Update - Had a good weekend

We had a great weekend. After Coach and J had their talk, they decided he had to be in at 3am on Friday night. He came in at 1am. Hes never been early before! He slept from 1am that night until 1 pm on Saturday. He was out of it, and I just let him sleep. I think he was exhausted from all the stress of the week before. When he got up he was in a really good mood. J mowed the yard for us in the afternoon. Then his birthday party was that evening. His Aunt and her boyfriend came over. ThatҒs the only decent family he has. She is my age. We had a nice steak dinner. Then we put 18 candles on JҒs cake and had him make a wish and blow them out. I think he really enjoyed it. He went home with his Aunt on Saturday night, and went to church with her and his sister on Sunday morning. He came home that afternoon in a good mood again. I told him that I was glad to see him smiling again, and that it seemed like hed been happy the last couple of days. I wanted to point out that heҒd been happy AND drug free. He shrugged at first, but then said yes hed been happy. We had the family counseling session this morning, and it went really well. He wasnҒt participating much at first, but opened up somewhat by the end. Hes going to see her weekly for a while. Woooo Hooooo. He needs it so badly. Then Coach and I will participate every other week. This is in addition to his rehab classes. The counselor told me privately that we are doing the right things. She said we did the right thing in backing off on the consequences as we did. She also said that she thinks he wants what we have to offer, heҒs just afraid of it. It was soooo nice to have a peaceful weekend. He needed it, and we needed it. It also came up spontanteously in the counseling session that I love him unconditionally. And his response was that he doesn't accept that. So in other words, he doesn't believe me. He said that I couldn't love him like he loves his sister because they'd been through so much together. We said that we'd been through quite a bit in a short amount of time, and sometimes love just happens like that. I think they'll work on that some more in his individual sessions. We talked about his refusal to sleep in a bed in our house even though he has one. He always sleeps on our couch. I said that as long as he sleeps on the couch he considers himself temporary. And the counselor said that was very insightful. She's encouraging him to start sleeping in his bed, and making the space his own. Progress, I think.