Standing on God’s Promise: A Testimony

Hello Exceeders! 💜

Extremely long testimony ahead but God deserves all of His praise and glory! 

I have been on such an emotional rollercoaster and I had to be in tune with God to make it off. I have been working on this post for coming up on 3 weeks. I had to go to God about why it was taking so long and He had to remind me that this is important. To give Him His glory, to me, and to whoever needs to read this testimony of grabbing the supernatural and bringing it down to earth. Declaring and decreeing to LIVE and not die! As we all know, 2020 has been a complete transformation from whatever you THOUGHT was your norm. Things that you thought you needed or wanted didn’t matter anymore. Everything has changed and if you were doing it right, you changed as well. God has been revealing and healing things in me and its been quite the ride. I have grown in leaps and bounds since 2019 and I’m still not done but I’m not where I use to be. I have truly tried to tap into the God in me this year. I was intentional about my growth. I wanted my light to be set on a hill. Today I have a testimony to tell that wraps up my 2020 perfectly after all that growth . I spent the last 6 days of this year in the hospital with COVID being treated like the enemy himself was my nursing staff but God…

It all started when I said yes. I always knew that whatever my calling was that it would require me to talk to a lot of people and there was only one flesh problem with that…..I don’t like talking in front of people lol So to say I was running from God was an understatement so I guess I thought I was Jonah. That fear has truly stopped me from many blessings. I’m shy at first until you get to know me and to know me is to know that I’m not really shy lol It’s weird but I have been on this journey with God all 2020, getting closer to Him and trusting what He wants for me and I know that I can’t run forever so I decided to stop saying no. So here comes my bible study facilitator, P Roz, on assignment the same day I said that I was going to stop saying no, and she asked me to facilitate our bible study and I said….yes. Even she said that she thought that I would say no but I literally told God that day that I would stop telling Him no. It lined up perfectly though because the very sermon that I was to facilitate was something that I had been personally saying all year so I was really passionate about it. So I did it……and I loved it.  I mean its an open discussion so it wasn’t like I talked the whole time but just the position itself was so enjoyable. That’s when the enemy showed up. That same exact week I began to feel bad in my body. Body aches, headache, not able to eat, fatigue. That Friday I couldn’t even go to work so I decided to go get tested and I truly thought I had a sinus infection but surely enough it was COVID. At first it wasn’t that bad. They even told me that they thought I was over the hump. I really just slept a lot. My body felt like I was always carrying 3 people on my back. I would try to move around during the day and for the most part I was fine but during the night it got bad. Coughing, unable to catch my breath and I didn’t see anything below 102 as my temp but I was determined not to go to the hospital unless I absolutely had to! That continued until the day before Christmas Eve. I took a turn for bad because worse had yet to come. My parents thought it would be best that I come stay with them because at that point I had not eaten in 4 days. Christmas Eve is when I started to slowly slip into worse. I couldn’t go 3 steps without having to stop to catch my breath. It was such a struggle because staying active was such a challenge but staying active was what everybody said I needed. My family opens Christmas gifts on Christmas Eve and I tried my best to be normal. To be present but I barely remember anything that happened. Once I went in the room after the festivities, the slip into worse started.

Our church had 6 am early morning Christmas service and I was determined not to miss it. I set so many alarms to make sure I wouldn’t. I made up my mind and that’s when the enemy came full force. That was the worst night of my life. It was a point in the night that I was coughing so bad that I couldn’t even catch my breath long enough. NOTHING matters when you can’t breath. The only thing that comes out of you in that moment is what’s in you. I’m so glad that the God in me is what came out. The Holy Spirit was ringing in my head. 

Just breathe, you can breathe, you know how to breathe, calm down and just breathe. 

I was finally able to take a breath and I couldn’t do anything but thank God but the enemy wasn’t through bothering me yet. I tossed and turned all night long and I woke up every 10 minutes it felt like, not on purpose. I was so restless and it was so confusing. After being so fatigued, not being able to stay asleep didn’t make sense but my body was in so much pain that I understood why. Everything hurt. My chest being the main thing. Every time I woke up I thanked God. It was like I didn’t know if I would wake up again. That went on for hours and finally it was time for service. I made it. I was half conscious but I made it. Immediately after I got off the line it was like someone turned my lungs completely off. My mom rushed in the room and she was trying to get me to catch my breath any way she possibly could as I was humped over trying not to break. I could still hear the Holy Spirit telling me “you know how to breathe, calm down and breathe”. It was the scariest thing but my mind was made up that I still have a purpose I haven’t even fully started. I decided that I was going to live. I got through Christmas, on day 5 of not eating and I thought if I made it through that breathing scare, I must be coming out. I was wrong. 

