Before we go any further, I want to say this carefully. If your son is in immediate danger, if there is any threat of harm to himself or to someone else, please reach out to your local emergency services right now. If you need someone to talk to, you can find a helpline in your country at
findahelpline.com. Do not carry the weight of a crisis alone in the dark; there are voices on the other end of a line who will listen, and the Good Shepherd often sends His help through the hands of those trained to steady the soul in its most desperate hour.
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You have been watching through the night again, haven’t you? The hours stretch long when the mind you love is tossed on waves you cannot calm. You sit at the bedside, or you pace the floor in another room, and you whisper the same prayer you have prayed a hundred times: Heal him. Protect him. Give him sleep. And heaven does not seem to answer as quickly as your heart demands.
Let me sit down beside you a moment. Not to lecture, not to explain away the mystery of this trial, but to remind you of something you already know deep in your bones but may have forgotten in the weariness of the watch.
Do you remember what the Psalmist said? “He giveth his beloved sleep.” It is one of those little-noticed jewels in Scripture, tucked into a psalm about the vanity of anxious toil. Men rise early and sit up late, eating the bread of sorrows, driving their bodies and minds past all reasonable limits, thinking that their own striving will secure what they need. And God looks down on all that feverish effort and says, It is vain. I give to my beloved, even in sleep. Do you see? Sleep is not something your son must achieve. It is not a reward for a sound mind. It is a gift, pure and simple, from the hand of the Father who never slumbers and never sleeps.
I know your son’s sleep has been shattered. The spirit of psychosis is a cruel thief, it steals rest, it twists thoughts, it makes the night a place of terror rather than refuge. But hear this: the Lord who made your son knows the pathways of his brain. He knows the chemical tides and the electrical storms. He knows the fears that crouch in the corners of his room when the lights go out. And He is not standing far off, wringing His hands. He is near. He is so near that the very darkness is light to Him.
You have asked for healing, physical, mental, spiritual. That is a large request, but you are bringing it to a large Christ. Do you recall that house in Capernaum, with the crowd pressed so thick around the door that no one could get in? Four men carried their paralyzed friend, a man who could not move a finger, who lay utterly helpless, and when they could not reach Jesus, they tore open the roof and let him down. And Christ’s first word to that poor, motionless man was not Be healed, but Son, thy sins are forgiven thee. Then He added, Arise, take up thy bed, and go home. The order matters. Forgiveness first, then healing. The deeper disease dealt with before the outer one. Spiritual wholeness reestablished in the very moment when physical wholeness was still waiting.
So do not think that because your son’s mind still trembles, God has not already begun His work. The forgiveness that washed him clean the moment he believed is just as real now as it was in the hour of his first faith. The healing of his mind may come gradually, like the dawn, not like a lightning flash, but the Physician is at the bedside, and He will not leave until the cure is complete.
There is a tree in the heavenly paradise whose leaves are for the healing of the nations. I do not pretend to know all that means, but I know this: Christ has leaves for every kind of wound. For the wound of a fractured mind. For the wound of a terrified spirit. For the wound of a body that will not rest. He is the one who bindeth up the broken in heart and healeth all their diseases, not some, not most, but all, in His time and His manner. Some of those diseases He heals by removing them. Others He heals by giving such a weight of sustaining grace that the disease, though it remains, loses its power to destroy. Either way, the healing is real.
And what of the protection you have asked for? When the mind is unmoored, a man feels exposed to every evil wind. The enemy whispers that God has abandoned him, that he is defenseless, that the dark is full of threats. But you know better. You have prayed, and I pray with you now, that a hedge of angels might encircle his bed, not the painted angels of sentimental art but the real ones, the kind that excel in strength and hearken to the voice of God’s word. The same Lord who stood with Daniel in the lions’ den stands with your son in the den of his own unquiet thoughts. He is not at the mercy of psychosis. Psychosis is at the mercy of Christ.
Do not measure God’s love by the presence of this affliction. Measure it by the cross, where His Son bore sorrows deeper than any brain can fathom and loneliness darker than any psychotic night. That same Son now sits at the right hand of the Majesty on high, and He ever liveth to make intercession for those who come unto God by Him. He is praying for your son this very hour, with a sympathy so perfect that no earthly parent could approach it. You love your son with a fierce, tender love. The Good Shepherd loves him with a love that went down into the grave and came up again triumphant.
As for sleep, that sweet oblivion that heals the wearied frame, remember whose gift it is. The same God who gives rest to the laboring man after his toil, who makes the whole creation lie down in green pastures at evening, has not forgotten your son. He may be sleepless tonight, or the next night, or many nights. But the Lord is teaching him, even in the darkness, lessons he could not learn in the light. And you, dear parent, you are learning too. You are learning to let go of the ropes that lower your beloved through the roof and trust the hands that catch him below.
Let me leave you with this picture. A ship is caught in a storm, far out on deep waters. The wind is contrary, the waves are breaking over the bow, and the sailors have done everything they know to do. But in the hold, a passenger is asleep, not because the storm is small, but because the captain is great. Christ is that captain. Your son is that passenger. The storm is real, and the tossing is violent, but the one who commanded the winds and the waves is on board. He may not still the storm yet. He may let it rage until a certain work is accomplished. But He will not let the ship go down. He cannot, for He has bound Himself by covenant to bring His beloved safe to harbor.
Watch then not with despair but with expectancy. Your prayers are not falling on deaf ears. They are rising like incense before the throne, and the High Priest who receives them knows what it is to be a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. Your son belongs to Him. You have placed him in those pierced hands, and none can pluck him out.
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Lord Jesus, Thou who didst calm the raging sea with a word, speak peace to this troubled mind. Thou who givest to Thy beloved even in sleep, grant it now, deep, restoring, heaven-sent sleep. Cast out every spirit that is not of Thee, and fill every corner of this child’s heart and mind with Thy light. Be a wall of fire around him, and the glory in the midst of him. And for this weary parent, give the rest of faith, the quiet confidence that comes from casting every care upon Thee, for Thou carest for us. We ask all in Thy strong and gentle name. Amen.
