E22 - Hope’s Harbor Gritty Bible Devotions - My account of surviving Delta Covid-19
Hope’s Harbor
Gritty Bible Devotions
Episode #22
Title: My account of surviving the Delta variant of covid.
Date: October 4th, 2021
Contact: info@hopesharbor.net
Key verse(s):
Intro: When I recorded the following account as part of E21 it was too long to put in a regular episode since I try to keep them less than 10 minutes.
The reason I left my account long on details is my belief many people are dying from complications from covid that aren’t realized until it’s too late. A beloved uncle died last year from one of these complications and I’ve had a couple of friends/former coworkers who also died from similar causes.
I too nearly lost my life to one such complication.
For this reason and the spiritual experience, I offer this on the off chance it may help someone.
Devotion focus: We are eternally safe in GOD’s care regardless of events that happen to us in this life.
First of all, I’m not someone who flaunts any experience with GOD, because these are deeply personal. Secondly, I don’t believe in showcasing experiences with GOD in an attempt to motivate GOD’s people. I believe it often leads to Christians seeking GOD for some kind of experience, something to generate excitement. This belief is based on experience while attending a church as a child that focused much attention on emotional stimulus.
However, I will try to share what happened, but caution against seeking this kind of experience. Anyone who seeks GOD in order to know Him better and serve Him out of love for Him will experience sometimes wonderful revelations.
But these have been few and far between in my walk with GOD for the last 44 years this month, September 2021. The walk of faith, by definition believing what we cannot see, implies we should serve GOD without demanding or expecting a visible, physical show of evidence. Jesus said better are those who believe without seeing (evidence). This principle is found in John 4:48 – ‘Then Jesus said to him, "Unless you people see signs and wonders, you will by no means believe." And also: John 6:26 - Jesus answered them and said, "Most assuredly, I say to you, you seek Me, not because you saw the signs, but because you ate of the loaves and were filled.”’
On July 28th I became ill, thinking it was a cold and sore throat only, but by the next day recognized it as the same symptoms as covid that I had the year before. I went to a nearby lab and was tested. This test revealed a positive for covid with a 92% likelihood it was the Delta variant. Within another week I was bedridden for the most part, but believed it would pass the same way as the year before with bed rest, vitamin supplements, and plenty of fluids.
But this was an underestimate. Two weeks after becoming sick I went to the ER but was sent home, being told there was nothing more that could be done.
Another few days went by and another visit to the ER, this time at a different hospital. X-rays revealed the onset of pneumonia. I was sent home with a 5 day supply of antibiotics.
Yet another week went by and I was too sick to get out of bed and slept pretty much for 48 hours straight. This was a mistake. If my wife had not been checking my oxygen levels every two hours, I would not have survived August 17th. At 3:00 am (21 days after contracting Delta covid) she once again checked my oxygen and this time it was 51%. She urged me to get up for yet another visit to the ER, but I resisted. I was so sick and weak I told her I couldn’t face going. The only reason I relented was for her sake since she had tended me around the clock for two weeks, having contracted the virus the previous week and still tended to me.
On the ride to the hospital, I breathed oxygen from a can, called Boost, something athletes use, not knowing how near death I was. As it turns out this too contributed to my survival.
When we got to the ER, a nurse took my oxygen levels, now at 62%, as the doctor questioned me. She then ordered a CT scan and left. When she returned, everything changed. She explained how both my lungs were full of pneumonia and also there were numerous blood clots. These came about because I had lain around for those two days prior to this morning.
She told me I was being transferred to the covid ICU at the main hospital 50 miles away. This was the last thing I wanted to hear. Within two hours I was placed in the last room available in ICU and told I would be there for 3 to 5 weeks. It’s hard to describe how I felt in that moment. I had never been in any hospital for longer than a day and that was after major surgery.
I must have groaned out loud because the pulmonary doctor standing there explained the danger I was in. Not only the covid, and not only having double pneumonia, but if one of the blood clots dislodged and went to my heart or brain, it could kill me. That got my attention.
Now, here’s where GOD had His way, where He set forth His will in all of this. I have to tell you by this point I was too sick to even pray, but I did read my Bible off and on for the next 48 hours. I read it during all hours of the day and night; especially at night because it was so hard to breathe I couldn’t sleep.
Though I could not pray, I could think about GOD. Which I did. A lot. The clarity I had of who GOD actually is during those long hours must be attributed to the Holy Spirit. I became aware of His absolute sovereignty. How He doesn’t need us, but since He loves us so deeply, He chose to save us from His righteous wrath against the sin in us. I thought with renewed thankfulness how God the Father sent His Son Jesus to die on the cross for the sins of the human race and not only our race but for my sins against Him. Personally.
