God Works The Night Shift

“Your lungs look like hell...”

Almost two years later those words from an ER doctor at Kaiser San Diego still ring in my ears. It was July 2021, at the height of the spread of the Delta Variant of Covid-19, and I had just returned home a few days earlier from being a camp counselor at a youth summer camp up in Big Bear. I wasn’t feeling great but thought it was just “the camp crud” that inevitably follows a week’s worth of cabin time with a bunch of Jr. High boys. Then, as I tried to walk up the stairs in my house and found myself out of breath before I reached the top, I knew something more serious was going on.

I had no idea how serious my health situation was until this “delightful” conversation that same night. There I was stuffed in a concrete closet, lying on a cot half my size in a hospital at max capacity, with a nasal cannula of oxygen. My wife and five sons were not allowed in and I was not allowed out due to hospital protocols. My ER doctor was clearly at her wits end. Who knows how many hours and how many patients she had seen that day already, but there was clearly no room for “bedside manner”. She looked at the x-ray of my lungs that were completely clouded and confirmed that I had Covid double pneumonia.

She looked down at me as I struggled to catch a breath and continued her tirade, “I’ve seen people like you at your age come in here with lungs like this and they don’t make it out. You’d better call your fam- ily while you still can because I don’t know how much longer you’re going to have the ability to talk to them depending on how this progresses.” With that she handed me a plastic bottle to relieve myself in as I was not allowed out of that room. As she walked out and closed the door to the rest of the world I can’t remember ever feeling so alone. Her words reverberated off of those concrete walls like a clock tower striking midnight on my life. I felt beat up by my doctor while simultaneously beating myself up for being this sick. I know family members and friends who have spent their lives battling chronic illness and sickness, but this was a first for me. I’d spent my entire life healthy and happy and yet, in this moment, I was sinking into the depths of despair. I had entered the dark night of the soul. Thankfully, I serve a God that works the night shift. A lifetime ago I worked as a barista for a 24-hour Starbucks drive-through in Seattle. I did my best to always get the early morning shifts because I was at my best and, generally, so were our customers. I had heard enough horror stories from my fellow baristas on how crazy it can get the later in the night it got, proving once again, in the immortal words of Whodini, “The Freaks Come Out At Night.” As it turns out, the fears come out at night too! I was afraid I’d never see my wife and sons again. I was afraid that my story was about to be cut short. I had spent most of my life in a vibrant, daily relationship with Jesus, but in this dark moment, He felt a million miles away. What if God didn’t come through this time? There were no windows in the room and it felt suffocating. Whatever faith I had left had fallen to the floor. I couldn’t feel Jesus. But I called out to Him anyway. There in my dark night of the soul I reminded God I had much more He had asked me to do. I wasn’t done. Though I seemed a bother to everyone else in the ER that night, my Jesus was working the night shift. I remembered reading about His dark night of the soul in the Garden of Gethsemane. Jesus felt so alone as He wrestled with the reality of sacrificing his life through the torture of the Cross. He had brought along his friends, but they had all fallen asleep. Through His anguish and tears He prayed, “Father, not my will but Yours be done.” Jesus surrendered His life in that garden long before He was ever nailed to that cross. On that dark day Jesus called out, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me!” It was the first time in His life He had not known the comforting presence of His Father. Yet, a holy God could not be near sin, and Jesus had taken our sin upon Himself. Jesus experienced agonizing separation from God so that I would never have to! Whether I felt Him or not, I knew He was with me in that little room. In my tears I turned on the worship songs that I didn’t have the breath to sing, but mouthed the words anyway. I had found recordings of others praying scriptures of healing and I clung to these promises. Throughout the night my mind toggled between darkness and light. During what felt like the longest and darkest night of my life it felt like Jesus was holding me. He wasn’t just the light at the end of the tunnel, He was the light IN the tunnel. Some- where in the middle of this I heard His voice whisper to my heart, “I’ve got some new songs for you to sing - you will get through this.”

I felt I needed to ask everyone I knew to pray for a 5-day miracle.

I didn’t know why that number was significant until many months later. A nurse who served during the Pandemic told me it was usually at day 5 that if a patient hadn’t improved significantly they would intu- bate. She told me that recovery after intubation was much less likely. I didn’t know this, but my God did. My Savior never sleeps or slumbers. He shows up when no one else will.

Thanks to the faithfulness of my God, the prayers of His people, and the care of doctors and nurses, I walked out that hospital 5 days later without an oxygen tank. The doctor even remarked, “I’m not sure what you’re doing, but keep doing it!” I told him it was Jesus who breathed breath in my lungs and got me back on my feet again.

On His dark night of the soul, Jesus didn’t stay dead....His story was still being written. He rose from the grave on the third day, the stone rolled away, and answered the cry of everyone who would call out His name no matter how late in the night it might be.

If you’d like to meet the God who works the night shift I’d like to personally introduce you to Him. You’re invited to join me at The Father’s House 1185 Linda Vista Dr, San Marcos, CA on Good Friday, April 7 at 6pm for candlelight and communion. Then, join us on Easter Sunday, April 9 at 9 am or 11 am to celebrate the only One who can bring the dead back to life again! We will have a free coffee bar, childcare and a bounce house for the kids.

If you’d like to find out more or share your story please feel free to visit our website at www.thefathershousesd.org or give me a call at 760-798-9418 or email me at jon@tfhsd.org.