Hooked Up to Grace: What IV Antibiotics Taught Me About God

Antibiotics are hard on the body, and this bruise is proof of what IV vancomycin did to my vein after days of treatment.

It hurt, it burned, and it left a mark, but it was part of the fight to stop a four-bacteria infection and save my foot.

There is a particular kind of pain that comes with IV antibiotics.

It is not just the sickness that brought you there in the first place. It is the burning in the vein when the medicine starts moving. It is the bruising that spreads across your arm like a map of everything your body has endured. It is the blown veins, the repeated sticks, the quiet dread when someone walks in with another needle and says, “Let’s try again.”

For eight days, I was hooked up to an IV pump for most of the day. There is something humbling about being connected to a machine that slowly pushes medicine into your body. You sit there and watch the liquid move through the tubing, drip by drip, knowing it is entering you, fighting for you, working in places you cannot see.

It is strange to think about what antibiotics actually do. This liquid flows into the body and begins a battle at the cellular level. It attacks a pathogen. It changes what is happening inside your tissue. It interrupts the sickness that is trying to take over. You may not feel better right away. In fact, sometimes you feel worse before you feel better. The medicine burns. The process hurts. The body gets tired. But all the while, something is working inside you to keep the infection from winning.

Lying there, especially in the stillness of the night, I started thinking about God.

Maybe God works on the soul the way antibiotics work on infection.

When we are spiritually sick, when bitterness, fear, grief, anger, pride, despair, or exhaustion have started spreading through us, we often want God to heal us quickly and painlessly. We want a gentle prayer, a peaceful feeling, and an immediate sign that everything will be okay.

But healing does not always feel peaceful at first.

Sometimes letting God in feels like being hooked up to an IV drip. You surrender. You sit still. You admit that you cannot heal yourself by pretending you are fine. And then grace begins to move through the places that are infected.

But grace does not always feel soft.

Sometimes it burns.

Sometimes it exposes what we wanted to hide. Sometimes it forces us to look at wounds we thought we had covered. Sometimes it brings us face to face with fear, weakness, and the parts of ourselves we would rather not name. Sometimes the hard times do not go away when we let God in. Sometimes they get worse. Sometimes the very thing we prayed would be removed becomes the thing God uses to remake us.

That is hard theology when you are the one in the bed.

It is easy to talk about faith when life is clean and organized. It is much harder when your veins are bruised, your body is tired, and the IV pump becomes the soundtrack of your day. It is harder when you are watching medicine drip into your body and wondering what your future will look like. It is harder when healing feels less like comfort and more like fire.

But fire can purify.

And medicine can burn while it saves.

That is what I kept coming back to. The antibiotics were not hurting me because they were against me. They were hurting because they were fighting something that did not belong in me. The pain was not proof that the medicine had failed. In some strange way, it was proof that something was happening.

Maybe that is true with God too.

When God begins working on the infection of the soul, it may not feel like instant peace. It may feel like conviction. It may feel like grief. It may feel like being stripped down to the truth. It may feel like silence. It may feel like waiting. It may feel like being attached to something you did not choose, but desperately need.

And yet, drip by drip, grace enters.

Drip by drip, strength returns.

Drip by drip, the sickness loses ground.

I do not want to romanticize suffering. Pain is pain. Blown veins hurt. Burning medicine hurts. Being hooked up to an IV pump for days is exhausting. Fear is real. Sickness is real. Spiritual darkness is real.

But so is God.

And sometimes, only after we come through the fire and fury, only after we look back from the other side, do we realize that we were never alone. God was not standing far away, watching to see if we would survive. God was there in the room. God was in the stillness. God was in the hands that cared for us. God was in the knowledge that made healing possible. God was in the medicine. God was in the people who discovered it, prepared it, administered it, and checked on us when we were too tired to check on ourselves.

In the stillness of night, reflecting on all of this, I found a strength and calm I did not expect.

I thanked God for the people who isolated antibiotics.

I thanked God for science, for knowledge, for skilled hands, and for compassionate care.

I thanked God for the nurses who kept coming back even when my veins did not cooperate.

I thanked God for the medicine that burned because it was fighting for me.

And I thanked God for grace, that mysterious holy medicine of the soul, which enters the wounded places and does its work even when we cannot yet feel the healing.

Because sometimes healing does not begin with comfort.

Sometimes it begins with surrender.

Sometimes it begins with being still long enough to let the medicine in.

And sometimes, when we finally look back, we realize that God had been carrying us the entire time.