we have seen some incredible improvements in our home and with Josh. There are still some hard days but he is 'bouncing back' (as he would call it).  He is taking a religion class at school and they have been talking a alot about resilience. Every day that has been tough Josh says "I am going to be resilient and bounce back from the toughness and hardness of today". It makes me happy and I rejoice that he is seeing the bigger picture and is becoming stronger.