Josh

My name is Michael Dyck, and I am the psychiatrist who had the privilege of working with Josh Goossen. Josh is a Christian man who struggled hard to overcome a debilitating disease, a disease which ultimately took his life but never took away his burning desire to fulfill God’s purpose for him. I knew Josh as a patient, but also as a person who affected me in ways that are hard to express.

Josh came to see me in October of 2000, when many of his friends, family and teachers were concerned that he could not study and relate to those around him as he had before. Josh had been admitted to hospital in Saskatoon the winter before for similar symptoms. He was making what was a very difficult decision for him: to again accept help from the medical care system, and to try to open himself to understand what was happening to him from the point of view of doctors, nurses and professionals who work in what we might call “Western medicine”. Josh struggled to come to terms with a diagnosis of schizophrenia, a word shrouded in mystery, fear and stigma. You may think that choosing to get treatment from a doctor for a legitimate disease would be easy to do; this is rarely easy for those with this disease, and it was never easy for Josh.

With some persuasion, Josh agreed to be admitted to Eden Mental Health Centre. The first day that I met Josh, he talked, as he was able, about thoughts and voices which criticized him, about a cloudedness in his mind. Then, and often thereafter, Josh expressed his sense that he was failing God in some way, that he was not behaving as he thought God wanted. This sense, which others around him found so difficult to understand, caused him to behave in ways which could only be understood through the prism through which Josh saw the world and himself.

Josh stayed with us at Eden from October 2000 to February 2001. During this time, even when he struggled the most, Josh was always seeking ways to minister to those around him. He ministered to other patients with song and Scripture. He ministered to staff with his art, which seemed to well up from the deepest centre of himself. Josh brought a gentle, peaceful glow to all those with whom he interacted.

A few weeks after admission, after Josh had been involved in different forms of assessment, I prepared to explain to Josh and his family what our findings were. I prepared to tell him that the confused or absent thoughts, the disturbing thoughts and voices, the change in personality in recent years – which his family described and the tests and assessments confirmed – were all consistent with a brain disease called schizophrenia. Several days before I planned to explain the diagnosis, Josh must have sensed my concern about how he would accept it, because in a session with him he suddenly brought up the subject of his diagnosis. I asked him what he thought it was. Without hesitation he said, “Schizophrenia.”

To remember Josh and to support his family is to try to understand how this disease, so often misunderstood, affected him and them, to understand how a disease of the brain can take a life.

Schizophrenia is a disease of the brain which, like other brain diseases, causes it to change, to stop functioning normally. You and I take for granted that we can tell the difference between our own thoughts and any voices we may hear; when the brain is affected by schizophrenia, it loses the ability to distinguish between these. You and I take for granted that when we have to make a decision, we can decide between two options; the brain affected by schizophrenia is plagued by indecision and seeming contradiction. You and I take for granted that we can generate thoughts; the brain of someone suffering from schizophrenia often is unable to generate thoughts and conversation. I know that, in his deepest self and before God his Maker, Josh Goossen, even at his most troubled, was the same Josh who had been born 21 years earlier. His soul was intact and could not be touched by any disease. But we humans are not God: We see through a glass dimly; we can see parts of a person, but not his soul. Schizophrenia affected Josh’s brain, causing us to perceive a change in Josh’s personality, in what he said and what he did.

Josh lived at home with his parents again in spring 2001 for just over two months. During that time, Josh’s parents, his family, friends and professionals provided medication, helped him to minister at Winkler Bible Camp and worked to help him define his goals for the future. Despite this, his mind and body weakened, even as he drove himself ever harder physically. He had greater difficulty accepting Western medical treatment. Ted and Mary Goossen never stopped supporting their son; I have never met two parents more devoted to their children. They never ceased to engage Josh, to advocate and to read about his disease. Even as they struggled with the inability to cure Josh, they held me up in prayer, as I did them.

Josh had to be admitted to Eden again due to deterioration in his condition, including a struggle with thoughts of death. As the disease prevented him from making everyday choices, so it prevented him from choosing a way forward. When, at some unknown moment, Josh’s mind could no longer see a way forward, when the disease of schizophrenia disabled his hope, he could not struggle any longer. I do not comprehend the mystery of death, especially the death of the young. I do know that when disease has come to its end, followers of Christ like Josh Goossen see Him no longer dimly, but face to face.

Schizophrenia can do many things to a person. It can take away the parts of a person that allow us, as human beings, to fully recognize that individual as the same person we knew. But there are things that schizophrenia, or any other illness, can never take away. Schizophrenia could never take from Josh his identity as child of God. It could never take away his desire to follow Christ in everything he did. In his times of despair, Josh felt that he had failed God and those around him. But those of us who had the privilege of knowing him could see the Christ light shining through the prism that was Joshua Goossen, even when he couldn’t. Despite everything that he lost, despite what medicine, the love of his family and the care of those who knew Josh just could not heal, Josh never ceased to be a living sign of the healing power of Christ.

Michael Dyck is a psychiatrist at Eden Mental Health Centre, a government-funded inter-Mennonite agency based in Winkler, Man. This article is adapted from an address Dr. Dyck gave at Josh Goossen’s funeral April 30, 2001.

Josh’s parents, Ted and Mary Goossen, have given many years of service directing Christian camps and pastoring Mennonite Brethren churches.