Happy Holidays? I survived

I'm back!  I feel as if I have let some of you readers down, (as if there are many) by not writing what we went through over the holidays.  It was so fun that I couldn't find the time to sit and write! NOT!  Really what was going on is that ever since Thanksgiving Jake has been on a really badmean streak.  He has been so nasty and so stubborn that we went into shelter mode and just shut down.
Jake is at a place in his journey where he now has the tools to "snap out of it" and has done it a few times, but like an addict, he can't do it for very long.  He gives up and gives in to all the bad influences and his old tendencies and just wallows in the mire.  He has been in a bad place for over a month now and I can't seem to shake him of it.  He is so stuck and so sad.  He fights over everything!  He just looks for the fight in the smallest things, even when I tell him to do his favorite puzzle, he says. "No, I don't want to do that one!" and then proceeds to swipe all of the pieces on to the floor.  This is just a way to stir the pot and get into a struggle of wills and possibly a fight.  I feel so sad for him, (it took me a while to get here after the holidays) that his whole life is a fight for power, not what a kid should live like.
Most kids fight a little to test boundaries, but this kid does it to live!  He fights as if his life depends on it.
What is really hard now is that he has felt what it is like to open his heart and feel real love, he has been in a place where it feels truly good to obey, and now he just doesn't want it.  He feels "better" when he is fighting and miserable.  There is a great CD by John Bytheway (and LDS speaker/comic) called "How to be Totally Miserable" and it goes through all the ways people can be miserable or happy and how to chose.  Jake actively choses to be miserable now.  I am still not sure how to snap him out of it, but I will be praying for guidance and direction.  The biggest struggle is not to let Jake spread his misery to the rest of the family.  I have to remain happy and comforted while my child is in agony.
The holidays were hard because (well besides the stress of gifts, parties, and "to do" lists) I got sick of being split from my husband.  We always have to go do things separately because one has to stay at home with "the boy".  It gets difficult to ask for more help watching Jake when we do enough of that for all the therapy for both Jake and I.
My therapy of late has been service.  Christmas will do that for ya.  I have felt much better giving and doing for others.  It makes it all feel better knowing that somehow I can help others feel that someone cares for them.  My favorite things were doing stuff for others without them knowing I did it!!  I know that I can be an answer to other's prayers by listening and then doing.