I had become isolated during the pandemic. I was in a heavily locked down and restricted region which made it difficult to have any social interaction. Leading into this was more than a decade of graduate level academic studies and a high-pressure, results driven job that was burning me out. I was not in good shape for facing a pandemic and the associated restrictions.

Late 2020, early 2021. I had been having trouble falling asleep at night in the previous weeks. My heart would start pounding in my chest as I lay in bed, and it continued to build in intensity over time.

February 4, 2021. I lay down to go to sleep and I cannot calm down. The heart pounding is getting extreme and I’m getting nervous. It’s almost midnight and I need to do something. Am I having a heart attack? Am I dying? I get in my vehicle and drive to the emergency room around 11pm.

I get admitted and then after talking with some nurses they mention the ECG tech is coming by to check my heart. (Heavily symbolic: checking my heart.) He walks in with an unbelievable calm demeanor. He connects it up takes and some measurements. Once he’s done I asked him:

How are you so calm?

And he replied:

Because I have faith.

Which blew me away, and also humbled me. I had grown up in the church but I didn’t have faith. I had made my way back to church about a year before after being away for 20 years. I didn’t have the kind of faith he had. I was hanging by a thread.

He leaves and I’m laying in the hospital bed. A low moment in my life.

This voice then says in my head:

You need me.

It completely crushed me, in a good way. I started bawling my eyes out immediately. Total ugly cry. I knew it was from the Lord, it was the same voice I had heard only one month prior when the Lord spoke to me prophetically about one of my friends.

As it turned out, my heart was fine. I had been completely drained by years of work obsession and other unhealthy behavior and the lockdown restrictions pushed me over the edge. I got help and made healthy changes in my mental and physical life which continue to this day.

Hearing from the Lord was an extremely important moment in which I started to take my faith much more seriously and pursue the Lord in a more earnest way.