More than one injured party

3 years ago, as most of you know, our second born son Sam was injured in a freak gun accident. He was at his grandparents farm with his older brother, Josh, target shooting  and Sam brought his gun up too fast and his himself in the head with the scope. This caused him to become dazed and drop his gun which discharged and shot him in the head. That was our first injured...

Our family has always thot to be the 'second' injured party until last might...

Over the last 3 years and mostly the last year our family has under gone some major changes, and I do not mean of a medical kind (altho' there was lots of those kinds too). The changes I am talking about are us as a family growing apart.  Feeling like we are just a bunch of people that live in a house and tolerate each other.  We have talked with our kids and tried to find out what the problem is. Others have suggested that we are under going what most families do as your kids enter their 'teen years'.
It had finally all come to a boiled point this weekend and Dennis and I stayed on top of the kids until we got some results... and some talking out of our 'strong silent' boys.

I am going to go back a bit here and state that I have always wanted us to go to counselling but due to lack of support from the rest of the house and then there is that pesky issue of money to pay for it, we never have gone. This weekend finally brought to light that we either: A) go to counselling, B) start talking about how we are ACTUALLY doing or C) continue on the path we are on and not have a family life -- continue living in the hell we have been.

When we brought this news to the kids and shared with them things that have bothered us, things that irritate us, our 'happy thots'... just life and how we feel we are doing they started talking too ... a bit ... they all basically agreed they wanted to deal with our family issues as a family first and if we felt we needed it later we would go for more professional help.

So they started talking and brain storming. There was a lot of things said that made sense, some things we (Dennis or I )had not heard out loud but had assumed was being thot by the kids. (they can be very sensitive and thotful when they want to be!)

But the oldest never said anything. Josh was basically silent the entire talk. Last night I had a good talk with him and I dont know what made me think it let alone say it, but I did and it opened a whole flood of emotions in my Josh. I said "where you the one who said to go target shooting?" and that made him break down... he crumbled in front of my eyes and I felt a huge weight hit me. Josh has held it all in and has blamed himself for all of this. He blames himself for not only the accident but for all the things that have followed because of it.  I cried right along with him, assuring him that it was most definitely NOT his fault and that we do not blame him for anything.  We cried and hugged and cried more. Then we talked more and he admitted that this is the reasoning behind his not wanting to take the other kids anywhere with him or do anything with them because he is scared that someone will get hurt again and he will be responsible. It is because of this too that he FEELS so responsible and stressed out about Sam.  We talked for a while and then we decided to take a break and we will resume talking tonight... with everyone.... as a family.

I pray that this will be the new beginning we have all be desperately needing and wanting for a while.