I remember reading an ominous quote as we were entering the third year of the global pandemic.

“All of us have a date with Omicron,” a scholar at Johns Hopkins proclaimed, referencing the latest, hyper-transmissible COVID-19 variant.

For our family, that date occurred on June 24, 2022. My wife Amy, son Aidan, newborn daughter Ava, and myself all tested positive. Outside of a midnight trip to the emergency room when Ava spiked a fever, the acute phase of the disease was mostly unremarkable for us.

We spent a week at home, binge-watching a series where Rowan Atkinson descends into madness trying to kill a bee. Then it was on to a show where people guess if an object is actually an object, or a cake. It’s amazing what can pass for entertainment these days.

By the end of our quarantine, Amy and the kids had thankfully recovered. I, however, developed significant sinus issues, prompting my doctor to prescribe a round of the steroid prednisone.

I didn’t respond well.

While tapering off the medicine, I experienced the most crippling anxiety of my life. On top of that, my terrible sinus issues persisted.

For several weeks I was unable to sleep more than 30-45 minutes at a time. I was barely able to function due to sheer exhaustion. In order to get by, I became physically dependent on a nasal spray (I didn’t know it was possible to become a nasal spray junkie).

As the weeks progressed, my condition only worsened. I developed heart palpitations. I was unable to think clearly. And I became increasingly obsessed with finding a treatment that would enable me to breathe.

Up until this illness, I was an endurance sport athlete, following a strict exercise regimen that included a mix of running and cycling 8 to 10 hours per week, on average. In the previous two years, I completed the 46-mile Rim-to-Rim-to-Rim crossing of the Grand Canyon on foot, a 100-mile bike ride, and climbed 11,000 feet from Palm Springs to San Jacinto Peak (Cactus to Clouds). I had gone from being in the best shape of my life to having zero desire to engage in any form of exercise.

But now I developed an extreme intolerance to heat, sweating profusely in any environment warmer than room temperature (Phoenix in July wasn’t pleasant, to say the least). I had little to no appetite and over the first several weeks of this malady lost about fifteen pounds (I did not need to lose fifteen pounds).

Then one afternoon, my chest tightened and heart rate soared, prompting me to rush to the emergency room. I received an EKG, chest X-ray, CT scan, and multiple blood tests. But I was told that the medical team couldn’t find anything wrong with me, aside from a low blood sodium level.

While it was reassuring to hear that COVID hadn’t ravaged my lungs or heart, I was no closer to answers as to why I felt so miserable. Any sense of relief was short-lived as my list of symptoms continued to grow at a frenetic pace. Weeks progressed without solutions or viable treatments from medical professionals, and as I hit the three-month mark, I began to wonder:

Do I have long COVID?

A Silent Pandemic

According to Harvard Medical School, “Long COVID [is] considered a silent pandemic by many, running parallel to the COVID-19 pandemic.” The CDC estimates nearly 20% of those who survive the initial illness develop long COVID – a catch-all phrase for symptoms that linger weeks, months or even years after the acute phase.

One person might have a persistent cough, while another might be bedridden due to crippling exhaustion.  Still others experience intense anxiety and depression. Name a system in the body, and there is almost certainly a symptom that can fall under the umbrella term of long COVID. It is common for test results of long COVID patients to appear normal, despite the fact that they feel downright miserable all over.

Brain fog is a common symptom of long COVID. It can mean different things to different people, but for me, it meant I could barely concentrate on anything. I would struggle to remember the date (and sometimes even the month). I couldn’t follow text message conversations and jokes stopped making sense. I would read three sentences of an e-mail and struggle to comprehend what I had just read. A decade ago, I graduated from university with honors, and now I was struggling to follow the plot and remember the names of characters while reading third grade elementary books to Aidan.

This lack of concentration and focus made it next to impossible for me to participate in group texts with my running friends, which brought with it feelings of guilt and isolation.

I developed the hallmark symptom of a condition called Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome (POTS), where your heart races anytime you stand up and doesn’t return to a normal baseline. Walking to the kitchen would result in my heart rate jumping to 110 beats per minute. Attempting a low intensity strength workout would send it soaring to 150. Often, as I would pull into my garage and see my road bike hanging on the wall, a little voice would tell me “your days of riding that are over, you might as well put it up for sale.”

