Tag Archives: Covid-19

First, Do No Harm

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I live in New Braunfels, Texas and I routinely call pharmacies about a variety of drugs, including ivermectin.

Pharmacists at one of the local CVS pharmacies and two local Walgreens have refused to fill prescriptions for ivermectin for combatting active Covid infections. They say that it is not approved by the FDA. One pharmacist told me they won’t even stock it.

By contrast, these pharmacies reported that they do stock and sell drugs which end pregnancies-abortifacients.

So, it could be said that here in New Braunfels, it is easier to convince some pharmacists to help end your pregnancy than it is to save your own life.

What Angels Do

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Daniel 10:12-14 KJV

[12] Then said he unto me, Fear not, Daniel: for from the first day that thou didst set thine heart to understand, and to chasten thyself before thy God, thy words were heard, and I am come for thy words. [13] But the prince of the kingdom of Persia withstood me one and twenty days: but, lo, Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me; and I remained there with the kings of Persia. [14] Now I am come to make thee understand what shall befall thy people in the latter days: for yet the vision is for many days.

We have so misunderstood and utterly misrepresented

What angels do

Who they are

Or how they might appear

(While surely they might be anyone–

Women, children, the dispossessed)

They stand their ground

Fight for us

Maybe when it would seem

We are otherwise entirely

Abandoned

Restraint

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What if there was no other choice? Or if the pain were even more protracted than this? This, after all, is mild

The woman in the windowless room notes there are no children in the pictures from the Kabul airport–where are all the children?

And in my attempt to swim off my fear and grief and anger, the lightning storm descends

So close to water, no rain

Paper Bag Analogies

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It is scary not being able to breath properly. It looks like you have Covid lung the doctor said, congestive heart failure…

My husband told my daughters what pills to give me and when, bypassing me entirely because the lack of oxygen meant fatigue and fuzzy thinking

I had put my soul at the center of this. Dying was just a space in my peripheral vision, something that was going to be inevitable at the rate I was going.

I tried to sing these songs. Eventually I had to just sit in their presence while others sang.

I talked to Jesus about the pain and paper sack lungs. He told me he took the true agony of a pair of dying lungs so that I could be given

More time, heaven after

When I began to think I would actually live a little longer, I was still afraid to take it for granted

I had to talk myself into the river. Tell myself I could ease in, keep your head above water

When I could go under

Hold my breath

Swim again

I told Jesus I would never tell the story without full acknowledgement

He healed me. He gave me back my life at his own deep expense

His lungs for mine

Now I can sing

We are the catchers in the rye

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Matthew 13:38-39 KJV

[38] The field is the world; the good seed are the children of the kingdom; but the tares are the children of the wicked one ; [39] The enemy that sowed them is the devil; the harvest is the end of the world; and the reapers are the angels.

When I was younger I would read Catcher in the Rye on a yearly basis. First I was Phoebe’s age, then Holden’s and now I am old enough to know that the narrator sounds too much like a middle aged man with a Peter Pan complex.

But the catchers in the rye are older than me and J.D.

They are the injunction of a God who saves us all from the precipice hill of Golgotha. He tells me I owe him all and I agree. He tells me, come with me into the fields

And I go

I try to go

Briefly Superheroic

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At times I go back and parse

The pain, the bone-deep ache

The fever, chills, fatigue

The way it felt like constant, relentless muggings committed by tiny, unseen assailants

No hunger

A brief sense of being untied from all ordinary things

As though powerlessness could be construed as

Super-heroic

Shedding

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At first I thought it was my age, that some magic threshold of peri-menopausal bliss had been breached and entered and that the clumps of hair went with the hot flashes and wrinkles. Then a survivor 20 years my junior told me she was struggling with hair loss and it occurred to me that perhaps it was one more Covid peculiarity?

I think I am handling it well. I have trimmed the remaining locks by inches and let its spun lightness rule the day.

I am alive

Lazarus

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He walks into every room looking for someone who might comprehend

what it is

he has seen and heard

He weighs their solemn waiting-room-faces

Do they have

Better memories now? Do they still need to write things down or

Know every word by heart?

Are all the lambs among them and

can we see their scars?

Who can end this waiting

By calling us out

Out into life

My Covid Story

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Around Thanksgiving I got Covid. I work in a doctor’s office, so eventually all of our staff got the disease as did our immediate family.

Symptoms and severity sorted out by age. The youngest two had the mildest symptoms, the oldest–me, ended up in the ER for a day, facing a diagnosis of damage to my heart and lungs.

First, let me say, that I am mending. I am the recipient of miracles and healing.

But the 24 hours leading up to the ER visit were really scary. The day in the ER was a gift. The oxygen machine they sent me home with was a gift.

And my current pulse, O2 stats, and general health–belong to the grace of my Ransomer.

Jesus gave me miracles, as He has done my whole life.

Covid is a really scary disease. It leaves some scars. It leaves fear and memory of the pain and uncertainty.

But Jesus is bigger than mountains. Jesus is bigger than tiny killer viral agents.

And Jesus never walks away from us.

I know I have been saved and given the gift of my life back.

I will do what I can to praise the One who saved me.

And I will use these beautiful lungs to pray for all of us.

That we feel him there with us,

No matter what.

Woman Up!

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I have never been a roller coaster girl. Too queasy, but these days the ride is all mental grit and actuarial tables–I stop in the credit union parking lot just as the preacher on the radio quotes Jesus–ask anything in my name and I will give it to you!

Ok, God, I tell Him, make those doctors brave

Could substitute kind, generous, humble, compassionate

Feels impossible, I tell Him then

He reminds me

Impossible

Is His specialty.