Our Experience with Covid

Towards the end of September 2020, after our final camping trip, Bob wasn’t feeling quite right. I honestly didn’t give it much thought since he suffers from allergies. Many of the symptoms mirrored are what I’ve seen before when he’s been too long in a barn stacking hay bales. He got a phone call from a fellow coworker that another coworker tested positive for the covid virus. That was on a Friday. You guessed it, he tested positive the next week.

He had a gamut of symptoms minus a spiked temp and vomiting. To be quite frank, he was miserable but he wouldn’t tell me until it was all over that at times he honestly thought that it would be the end of him. The scariest thing we encountered with Bob was the sudden attacks of feeling like he couldn’t breathe. They literally came from nowhere and usually followed a warm shower, something one would assume would loosen the chest, not tighten it. I would lay my hands on him and pray. What else could I do?

In the meanwhile, within 2-3 days of that Friday, the girls and I all had some sort of symptoms. The symptoms were minimal and mostly nuisance-like in nature — until Laura.

It was during an assumed reprieve that I was lounging on the couch one evening, wiped out from care-giving, when it was as though a light came on in a dark room. Something wasn’t right with Laura. She hadn’t been herself a better part of the day and it came back to me, Rachel saying that she felt warm. I didn’t give it much thought at the time, none of my girls are given to being cold. But my mother senses were suddenly on full alert. I bolted up the stairs to check on Laura. She did feel warm. Actually, she felt hot. It took some effort to find our inexpensive thermometer and even more effort to get the aged thing to give me a read. My heart sunk. I immediately proceeded to get a bucket of cold water, a cloth, and began administering tablets for fever. Rachel, (who did not know what was going on at that time), would tell me later that as she ate her evening snack, she sensed a spirit of death hovering over our house. She and Beth decided to combat it by playing worship music in the dimly lit bedroom.

I confess that in that initial moment I was gripped with fear. Then something came back to me from a teaching I had been recently studying and I knew I had to stop it and quick. Fear is the opposite of faith. I squashed the fear quickly by muttering scripture. I called Mum and she agreed with me in prayer. I knew we prayed through for Laura’s healing. But knowing you won the war doesn’t mean there aren’t going to be battles along the way.

Laura’s temperature ranged from 100 to 104 degrees. Once when calling our doctor’s office I talked to one of his staff who tried my patience by insisting the rest of us get tested. She especially wanted me to take Laura. Quite frankly, I was enraged. My girl was fevered and weak and yet she was insisting I take my child for that test under those conditions?!

I might have sounded impertinent but I didn’t care. I had more pressing issues to deal with. “My husband tested positive for covid and you know what you did for him when he called you and asked for help? Nothing!!!”

I was not taking Laura out feeling the way she was to satisfy someone’s curiosity and boost the fear-mongers’ numbers. I guess the woman finally realized my stance and changed her tone. “And how are you feeling, Christi?” I reigned in my own rising temperature and answered her as kindly as I could.

By night 5, Laura and I were both exhausted and I tired of giving her aspirin. I prayed within myself, “LORD, just get her below 100 and we’re done with these pills!” That was my line in the sand.

Don’t tell me God doesn’t have a sense of humor. Before I called Mum and she rebuked the spirit of infirmity, Laura’s temperature was 100. After we prayed it was 99.9. I laughed out loud. I even said, “Funny, God.” But “below 100” was the “sign” I asked for.

“Well Laura, this is how I prayed. You’re old enough to make up your own mind. Do you want to take an aspirin or do you just want to go to sleep?”

“I’m tired, Mum. You prayed and I trust God. Go to bed and just let me go to sleep.”

I’d be a bald-faced liar if I said I didn’t have one speck of reservation when I went to bed that night. There was the temptation to fear that the temperature would spike in the night and I wouldn’t know it. My prayer before I went to bed: “We’ve done all we can, LORD. You love her more than I do. She’s yours. And since You neither slumber nor sleep (Psalm 121:2-4), and I need to sleep (Psalm 127:2), I’m trusting her totally to Your care tonight.”

When I woke at 6 a.m. I admit that I was tempted to check on Laura. I squelched it and went back to bed. When she did wake several hours later on her own, the first thing I did was take her temperature. It was 98.6. It was Hallelujah! time in our house.

Satan’s schemes are kill, steal, and destroy (John 10:10). When I think of sickness I often think of a minister who said, “Satan will kill ya with a cold if he can!” It’s true, it doesn’t matter to our adversary how he destroys God’s beloved. Quite frankly, I’ve had my belly full of him. It’s the same thing over and over and over again. The frustrating thing is that the Believer has authority over him (Luke 10:19; Colossians 1:12:13; Ephesians 4:8; Colossians 2:15) but we either aren’t aware of it, aren’t educated as to how to utilize it, or are too overwhelmed or lazy to fight.

I hesitated to share this because I don’t want to be the cause of the fear that so many others have wallowed in for over a year and a half now. Fear isn’t the point; faith is. Disease isn’t the point; healing is. Since beginning this draft quite some time ago, Bob’s older sister was near death. I didn’t know it until I heard from her lips that a priest was called in to read her last rites — only he wasn’t allowed due to a virus. In hindsight, I thank God he wasn’t allowed in, that might have “sealed the deal”, so to speak. As it was, my family and closest prayer partners were waging spiritual warfare by rebuking the spirit of death, speaking Holy Spirit to breathe into her lungs, and life and health to come back. She isn’t 100% yet but she’s home and she improves daily.

Covid is demonic. Lest we forget, all sickness is demonic. I will say that I feel like covid has its own special kind of demonic power as it has brought so much fear, division, and control. Do you understand? Get this: God isn’t doing this to teach us something. We might learn something from this assault, and indeed, many people say they have. But God isn’t the source of this. Jesus came to give us life and life more abundantly.

God kept Bob. God kept Laura. God kept Bob’s sister. Continue to fight. Continue to pray. Continue to believe. It is difficult with so much crap going on around us, I get it, but determine to never give up. I remind the LORD often that He showed me healing oil being poured on all the world. He who speaks it keeps it.

If you are in health, thank God. If you are ill, trust God. If you know someone who is battling, stand in the gap for them. Join me today in praise, trust, and prayer. God’s got this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMmmbJlWhtk

I hope you will take the song above to heart.