“This is God! I hate you! Everyone hates you!”

This is God! I hate you! Everyone hates you! 

If this were like previous episodes, Paul would stand there for the next two or three hours, yelling that he was God and that he hated me until he was hoarse.

This is God! I hate you! Everyone hates you!

Paul was my twenty-six-year-old stepson. He stood in the hallway, just outside my home office door while I tried to work.

This is God! I hate you! Everyone hates you!

Seventeen years before, when he was nine, Paul had contracted viral encephalitis, which left him with cognitive impairment and intractable epilepsy. He had to take the maximum dose of multiple antiseizure medications. Even with the medications, he often had fifteen or more seizures a month. Without the medications, he would have seized uncontrollably until he died.

An unfortunate side effect of long-term use of some antiseizure medications can be medication-induced psychosis. Paul’s psychosis had started four months before this particular incident outside my office and was getting progressively worse.

This is God! I hate you! Everyone hates you!

Paul had been kind and funny and helpful. He pitched in to help with any task or project. Though life was hard for him, he rarely complained. All that changed though once the psychosis overtook him. 

This is God! I hate you! Everyone hates you!

First, he thought a picture on the wall in his bedroom was moving. Then he heard animals talking to him. Later he was sure characters on TV shows talked to him. Then a collection of stuffed toys talked to him. We would find him sitting on the floor of his room, ten stuffed toys in a semicircle, having a conversation with them.

If we didn’t see or hear the things he saw and heard, he got angry. 

This is God! I hate you! Everyone hates you!

It had become all but impossible to take Paul out in public. At any moment, without any warning, he could go from having a quiet conversation to screaming at us.

My wife and I adjusted our work schedules so that one of us could always be at home with Paul. The only place outside of the house we took him was to our Miami-area Presbyterian church. 

One Sunday, just as it was time for the service to begin, Paul walked to the front, sat at the piano, and started randomly hitting keys. 

We quietly explained to Paul he had to get up and come back to our pew. He refused. He got angry and combative. It took three strong men to pick him up and carry him out of the sanctuary while he struggled to get back to the piano. 

This is God! I hate you! Everyone hates you!

The people in our church loved Paul just like we did and were wonderfully welcoming and supportive of our family, even as his psychotic episodes worsened. We were so grateful for them.

This is God! I hate you! Everyone hates you!

Then Paul started having delusions that he was someone other than himself. Sometimes he thought he was one of his brothers. More and more frequently, he thought he was God. When he took on the persona of God it was almost always to shout that he and everyone else hated us.

This is God! I hate you! Everyone hates you!

I dropped my head and ran a finger across my broken nose and rubbed my broken rib. 

At church the previous Sunday, during another psychotic episode, I told Paul we needed to go home. He didn’t want to leave. I put a hand on his arm to encourage him to walk to the car. When I did, he head-butted me in the face and punched me in the chest.

Later, when his mom talked to him about it, he looked confused and had no memory that it had happened.

This is God! I hate you! Everyone hates you!

When I married Gail, I knew that that also meant having Paul in my life. While not trying to replace his father, I had, for seven years tried to be a “dad” to him. 

I prayed for Paul. I wanted to be helpful and encouraging. I tried to give Paul jobs that would give him a sense of purpose and meaning.

We took Paul on adventures. We visited Washinton, D.C. and Baltimore. We went on a mission trip to Jamacia. 

And, when necessary, I jumped in to catch him when he seized. I got on my knees and cradled his head as he convulsed on the floor.

This is God! I hate you! Everyone hates you!

But this was too much. I hadn’t signed up for broken bones.

This is God! I hate you! Everyone hates you!

“I can’t do this anymore. I’m done,” I thought.

Right on the heels of that thought, I mean immediately after that thought, I heard a “voice” in my mind, If Jesus is patient with you, how can you not be patient with Paul?

This was not the first time the voice had entered into the most difficult moments, not the first time, as Paul’s psychosis had gotten worse, as he had screamed at Gail or me for hours, as it had become increasingly difficult to leave the house with Paul, as I had looked into a future of psychotic episode after psychotic episode, that I’d thought, “I’m done,” and then instantly been challenged by the “voice.”

If Jesus is patient with you, how can you not be patient with Paul?

I reflected on Jesus’s patience with me. I thought about my many sins, my broken promises, my failures, my selfishness, my willful disobedience. I meditated on the truth that even though I had given Jesus many reasons to say about me, “I can’t do this anymore. I’m done,” he had never done so.

A resounding 202 times the Bible uses the phrase “steadfast love” to describe God’s covenant commitment to his people. His love is steadfast, unchanging, not because of what we do or don’t do, but because of who he is. 

Jesus is a steadfast lover.

I meditated on Psalm 25:6–7.

Remember your mercy, O Lord, and your steadfast love,
for they have been from of old.
Remember not the sins of my youth or my transgressions;
according to your steadfast love remember me,
for the sake of your goodness, O Lord!

This is God! I hate you! Everyone hates you!

I bowed my head again, but this time in prayer. I asked God to forgive my impatience with Paul and to help me remember Jesus’s patience and steadfast love for me. I asked him to give me the grace to be more like him, to be patient and loving with Paul.

I am not yet perfected. I still have moments when the old impatient and self-centered man comes out of me. But I did learn patience and love during those terrible months. I am more forbearing, more considerate of others, kinder. 

Though I am not glad that Paul had to suffer from psychosis, I am grateful that God used that experience redemptively. I am grateful that he showed me something about my self-centeredness and taught me more about what it means to die to self.

The hours of proclamation outside my office were one of the last psychotic episodes Paul had. Two weeks later, after several failed attempts at finding an effective medication, Paul was prescribed one that eliminated the psychotic symptoms. He left behind the refrain This is God! I hate you! Everyone hates you! That was April 2017. In July Paul passed away in his sleep. 

Gail and I will always be grateful for the gift of having the “old Paul” with us for his final few months. God loved Paul and us all along.