The Voice ~ Are You Listening? By David Christenson
So, as the Holy Spirit says: “Today, if you hear his voice,…” Hebrews 3:7 +++
I know and recognize the fact that I don’t talk to God as much or as often as I should. But I do try to talk to Him everyday. I believe that the more we talk to God the more He becomes a part of our life. The more God is part of our lives the more that He talks to us with the voice of the Holy Spirit. This belief has been quite evident in my own life the past few weeks and I want to share the experiences I have had over that time frame.
Because I am a heart patient, I tend to pay a bit of attention to the signs of a possible issue again. About a month ago, I was having some ‘twinges” near my left shoulder and in the armpit area. Then that next Sunday I went to a blood pressure screening at church and it was elevated far higher than what is ‘normal’ for me. I’m usually in the neighborhood of 115/65 and that day it was 144/104. So I started debating with myself if those things were all connected somehow. I told my Bible study guys that Wednesday morning that for two nights in a row I had awakened at almost the exact same time: 2:04. And that made me wonder if it was the Holy Spirit talking to me and wanting me to go get this thing checked out. We prayed a bit and then I mentioned that I needed to go to Aberdeen about an hour away that morning but when I got back in the late morning I was going to have it checked out.
On my return from Aberdeen I went right to the hospital and after chatting with a few nurses for a bit I checked myself into the ER so they could perform some tests. I was hooked up so I could have an EKG done and then a short time after that the doctor came in to look things over. He wanted some blood taken for a panel and then after the blood draw he wanted some chest X-rays performed. After almost 3 hours of tests and looking over the results everything came back negative. I was wondering if I was hollering out “Wolf” when there weren’t any around. The twinges ended up being nothing more than muscles spasms.
Then about a week ago my wife Gretchen and I went out to visit some very good friends of ours and we stayed long enough that we were invited to stay for a bite to eat. About an hour or so after returning home I wasn’t feeling the best and when I went to bed I was quite miserable. I couldn’t get comfortable and I was freezing cold with the shakes. I ended up putting my heavy wool socks on along with sweatpants and a hoodie to try and keep warm. The next couple days were like that but also into the mix was a nasty diarrhea without any appetite, and then with miserable nights in between to go along with that terrible diarrhea continuing. Then on Monday it seemed as though the bug had run its course and I was on the mend. And it could have been so easy to write everything off as the flu or just having flu-like symptoms. Monday afternoon was going so well that I went out and drove the countryside talking to some farmer prospects for possible insurance transfers. Monday night proved to be a night to forget.
All those previous symptoms came back with a vengeance. When Tuesday morning dawned I had made up my mind that I needed to see a doctor. When I left the house about 7:30 to go to my office I was content with that decision. Somewhere about 9:00 I decided to forego the call to the local doctor and decided to go one step further and I called my cancer doctor since I was concerned that because of the leukemia it might be some kind of infection. After describing my symptoms to Dr. Conklin’s nurse she said she would consult Conklin and get back to me. About a half hour or so later she called back saying Conklin wanted to see me ASAP and an appointment was set up for the following morning.
The night before the appointment Gretchen and I were talking about the whole ordeal and she asked if something that had happened to me the previous Monday might be the cause and I said it could be. I had been out to my former cattle partners for much of that day freeze branding some new bred heifers they had purchased. My job was to work the chutes pushing the heifers through so 3 other guys could perform their duties. We were almost done when one critter got a little snotty in the chute and she lunged forward into the head gate and sent a splattering of wet, gooey, sloppy manure that took me full in the face. I had my mouth closed and my eyes were protected from debris because of my sunglasses. I wiped my face clean with a paper towel and never thought too much of everything. The guys had a good laugh at my expense though.
