We love our Bean!

I don't think anyone reads this anymore but me, so I'm just going to write here about Bean.  Life has been so hard for him (and us) for the last 10 or so years.  Mental illness has raked him over the coals so terribly.  It has robbed him of his identity, the chance to make the dreams he had for his life a reality, to build relationships of love and trust, the chance to share his talents, his faith in Heavenly Father and so many more things.  My heart aches as I see his heart ache in the times when he does feel some reality and remembers his old life and mourns for what he is missing now.  He has come to blame and distrust us and we have come to wonder about how we have done things wrong that may have made life harder for him.  We had hoped that he could just live out his days with us at least having good food, comfortable shelter and someone to look after him and keep him safe from the bad things and bad people in the world who do not understand and want to take advantage of him and hurt him. Mental illness wastes so many beautiful people's lives.  The words we most often say when trying to figure things out for Bean are, "I don't know."  I know that somewhere in his future in the next life things will be better, but it is a very long, hard road here.  I suppose that with Easter coming, I will think of what the Savior did for Bean...that someday things will be right for Bean and he will have his chance to make the choices that his mind couldn't make here and opportunity to experience the things he missed because of mental illness.  He will have his own mind I will love getting to meet and see the beautiful man he is and hope that he will forgive me and love me in spite of all my mistakes toward him and we will build a new relationship.  I will get to see him find love and a wife and have the chance to work toward all of the wonderful blessings that are mentioned in his patriarchal blessing. All the tears will be wiped away and he will love his Savior and Heavenly Father and know that they love him.  I look forward to those things and so many others that the Savior's atonement will make possible for Bean and all of the other people with mental and physical disabilities that have robbed them here of the blessings that "normal" people take for granted as just having a regular life.  

He put together this funny guy to greet us on April Fool's day!

Funny hair!

Funny shoes!

An real smile on this day!