Earlier this month, an elderly client of mine who is in his 80s — I’ll call him John — wasn’t feeling well, so he went to the emergency department of one of the local hospitals. Prior to going to the hospital, John had tested positive for the COVID-19 virus. In addition to the virus, he had other medical issues (comorbidities) that put him in the high-risk category for COVID patients.
In February of this year, I caught a virus that made me sicker than I’ve been in years. For the first few days after the virus hit me, I had a fever that raged at night and eased up during the day. I slept on the couch on pillows that were stacked to keep me in an inclined position. I had to do that because in addition to the fever, I was coughing up mucus and was unable to lay flat. For the first few nights, I also had nightmares that bordered on hallucinations.
Last week I wrote about my five-year-old grandson, Liam, who was scheduled to have open-heart surgery on Tuesday, October 13. At the end of my article, I asked for prayers for Liam. I’m happy to report that the surgery was successful. The surgeon was able to apply a patch that was a little larger than a dime to the hole in Liam’s heart, and after the surgery, Liam’s heart rhythm was normal, and he was placed in the intensive care unit.
In last week’s article, The Defiant Catholic Child, I wrote that in every large devout Catholic family there is at least one child who is difficult to handle and demands more attention than the other children. In my article, I called this type of child “the defiant Catholic child” and limited my discussion to children who grow up in normal, devout Catholic two-parent homes.
The recent riots have exposed a reality that those of us who are devout Catholics have always known to be true. What is that reality? That there is an epic battle that has been taking place since the beginning of time. While the battle has involved different types of weapons and different forms of communication, the participants in the battle have always had one thing in common — they have always been separated into two opposing camps.