the story behind “Yellow Buttercup”
Yellow Buttercup
There it is,
gleaming in its shiny yellow petals
atop such a delicate green stem.
Alive in the sun’s rays--
though the snow
still holds on round about.
Frozen whiteness reflects the day’s
brightness,
telling us winter is not yet departed.
But that flash of color
in that small flower
has the power of hope
in its being—
greater than the cold.
Dear Lord,
May more of Your promises
spring up
as Your warmth
finally comes to stay.
So the story behind this piece, is to follow, but the short answer is — long covid and God’s mercy.
Our son battled Lyme Disease and Chronic Mold Illness since he was about seven, but by the summer of 2022 he was emerging stronger than ever. My husband and I felt a surge of hope that he was going to be ok. He was able to work that summer at a marina in Ketchikan, Alaska, and we were thrilled for him. But then, in mid-July, he came down with Covid-19. It derailed him. By mid-August he’d recovered enough to begin his senior year of high school back at home in Illinois. He made it through fall semester, but at the beginning of January he had to take gym class. The required running shook all those micro-clots up and once again took him down. The cloud that hung over our family that winter kept getting darker and denser the more days he missed from school. I dreaded having to call him in sick again, even though everyone in the office was so understanding. I prayed and prayed, and filled more of heaven’s bottles with my tears.
We found a long-covid specialist across the country and did the special lab testing and maneuvering to try to get our son on the medicines their trials had shown to be successful, but when my son took the second dose, he developed a strange cough. Even just taking those two doses made him worse and we were counting down the days he had left to finish his assignments so he could graduate. We cried out to God, desperate, feeling that our one shot had just exploded in our hands.
I prayed more prayers and filled more of heaven’s bottles with my tears….and it was during these dark, dark days that the Lord gave me the picture of a single buttercup springing up through the snow. (We live in the Midwest and winter was in full swing outside, as well as in our hearts.) He just showed me that sunny little flower, and it radiated hope. So I turned to my journal and wrote what I saw, through tears, holding onto the lifeline of hope the Lord was tying onto me.
And then, my Heavenly Father opened the windows of heaven a bit more. While returning a phone call to my son’s doctor’s office where we were going back and forth with messages about whether that medicine came in lower doses or could be split in two, etc, the Lord allowed me to catch one of my son’s functional MD’s nurses when I tried her line. (It usually always went to voicemail, but not that day!) And as I poured out my heart, she shared that she had been through everything our son had gone through. She had had Lyme disease, mold illness, Covid, and Long Covid, which reactivated all the previous illnesses that she too had come so far to overcome. She had been totally debilitated for a time, too, and she shared with me all the things that the Lord had led her to which had worked.
I got off the phone knowing that the conversation I just had was a gift from God Himself and we stepped out in faith to follow this nurse’s generous advice. For our son, it turned out that UVBI (Ultraviolet Blood Irradiation) was a game changer. The seven treatments he did allowed his immune system to finally see the stealth infections that had haunted him and gave his body the boost it needed to overcome. But it was the gift of that small flower with its gleaming yellow petals that gave me the hope and strength I needed to press ahead and keep fighting the good fight!
