Thanks everyone for the very sincerely appreciated encouragement and compassion.
I guess you have to have really been there to appreciate and understand the pain I went through and continue to do so. However, each day has been different for me. Today, while I was temperamental, I still fulfilled the promise to my children to take them to a movie, Kung Fu Panda. It was a good movie and we enjoyed our time together, then I went nearly ballistic when I got to Kmart and found my wallet was missing. I drove back to the theater, praying under my breath that it would be undisturbed and there. It was; it had fallen unnoticed out of my back pocket. I made sure to button my pocket this time.
Then the kids went to Tae Kwan Do, and I watched them have fun and learn a few new moves (kids both scheduled for possible belt advancement examinations next week). Then we bought fireworks and went home. Laura brought home some Mexican takeout from a new restaurant owned by a friend--good food. We had some great laughs with an old MASH episode where Pierce and Trapper did the Marx brothers skit with the Pierce being Groucho and Trapper being Harpo (of course blowing a duck call "quack!"). Great laughs. Reset my mood a bit.
To make a long story short, I am planning on continuing in the land of the living (not just passively, either!). Yes, I am still depressed and angry, but it was less intense today. I will try to respond to some of the individual things that people said here that really hit home with me, and wish to extend a general THANK YOU!! for all of the rest of your sincere and heart-felt concern and sympathy. I guess I'd also like to say that God must have been attentively listening to those of you who were praying because I did do better, even though my children, especially my son, were naughty and defiant this evening--and I didn't blow my stack. I just had to lay down some firm, but reasonable discipline (such as 10 minute time out--only to begin when KC stopped talking and making noise--so it really took 30), but no raging shouting or screaming. So even in the matter of the kids, things were better even when they were behaving worse than yesterday.
Tomorrow we have plans to go to our annual 4th of July parade (with military jet flyover and precision skydiver landing by Master of Ceremonies stage), plus our own kids on the Clover School float wearing red/white/blue clothes. My wife and I will be sitting by my father in front of his clock shop in downtown Buhl, population 3800--the same as it was in 1910, two years after it was founded. We'll have a couple thousand people coming in from other cities in the Magic Valley (Twin Falls county and other nearby ones) to watch the parade. Then afterward we'll go to a large local park, where the local city pool is located, where we'll have food, fun booths, carnival, live music, fire hose competition (fire hoses shooting at a suspended barrel), trout scramble (kids catching trout by hand), and lots of other fun stuff. Then a public fireworks display and about $250 of private fireworks for at home. Laura says for me to admit I'm a pyro at heart!
To summarize, yes I'm battling depression, but I'm not letting it stop me from at least trying to have some fun. As for the suicide option--it's never been a consideration nor do I believe will it ever be one. Thanks, though for your vehement admonitions to seek medical and psychiatric help. I'll contact someone this Monday. Meanwhile, my wife's experience as a Family Practice Physician would help her see any danger signs in me and could intervene with professional support if she thought it necessary (including our neighbor EMT and the country sheriff if the need should arise). Don't worry about me. I'm in excellent hands, both from the human and spiritual side of things. Thanks, and I'll keep people posted here about what happens, even if things go downhill again. Yes, continue to lift us up in prayer, not just me, but Laura and the kids, too. They need healing, too, from all of this.
Looking Up a Bit in Idaho,
Chris