That night was just as bad as the night before but this time I was stuck in place. I couldn’t breathe and my body was so weak, I couldn’t do anything about it. I couldn’t yell, talk, move. All I could do was lay there. The next morning came and I knew I needed to get out of that bed. I heard my dad cleaning the kitchen but like I said, I was paralyzed. I knew I had to get out that room. I heard it, I heard “GET UP”. I took all the strength I had and climbed up the wall and I ran as fast I possible could to the living room. I was completely out of breath but I didn’t stop until I got there. It took me so long to actually calm down but something was wrong. Something was different. My chest felt weird. So I laid there for some time and then my mom came and sat with me. After a while, she looked at me strange and asked if I was okay because I was breathing weird and I knew that I wasn’t. She told me to get up and walk down the hallway and she put a oximeter on my finger and before I could take 2 steps, my oxygen was showing 81 out of 100. It was time to go to the hospital. We got in the car and my mom turned on War by Charles Jenkins and completely out of breath and half way out of my mind I sang as many words as I could. It was time to put my war clothes on. I knew that was the Holy Spirit that told me to get up. If I was in that room, the only person that would have heard my breathing getting faint would have been me. I was so out of it, lacking oxygen, that I thought I was talking out loud and I was actually only talking in my head. My mom said the only thing coming out of my mouth was, I can’t breathe. 

I was in CONSTANT prayer. I needed God to tell me why I was going to the hospital because I was not going there to die. I was going there to bring something out of me. I had all my teachings on my mind. I had my own personal studies on my mind. I was ready. I knew it was a mind thing overall. COVID attacks your body but the enemy wants your mind. Like I said, nothing matters when you can’t breathe so that’s the perfect time to attack. The enemy didn’t anticipate me to remember that in my weakness, God is made strong. My body was weak but my spirit man was strong. My mind was weak and lacking oxygen physically but it was not weak spiritually. I knew exactly what was going on and I knew exactly what time it was.  

“Many are the afflictions of the righteous: but the Lord delivereth him out of them all.” Psalms 34:19 KJV

God was walking into that hospital with me, HE WAS THERE BEFORE I GOT THERE.

We get to the hospital and they test my oxygen and immediately say that I will be getting admitted. We go through the process and they do a EKG and she tells me that she can’t even see my lungs because it’s covered with blood clots. Even then I had already made up my mind so the only emotion that I felt was calm. I just wanted to lay down. So my mom asks can she go back with me and BY THE GRACE OF GOD, the rules had just changed in that hospital that a family member could go back until I was put in a room and then only she could visit for 2 hours a day. I was overjoyed. So we get back to a holding room and…..its hot. I have never experienced a hot hospital but it was like the heat was on in there. So now I have heat mixed with pain and still I was calm. Every room I went in had a cross on the wall directly in front of me. The day before my mom picked me up I was studying Jeremiah and I read Jeremiah 17:14  “Heal me, O Lord, and I shall be healed; save me, and I shall be saved: for thou art my praise.” It was engraved on my heart that God was going to heal me and save me. So they come in to do my IV and the woman was poking me everywhere but in a vein. I couldn’t even react fast enough, I just sat there, smiling at the cross above the door and then she said she was going to get another nurse who was good at finding veins. The other nurse comes in and smiles at me and I’m thinking that she is about to put the IV in but she tells the lady something and then says “In the Name of Jesus”. I immediately perk up and look at her. The lady tries again and gets the IV right and the other lady repeats “In the Name of Jesus” then looked at me again and said “see, all you have to do is call His name” and then left. That lady was probably an angel but that’s when I knew I was going to LIVE. That was my confirmation. All you have to do is call His name. 

Here is when the problems wanted to start back up. So there were a few doctors that came in to explain that the blood clots were why I couldn’t breathe and it was good that I got there when I did. Me and my mom were in agreeance that no matter what, I was not to be incubated and put on a ventilator. I told that to the last doctor that came in. He was confused but he stated that was a thing I could request and he would get me the paperwork to sign. Well it didn’t go over well with the other 4 or the nurses because they all came back in the room at separate times trying to explain it’s importance and how they felt I was foolish for not wanting that. They got more and more agitated as we continued to decline. Finally they stopped pleading their case and stopped coming in there. About an hour later a nurse came in and I asked how long I would be in this area because I was soaked with sweat, she stated “Until a COVID patient checks out”. I was so confused but she walked out without saying anything more. 12 hours we sat in that room. I woke up to me being transferred to a room. A beautiful room with a beautiful view and my cross right in front of me. I was optimistic.

