"Depression Day"

A joyful heart is good medicine, but a broken spirit dries up the bones. Proverbs 17:22

The kids learned to sing this verse in VBS last year. My goal with Depression Day wasn't to embrace depression, but to acknowledge it, give it to the Lord, and try to deal with our emotions in a healthy way. The whole act of planning the day helped just because it was so silly. Here is how we spent our day:

After the other kids were at school, Andrew made a list of things he hates about diabetes (Sorry, but I don't have permission to share it). Then we made our bowls of ice cream (with lots of insulin of course) & sat down to watch Facing the Giants. It's hard to think of movies that make 9 year old boys cry, but this one usually does. He didn't cry this time, although he said that his "eyes were wet during most of the movie". I cried. It's not really a sad movie. It has great themes about nothing being impossible for God & praising God during the good times & the bad. By the time the movie was over, we were both finished with pretending to be depressed. My mom's car broke down the day before, so we took her home to get some things & to the store to get groceries. We got Andrew a new bat because his was too short & he was missing all the outside balls. Then we took Granny & Ben home & headed out just the two of us. Andrew wanted to go see Diary of A Wimpy Kid. I wasn't a fan, but Andrew liked it.

Other than the ice cream with the morning movie, Andrew's meal requests for the day were bacon & eggs for breakfast, McDonald's for lunch, and chicken cracker casserole for dinner. They were all high in fat, but none of these foods are really restricted from his diet! One of the initial triggers had been the week after Easter when he wasn't able to eat candy when other kids could. I had said we could break some of these rules once a year, but not regularly. He almost forgot to ask for candy until we got to the movie theater. I didn't want to pay their prices, & I was hoping he'd forget, so I put it off until after the movie. He didn't forget, so after the movie, I stopped & let him pick out some candy. We took his BG & bolused for a ton of carbs before going into Wal-mart. Then I took my time shopping before we bought the candy. We calculated the difference in carbs & bolused for the rest. I didn't care that we got in the slowest checkout line - I wanted that insulin to start working before he started in on the sour skittles! We stopped at the batting cages before he could finish his candy & broke up his eating a bit. All in all, it wasn't his best BG day, but it was a great day in every other way. He can only have one of these days a year (school is important too!), but it was good to have some special time together, to admit that this disease stinks, but to resolve to do our best and enjoy life anyway!