When we told Dr. Conklin about that he went into an offensive mode right away and wanted blood cultures and stool samples performed along with a CT scan to verify if the lymph nodes were affected or not. And he also wanted to eliminate the lymph nodes as the cause of my problems. The blood culture turned out to be quite the show. I have given blood a lot in the past 16 years and I have never been affected by it including the fact that I’ve never been light-headed but when the nurse tech was about done drawing blood from my left arm I told her I was getting a bit dizzy. These tests need to have blood drawn from at least two points in a person’s body and when she moved to my right arm she asked how I was and I said I was sure I would never be able to get up and walk down the hallway and as soon as I said that I started to go dark and I told her that. She went away for a couple seconds and came back with all kinds of nurses for reinforcements. My blood pressure had dropped to 69/46 with a pulse in the low 40s. They put me on oxygen and started an IV drip. I was probably so weakened from not being able to eat and diarrhea attacks every hour or two.
The other day I was told that one infection was found and they also found some microbes that needed to be dealt with. I had had a cold sore inside my nose about the time that I was working those cattle so it might be likely that the sore gave a perfect spot for these organisms to gain entrance into my leukemia taxed system. I don’t have the immune system a normal person would have to fight infections and diseases so these are things that need to be monitored.
As I mentioned earlier, I am a heart patient and but also suffer from sleep apnea. I have had ear problems since I was a very young child. I get drainage at different times and most of those are during the night. Last week was one of those times. I woke up with my right ear seeping fluid so when that happens I need to put a few drops of rubbing alcohol into my ear and dry it with a Kleenex and then use a Q-tip to swab it some more. I completed that task and the next day when I looked at Yahoo sports news I saw that a 34 year old former major league ball player was found dead from a heart attack and that he was thought to suffer from sleep apnea too. Former Philadelphia Eagles and Green Bay Packers great Reggie White died of a heart attack thought to have been triggered by sleep apnea.
So this news of the ball player passing made me think that this might be just another way for the Holy Spirit to talk to me; to help me pass the word about Jesus to those around me. These thoughts about the Holy Spirit talking to us prompted me to do this writing. It probably would have been considered quite normal for a person to think that those flu-like symptoms that I had about a month ago were just that. Nothing more, nothing less. It makes me think that since I do try to talk to God every day, that He was talking back in conversation with me through His Holy Spirit to bypass my family doctor and clinic to go to Dr. Conklin and to be put on the right path a few days earlier than otherwise to fight those infections and microbes.
And while I was focused on the infections part of this issue it seemed that maybe I should also mention the ear drainage and sleep apnea issue I have too in order to illustrate just another way the Holy Spirit can talk to us. I hope and pray that the Holy Spirit comes to each and every one who has taken the time to read this and that you also will see and hear the Holy Spirit and know He is God.
But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatever I have said to you. ~ John 14:16 +++
Here is more about our newest writer for God here at FGGAM! PRAISE GOD!
David Christenson, a lifelong resident of South Dakota, grew up on a farm north of Claremont and attended school in Amherst and Britton, graduating from Britton in 1977.
David married Gretchen Tisher in 1984. Gretchen is also a graduate of Britton and teaches math and drama at Britton-Hecla high school. David and Gretchen have two children. Zach is an engineer for Continental Ag in Norfolk, Nebraska and his wife Amanda is a nurse. Margo lives in Denver and works as a Marketing & Outreach coordinator for MyLifeLine.org, a cancer support not-for-profit entity.
David started a cow/calf operation in the 1980s and farmed on the family farm after his high school graduation until December of 1994 when he accepted a sales position at the John Deere store in Britton. David left the John Deere sales position in March of 2006 and became a licensed crop insurance agent in May of 2006. David also started a rental business in 2010 and remained in the cattle business until January of 2012.
David, age 55, has had some extraordinary circumstances in his life. He was run over by a farm tractor before age 6 and had three heart attacks a few months before turning 40. Then he suffered life threatening injuries a few months after turning 50 in a hit and run incident. David was diagnosed with leukemia in 2012 and skin cancer in 2014.
David started writing his recovery experiences on Facebook in December of 2009. Over the next four years those Facebook notes became what would become chapters in his book, “Why Are You Here?” which was published in December of 2013.