input focus

I have a listbox that is invisible at design time. It is enabled
during runtime when certain things happen. It pops up
over an edit control and the user can tab to it to pick data from it

The problem:
I SetFocus() and BringWindowToTop() for the ListBox but it can't
receive any keydown or mouse down messages from me.
As soon as i click on it, it loses focus and essentially is invisible
again. I tried to disable the edit control while the listbox is
visible but I don't want it to be gray while it's disabled.... it's not
the effect that I want.

Thanks in advance for any help.

set a member variable when the listbox should be displayed and check for notifications from the edit control that it gets the focus. If the member variable is set, set the focus to the listbox.