In all my years of writing, I had never gone an entire week without posting an article.
But now I have.
Unfortunately, it couldn’t be avoided.
I was incredibly sick.
Without warning, I was slammed by an absolutely vicious disease. There were days when I didn’t even want to move, and so obviously I didn’t want to eat or drink much either. Soon I was not going to the bathroom much at all, because I was severely dehydrated. But my mind was so foggy that I didn’t even realize what was happening until it was almost too late.
And the constant coughing and endless mucus that was being expelled from my body meant that I was losing more moisture on a continual basis.
Meanwhile, I could not lay down and go to sleep because the moment I laid down fluid would fill my throat and I would start gagging.
So night after night I literally could not go to bed and sleep.
I cannot even begin to describe how horrible that has been over the past week.
By propping the upper half of my body almost vertically, I found that there were times when I could get a few minutes of sleep. But the constant fever, pain and coughing certainly did not make that easy.
Last night I was so desperate for a normal night of sleep. I tried laying down on my side and inevitably I started gagging in just a few moments. I tried laying down on my other side and the same thing happened. I sat up in bed and just started crying because at that point I was severely sleep-deprived.
I tried several other positions but nothing was working. Finally I went downstairs and propped myself up on the sofa.
And for the first time in days I got a few hours of sleep.
Please pray that I would be able to get even more tonight.
The good news is that even though others around me caught the same thing, none of them became extremely ill like I did.
At first I was sure that it was COVID since it was a severe respiratory disease, but yesterday I went to the doctor and was told that it was actually RSV.
RSV is the second leading cause of death for babies under the age of one, and it results in vast numbers of tragic deaths all over the globe each year…
A new study estimates that 1 in 50 deaths of otherwise healthy children under age 5 around the world is due to a common virus that’s currently surging in the US: respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV. And in high-income countries, 1 in 56 babies who are born on time and are healthy will be hospitalized with RSV in the first year of life, according to the researchers’ estimates.
In recent years, RSV has been increasingly hitting older adults too, and last fall we witnessed a “dramatic rise in RSV-related hospitalizations” in this country…
In the fall of 2022, the United States experienced a dramatic rise in RSV-related hospitalizations. Federal data indicated that hospital admissions for RSV were 10 times higher than usual. At that time, beds at several pediatric hospitals were at or near capacity, and vulnerable seniors were also packing medical facilities.
When something like this happens, there is a question that a lot of people tend to ask.
Why would God allow me to go through something like this?
Over the years, I have had so many people ask me some form of that question.
Ultimately, there is a purpose for everything that we experience. Of course sometimes we make bad decisions and bring painful consequences upon ourselves unnecessarily. But other times that is not the case at all. Just look at Job. He diligently served God with his whole heart, and yet God allowed the enemy to attack his body, his family and everything that we owned.
At that time, Job didn’t understand why all of that was happening.
But God did.
And today people all over the world still read the Book of Job and are greatly blessed by it.
No matter what you are going through right now, God has a purpose.
Maybe your faith is just being tested. It is easy to trust God and praise Him when everything is going great. But when you are in extreme pain and you feel like you are dying it isn’t quite as easy.
Without resistance, there isn’t any growth.
This is something that weight-lifters know very well. They want to build their muscles, and so they try to lift weights that are a real challenge for them.
If we want to do great things for God in the days ahead, we need to allow our spiritual muscles to be challenged.
Are we just “good time Christians” that will fall away at the first sign of persecution, or will we be radically committed to our Savior and cling to the cross no mater what may come?
What I have been through the past few days has been hard, but it isn’t worth comparing to the fate of the millions upon millions of people that are dying without any hope at all.
What can I do for them?
What can we all do for them?
Very difficult circumstances have a way of focusing us on what really matters, and my hope is that this article will be a wake up call for all of us.
We thank and praise the Lord for answered prayers for Michael. Please Lord, continue to heal him and his family from this God approved trial. May through their godly testimony of the power of Jesus to heal and save, You will move people to grow and come to faith in Jesus! After you encounter Jesus, you will never be the same! Thank you Lord for Michael's many opportunities to help us and give You praise and Glorify You! May we never cling to any earthly thing as this is not our home as we are heavenboundRu. In Jesus name, AMEN
I'm so glad you survived Satan's attack. God is good. Lessons to be learned, though. I suspect you haven't been taking as good of care of your health as needed. With good health thru life, we can tend to think it will just always be so. NO! Good health is not automatic with age. We don't stay 'spring chickens' forever.😀 Rest more, watch what you eat and "pray w/o ceasing". Glad you're back. Prayers answered 🙏