Robbie Veurink: Life Transformation

106 days.

That’s how long Central attendee Robbie Veurink was hospitalized during his battle with covid.

Many of those days are a blur. Some he doesn’t remember at all. But one thing he’ll never forget is the way God worked miracles through seemingly hopeless circumstances.

From a nearly month-long coma to three near-death experiences in his hospital room, Robbie and his family endured trials and challenges that would challenge any person’s faith. And it all started with a cough.

“I was working at a jobsite on a Thursday afternoon and suddenly had this deep, aggressive cough that wouldn’t quit,” Robbie said. “For the next few days, I kept trying to work and push through it. But it got progressively worse each day.”

Within a week, Robbie was on oxygen and then hospitalized with COVID-19. From there, due to COVID restrictions, he spent a miserable 21-day stretch alone in the hospital before he was allowed to see a single member of his family.

“I had to say goodbye to my wife, and the last thing I said to her was ‘I love you, don’t worry, everything will be ok,’” Robbie said. “I didn’t realize how long it would be before I’d see her again. It got to a point when I couldn’t even talk. I just had to put the phone on speaker and she would talk to me for hours while I laid the phone on my chest in the hospital room.”

Soon after being admitted, Robbie lost consciousness for several weeks. As the days passed and the situation didn’t improve, doctors began to prepare Robbie’s wife, Ashley, for what they considered to be the reality—Robbie was going to die.

“He was on a ventilator in the ICU and they changed a medication and he just crashed,” Ashley said. “The doctor came in and told me ‘Robbie is going to die today. If he doesn’t die today, he will die tomorrow.’” 

But just like Robbie, Ashley and their family had no intention of giving up. Instead, they did the only thing that made sense to them. They prayed.

“We brought the entire family into the hospital and we surrounded his bed and we prayed for eight hours straight,” she said. “We watched his oxygen go from the 60s to the 70s to the 80s. It took hours, but he got there.”

Despite the doctors’ certainty that hope was lost, Robbie continued to improve. His battle was far from over, but God had gotten him through one storm. He and his family were sure God would get them through the next. And for Robbie, more storms were on the way.