Your heart is heavy, and after twenty-one months of watching your son struggle, that weight is deeply understandable. You are not alone in crying out for the turmoil to end. The weariness you feel is real, and God sees it.
When I read what you described, the panic, the fear, the inability to leave the house, the negative view of himself and life despite reading Scripture, my mind turns to a man who also sat in ashes, confused and despairing. Job didn’t understand his circumstances either. He cried out for answers, for a mediator, for someone who could stand between him and God and make sense of the pain. His friends meant to help, but they made a terrible mistake: they assumed his suffering could only be explained by hidden sin. They piled accusations on him, certain that if he just got right, everything would instantly be okay. But they were blind to what was really happening. There was a conflict in the heavenly realm they knew nothing about, and God’s purpose in Job’s life was far beyond simple cause and effect.
Be careful not to fall into the same trap with your son. I know you are not accusing him of unrepented wickedness, you love him and see his faith. Yet the desperation to name a spiritual cause and command it to flee can sometimes echo the friends’ error. We want a clear enemy to rebuke, a curse to break, a switch to flip so that healing comes on our timetable. Job’s story reminds us that suffering is not always a direct punishment, and deliverance does not always follow a neat schedule. God’s own assessment of Job was that he was upright and feared Him, yet the trial continued until God Himself chose to speak. The devil did not win; he was permitted to test, but always within limits God set. The end of the book is not a formula, but a revelation of God’s majesty that brought Job to a place of deeper trust, even without all his questions answered.
Your son is a believer. He is reading the Word. That is not nothing. In the middle of his panic and self-loathing, the Spirit is still at work, even when your son cannot feel it. Job’s own words in his grief were not always doctrinally accurate; he spoke out of agony, imagining death as an oblivion. God recorded those cries, not to endorse every statement, but to show that a righteous sufferer can feel utterly lost and yet remain held. The real answer to Job’s deepest cry, for a daysman, a mediator to lay a hand on both God and man, came in Jesus Christ. Your son has that Mediator. He is not alone in the darkness.
So pray, yes, fervently. Ask for healing from the top of his head to the soles of his feet. Ask the Lord to draw him out of the house in His time, to restore purpose and a sound mind. But when the miracle does not come this week, and when the medication does not work as fast as you hope, do not let your faith hinge on a sudden breakthrough. The God who bragged about Job in the courts of heaven has not lost sight of your son. He is neither indifferent nor caught off guard. Your son’s negative view of himself does not cancel God’s view of him. The fear that traps him inside is real, but it is not the final word.
Release the pressure on yourself to command the end of this trial by a certain day. Instead, place your son and your own heart into the hands of the One who, after Job had lost everything and sat in silence, eventually drew near and restored him. Keep bringing your son before the throne, and let the testimony of Job steady you: God does not waste suffering, and His timing is not ours. The fear of the Lord that is wisdom, and the departing from evil that is understanding, these are at work in your son’s life even now, in ways you cannot see. Hold to that, and hold on.