I would wake up every morning at 5:20am in a sweaty state of panic, terrified to face another day of this misery. I also experienced intermittent air hunger (feeling as if I was suffocating), a constant state of feeling tired but wired, anxiety, mild depression, 24/7 dissociative feelings also referred to as depersonalization / derealization, cognitive impairment, indifference, anhedonia, circulation issues, fine motor skill problems, lack of coordination, full-body muscle tension, and on and on…

Of the aforementioned symptoms, nothing was as terrible as the feeling of indifference. This is excruciating to write, but I would look at my beautiful wife and children and feel…

Nothing.

Intellectually, I knew that husbands and fathers innately love their family. On paper, I still did, but long COVID robbed me of almost all joy and emotion. I felt isolated, even when sitting next to my family.

Searching for Answers

Increasingly desperate, I spent hours reading posts in a subreddit (essentially an Internet forum) devoted to the topic of long haul COVID. The subreddit is a place to share stories, frustrations, emotions, and tips to encourage recovery. To-date, the online community is comprised of over 37,000 people, ranging from the newly infected to those suffering since the original 2020 strain.

Some people write that they have lost jobs, livelihoods, spouses, friends, and the most productive years of their lives. A particularly jarring thread devoted to suicide prevention resources is pinned to the top of the page, emphasizing the agonizing degree to which some people with long COVID are suffering.

A common refrain among members within the community is that their doctors had no answers. They told them there isn’t a cure but most people eventually got better, recommended doing things to reduce anxiety, and then wished them luck.

During any spare time I could muster, it became my singular mission to find the elusive supplement regimen or medical treatment that would end this nightmare. But with each person’s experience with long COVID being so unique, it was next to impossible to apply someone else’s recovery strategy to my own life.

One evening, I walked to our local park. Distraught, exhausted, and struggling to breathe, I sat in an empty bleacher overlooking a little league baseball diamond and pleaded with God to take this burden away from me. I begged him for healing so I would be able to watch Aidan or Ava play baseball on this field one day.

Throughout the pandemic, our family had stopped going to church. In the beginning, it was due to the quarantine mandates that shut the doors of most places of worship. We had the best of intentions of watching services online, but Sunday morning quickly turned into a time where we would either sleep in, or I would go off on a long run or bike ride.

Additionally, I had become disillusioned with the contemporary American church. Moral scandals involving well-known pastors I revered, partisan political grandstanding, and petty infighting over nonessential theological matters left me apathetic towards faith in general.

It was only recently that we had begun attending a local church in-person once again after Amy found a pastor named Travis Hearn. His sermons resonated with her during this difficult time. Each message Pastor Travis (PT) taught seemed to speak to exactly to what we were facing each week. Sermon titles such as This Mountain Shall Move, God’s Word for My Anxiety, God, Get Me Out of This, and Victory in the Valley perfectly encapsulated the volatile season we were in. We certainly felt as if we were in the depths of a dark valley.

On October 4th, my mom told me she had listened to a radio message from Chuck Swindoll, referencing the Bible passage James 5:13-15, which admonishes the sick to be prayed over and anointed with oil by church elders so that they may be healed. She asked me if my church did that and I muttered something like, “I doubt it..” and moved on, giving it little thought.

Much of my free time that wasn’t devoted to researching this condition was spent visiting medical specialists. Almost without exception, the specialist I was seeing would stress to me at some point in the conversation that there are no “silver bullet” strategies or treatment plans for long COVID. Each time, I would sullenly acknowledge this distressing, but consistent disclaimer, with a head nod. It was the same thing almost everyone in the aforementioned subreddit had heard over and over.

My primary care doctor is a man of faith. He prayed over me, performed a cognitive function test, and told me that he believed I would be free of this. He also gave me some strategies to promote recovery and some medicine to assist the process.

They were welcome words, because if I was honest, most (if not all) of my hope had been lost.

Hope for a Hurting Heart

One afternoon in November, my mom messaged me that she had just listened to an inspiring sermon on the radio called, “Hope for Hurting Hearts” by Greg Laurie. She also informed me that her devotional for the day was titled “Remain Hopeful”.

Well, that’s a nice coincidence. I could use a little hope right now, I thought.

That same day, I received an e-mail with the subject line:

THIS SUNDAY! POWERFUL PRAYER SERVICE! YOU WON’T WANT TO MISS THIS!

The e-mail explained that our pastor was going to preach a sermon titled “Don’t You Ever Lose Hope” on Sunday, followed by a time where the prayer team would pray for anyone who needed a miracle.

OK, well I guess I know where I’ll be on Sunday morning.

Sunday, November 6

After making it through my obligatory morning panic attack, I stumbled into the early service at Impact Church with Amy and Ava.