During those two dark nights as I lay awake GOD’s Spirit brought to remembrance the stark truth that GOD’s will is the foundational reality to life. And then I realized, even though I could quote Scripture about this truth, my life was lived another way, my way when it came to GOD’s will. I had always taken what I believed was GOD’s will for any given circumstance and applied to how I thought it should be lived out. Sometimes this was correct, but more often it resulted in me living ‘in the flesh’ as a double-minded man.
This realization was embarrassing and shameful. I renounced it. Then embraced GOD as the loving father I never had.
And then GOD made a choice clear to me: surrender everything regardless of the cost. Even after all I had been through and knowing I could die without warning if just one of those clots turned loose, I hesitated giving up what I possessed, mainly control. And I don’t mean physical possessing only, but relationships and hopes and plans for the future, especially the book it took me 14 years to complete and was on Amazon, but needed promoting. Something I couldn’t do if dead.
But you know what? After I mulled it all over I saw how ridiculous I was to put such a high priority on my possession, think ‘control’ especially in light of eternity. Control is such an illusion anyway. I surrendered.
Now, this is where it gets powerful. After I surrendered I had a peace come over me I have never experienced before and I’ve surrendered before. I’ve had peace before. But I see now surrendering is a process GOD brings us through, sometimes taking years as it did in my case. I can be a stubborn man according to my wife. Thankfully, GOD is patient.
The final part of this experience occurred when I embraced the reality GOD’s life is my life. His will is my submission. The things of life that once possessed me no longer have that hold on me. I use them, sure, but they are external to me now.
I came to fully understand as much as anyone can Colossians 3:3 – ‘For you died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.’ It means literally our lives as Christians are covered, concealed as from judgment, with Christ in GOD.
This meant to me our lives are to be lived from the top-down, kind of like streaming from Heaven. But most of us are living from the bottom up.
On the third day in ICU, I was given a breathing device called a spirometer, and then shown how different sleeping positions can increase the intake of oxygen. I went to work and kept track of how many inhalations I made each hour using the spirometer. Those deep breaths to function the meter were painful and induced a coughing fit with each intake of air, but I kept at it because I feared being put on a ventilator.
The combination of the medical staff’s efforts in administering the covid-cocktail, the breathing exercises, undergirded by GOD’s people continuing to pray for me, all combined, enabled me to go home the following Tuesday, 6 days after I entered ICU.
The peace I experienced after surrendering in the hospital is still with me, even though my old habitual thinking returned and must be resisted throughout each. It’s annoying how the old nature exerts itself. This is now my fight of faith.
I still cannot express enough thanks to GOD for saving my life. Words are not enough. I find I cannot adequately express my love to Him, either. It’s like this: how would you describe color to someone born blind?
And then there is the life of bearing fruit for GOD that Jesus taught in John 15. GOD bears the fruit of Jesus’s life in us and does so in measure according to how much we abide in Him, daily. But now I want this to become more than a belief. I want GOD to bring glory to Himself by producing fruit, or good works, through me.
Listen, it is GOD’s will we bear fruit which may be thought of as good works. But it is good works He produces and by this, He is glorified. You see, GOD doesn’t need us to work for Him. He allows it because this is the means He chooses to accomplish His will on the earth. If you remember from Episode 20, GOD’s will is directed toward establishing His Kingdom.
And the privilege for us is participating as His children.
Now I think I understand why I didn’t go into greater detail last episode concerning the bout of covid and the spiritual experience during it.
Summary: My greatest takeaway from all of this is living in the relationship of loving GOD with everything within me, and loving others.
When I asked GOD how to love others (I’m not a loving person), He said (to my spirit, not audible) to support them through encouragement and to help others when in need.
Action to consider: I can only offer this: pray as you’ve never prayed before and by this I mean to get alone with GOD on a regular basis. Read His word and then sit quietly for a few minutes. Start out for brief periods and work up to longer times. This is because if you’re like many of us you’ll find it’s hard to sit still and focus your thoughts on GOD for more than 5 minutes before our busyness-saturated minds begin to roam.
Next week’s devotion:
Seeking GOD – Making time for GOD’s wisdom and guidance –
Note: The one thing that enabled me to survive by getting medical treatment in time was the use of a pulse oximeter.
When my oxygen levels fell to the low 80% range I should have gone to the ER right then, not knowing that allowing it to fall all the way to 51% could be deadly.
The mistake was based on the false belief the pneumonia was a separate ailment. In conjunction with the covid virus, it was a deadly combination.