My nursing staff was kind for the most part but not attentive. I was waiting almost an hour to go to the bathroom and that was just the first day. The machine was going off and it would just beep and beep and beep and I was too weak at first to even try to cut it off. It wasn’t until the first night I stayed there, when my mother left for the night, that I found out that the assignment the enemy put on my life was bigger than I thought. That night I was having a coughing fit and needed to use the bathroom. I waited about 45 minutes for a nurse to come in the room to get my oxygen and all the machines to the bathroom with me, when I finally got to the bathroom it was like I couldn’t catch enough air to breathe again. I was coughing and wheezing and out of breath. The nurse left the room and came back in the bathroom and said to me, “let me just put this on you”, as she proceeded to put a Do Not Resuscitate wrist band on my arm. God quickened my spirit SO FAST. I knew it was God because everything stopped, the coughing, the wheezing, EVERYTHING. I looked at her and said “what?” and all she could say was “oh”. She helped me back to my bed and I never saw her again. I kept replaying the event in my mind. In that moment it would have looked like I was not in my right mind and I was never going to catch my breath. Also in that same moment, my nurse tried to make it so I would not be resuscitated even though I never signed a DNR, or the Do Not Incubate that I requested. That is when I knew that I needed to be not only in my right mind but in constant contact with God. 

After I told my mom about the event, she barely went 2 minutes without talking to me. Also by the grace of God, whenever she came up there to visit, she would be there for hours with no rebuttal. I was grateful for that the most because I know that there are family members that couldn’t see their family members at all so I’m still thanking God for favor in her being there with me. There were days that on a 12 hour shift I saw my nurse at the beginning of her shift and at the end of her shift. It was true neglect for the most of my stay and I was so righteously angry. All I could think about was the people that have died in the hospital from COVID. Was this why? Because they were afraid of us? I later found out that the floor that I was on wasn’t just for COVID patients, they had us mixed in. Was that why my nurses ignored me most of the day? Was it because they had to put on their protective gear every time they came in my room? My nurse tried to teach me how to silence my own machines. So many questions, so many tears for the lives lost that I think could have been saved, so many prayers to God for wisdom and strength to know how to handle the treatment I was getting. I held my bladder one day so long that I thought it would bust open. I was told they didn’t have underwear to fit me so my mom had to run and buy some. I was told they didn’t have leg cuffs big enough to prevent the blood clots from spreading to my legs. I knew then that was the enemy’s attempt to play on my previous insecurities. There was a time that a statement like that would send me straight into a depression and thinking, am I the biggest patient y’all have ever serviced but God has made me an iron pillar in 2020. It was a nice attempt but it wasn’t strong enough. 

There were 2 nurses that went above and beyond their duties to take care of me. One came back because she was taken off my floor and she stopped by the window just to check on me. The other noticed that my bed was filthy. I went 4 out of 6 days with the same gown on laying on the same pillow and blankets. She helped me in the bathroom and refused to let me lay back down until she changed the whole bed. Out of a combined 12 nurses, 2 showed me true compassion. That made me emotional again. Is that the statistics that we are working with? Is that what this pandemic has come to? I’m sure they weren’t bad people but I didn’t feel safe with 10 out of 12 nurses. 

It was such a surreal experience but God got me through. My parents and family got me through. My interceding prayer warriors got me through. Just hearing Pastor B and Apostle’s voice got me through. Constant contact with P Roz and Bishop got me through. My friends got me through. I want to buy my mom just anything she wants for all the time she sacrificed for me. I’m so thankful for the team God has connected me with. On January 1st from 12am to 1am, I sang and praised the Lord with everything in me. I didn’t care who heard me, I didn’t care if they tried to stop me, I gave God His glory for bringing me out. For opening my eyes. For showing me the gift of compassion I posses. For letting me know what to do and how to compose myself when the earthly help isn’t really there to help. I learned so much about myself. I would hear that I was growing so much and you could see it all over me. Internally and in private I knew what God had changed about me but not outwardly.. I felt like I was growing but I would always tell my sister, I don’t really see what people see in particular. Well, I saw it. I saw me choose God and His promise above everything. He said that He would never leave me nor forsake me. That He would deliver me out of my troubles. I wasn’t letting go until He healed me. I sit here today, writing this extremely long blog that I thank you for taking the time to read, with blood clots still diminishing in my lungs, walking FULLY in my healing. God did it.