PT began the sermon pleading with the congregation to never ever lose hope. Have a minute (or 42 of them)? It’s worth a listen:

At the end of the message, PT asked anyone who needed a breakthrough to come up to the stage and be prayed over, referencing James 5:13-15. Yes, it was the exact passage my mom brought up weeks earlier:

Are any of you sick? You should call for the elders of the church to come and pray over you, anointing you with oil in the name of the Lord. Such a prayer offered in faith will heal the sick, and the Lord will make you well.

When the invitation was made and the lights went down, I wasted no time moving to the stage.

Up front, I was greeted by a friendly woman named Erica who asked how she could pray for me. Frantically trying to sum up the last four and a half months in a matter of sentences, I settled on this request: That I would be healed so I could serve my family again in a meaningful capacity.

After telling me how sorry she was that I had to go through this, Erica anointed my head in oil (!) and prayed that healing would begin for me immediately.

After our prayer, I walked out of the auditorium and caught up with Amy and Ava in the lobby. Amy would later tell me that my skin tone had completely changed, as well as the expression on my face. For the first time in four and a half months, my sullen look was gone, replaced by optimism.

On the way home from church, we stopped by a place to grab lunch. I started thinking about how Erica looked familiar. Accessing the church’s website on my phone, I confirmed my suspicion that she was also a staff member of the church.

And then it hit me full force, square in the face. In Erica’s bio picture, she was wearing a sweatshirt emblazoned with big block letters that read HOPE.

The fourth reference to hope in less than 48 hours.

The Breakthrough

When we arrived home, I looked at my bike hanging on the wall in the garage and made a decision. Taking it down and filling the empty tires with air, I decided:

I will be going for a ride today, regardless of how I feel.

After some initial clumsiness, I settled on an easy gear and began to cruise, fervently enjoying the beautiful 75-degree day and palm-lined streets for the first time in months. To my amazement, I felt great and completely capable. I ended up riding 15 miles, thanking God profusely for the healing I believe had begun in my life – and for the ability to do something I deemed impossible only hours earlier.

Within a week, I was exercising at nearly 80% of my pre-COVID level. I could fully concentrate at my job, comprehending and retaining the information I read. Within two weeks, I was running high intensity speed workouts again.

Most importantly, I could feel and demonstrate love again. Ava’s smile would light up my face. I could interact with Aidan. Amy and I could have deep, meaningful conversations again. I was able to be fully present as we celebrated Aidan’s seventh birthday and our fourteenth anniversary in the same month I was healed.

The Valley is Temporary

This is my honest account of what occurred over a period of four and a half months of my life this year. My intention is not to exaggerate anything I experienced or attempt to tug at your heartstrings. If anything, this is a dramatically abridged version of what my family and I encountered during that tumultuous time.

This is also my appeal to Type A, analytical thinkers and cynics such as myself. I think a certain amount of cynicism is healthy and protective, but it slowly devolved into an unhealthy state for me.

Many times throughout this journey, Amy would remind me that valleys are temporary. She would encourage me, telling me that she fully believed I was climbing out of the valley. My mind would return to the 9 mile climb up the Bright Angel Trail out of the Grand Canyon, after putting in a grueling 37 miles. While you ascend, there are numerous switchbacks that can leave you wondering how much longer it is going to take to finally reach the finish.

This experience stripped me down to the studs and shattered my pessimism with a sledgehammer. I encountered a God that is so kind. A God that is for me. A God that healed me in spite of my unbelief, pessimism, and endless attempts to “fix” the situation all by myself (one look at the hundreds of dollars I spent on supplements ranging from vitamin A to zinc and you will understand what I mean).

The hours spent talking to my mom, clinging to Amy in bed during a panic attack, and receiving calls and texts from concerned friends and family remind me just how dependent I am on the people I love.

Luke 17:11-19, where Jesus healed the 10 lepers and only one returned to thank Him, comes to mind. Each morning I wake up with energy, rather than panic, I thank God for my healing. I never want to be one of the 9 that just went on with their lives and neglected to thank the Source of their healing.

Finally, this experience gave me a glimpse into how many people are still suffering the aftermath of COVID around the world. They, like myself, may have survived the acute phase of the infection, but their pain and suffering has not ended.

I continue to pray for long-haulers, that they would experience healing, support, and comfort throughout their journey. I want to do whatever I can to help those who feel hopeless about their post-viral condition, as I did for almost half of this year. While this was easily the most challenging season I have ever walked though, I learned an important lesson in the depths of my suffering:

Regardless of the way I feel, whatever negative thoughts attempt to consume my mind, or how many physical symptoms I experience, I know there is hope for the long haul.