Charlie and Faith Russell Share Their COVID-19 Journey

(Read the sidebar, “Rusty Russell: Preaching the Gospel While Helping Care for an Ailing Son”)

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By Chris Moon

For Charlie and Faith Russell, the last six months have been anything but easy.

“I think the best term is a roller-coaster,” Faith said.

It wasn’t supposed to be that way. The young couple from Murfreesboro, Tenn.—just outside of Nashville—celebrated their fifth wedding anniversary in June. They were healthy and active.

Charlie worked as a freelance graphic designer, helping local churches with their websites. He served on his church’s worship team.

Faith was an oncology nurse. They were expecting their first child in August.

Life was good.

But on July 29, Charlie tested positive for COVID-19. By Aug. 7, he was in the hospital. Fifteen days later, he was unconscious and on a ventilator.

It was a long, hard road for the next six weeks. At times the doctors offered grave words. Charlie might not make it.

But the prayers started pouring in—from all over the country.

Charlie Russell is alive today, and he’s quick to call it “a miracle.”

“I’m convinced that it is a testimony to the power of prayer,” he told Christian Standard. “I don’t think you can overlook the power of the church coming together that way.”

Charlie is the son of Rusty Russell, lead pastor of New Day Christian Church in Port Charlotte, Fla. He’s also the grandson of Bob Russell, former senior minister at Louisville’s Southeast Christian Church, one of the largest congregations in the Restoration Movement.

A Facebook page that Faith set up—called “Charlie’s Road to Recovery!”—now has nearly 10,000 members.

“So many people got connected to our story,” she said.

TO THE HOSPITAL
But back on July 29, all Charlie had was a positive COVID test and some cold-like symptoms.

His primary concern at the time was he might miss the birth of his daughter, Charity, who was due in a matter of days. Faith had a difficult pregnancy, and she already was on leave from her job.

Charlie figured he would kick COVID and be fine.

“I’m young. I’m going to beat this,” he remembered thinking. “It wound up not being true.”

Charlie’s condition began to decline. He went to the hospital twice, only to be sent home by the doctors.

Then he woke up early one morning and checked his oxygen level. A normal oxygen level is 95 to 100 percent. Charlie’s was in the 80s.

He went to the hospital yet again. This time, he only had the energy to walk through the front door.

“I barely made it to the chair at the front desk,” he said.

They checked his oxygen again. It was in the 70s. He was admitted to the intensive care unit. An X-ray indicated a bad case of pneumonia.

During those first couple of days, Charlie started to bounce back. It looked like he was on the mend. But then things started going downhill.

Charlie recalls a doctor looking at another X-ray of his lungs and muttering, “Oh, no.”

“That’s not something you want to hear,” Charlie said.

A BABY GIRL
But there was some business to attend to in the meantime.

Four days after Charlie was admitted to the hospital, baby Charity was born—just one floor below Charlie’s room. Charlie could only be there through FaceTime. He was wearing a mask so he could receive high-flow oxygen, and he could barely talk.

But the labor went fast, and Charity was born healthy.

“It was so hard he wasn’t there,” Faith said. But she called Charity the “joy in the middle of the storm.”

Charlie was bummed about missing the birth.

His grandfather, Bob Russell, stopped by for a visit.

Bob—whom Charlie calls “Pop”—had to stand behind a glass wall and call into the room on a phone. He offered some encouragement.

“‘You know, when I was born, my dad was fighting in World War II, and I turned out OK,’” Charlie remembered his Pop saying. “It made me feel better.”

ONTO THE VENTILATOR
But Charlie’s war was only beginning.

His oxygen levels bounced up and down. On multiple occasions, the doctors and nurses brought up the possibility of putting Charlie on a ventilator.

In many cases, that’s a last-ditch effort at saving a life. Many people never get off a ventilator.

“They were telling me that in the hospital, as well,” Charlie said.

But one day, Charlie’s oxygen levels, even with assistance, never got above 90. There was no avoiding it: Charlie needed to go onto a ventilator.

“Immediately, I was in tears,” Faith said.

She said she got frequent calls from the nurses that night.

“All night long, they kept calling me—‘We don’t think he’s going to make it,’” she said.

Faith jumped onto Facebook to encourage people to pray.

She remembers that night well. Her mom and best friend were at the house. She said she never prayed so hard—“God, please don’t take my husband.”

Faith was a new mom, and the situation was overwhelming.

“I can’t do this without him,” she remembered thinking. “It’s not really a fun place to be.”

The good news was the day after Charlie went onto a ventilator, he was transferred to Nashville’s Centennial Medical Center, where he was placed on an ECMO machine.

That stands for “extracorporeal membrane oxygenation,” which helps the heart and lungs with pumping oxygen into a person’s blood. It allows the lungs to rest and recover.

All of this was laid out for Charlie before he went under heavy sedation with the ventilator. The very idea was ominous.

“Doesn’t that mean my chances for survival aren’t good?” he asked his doctor. “[The doctor] said, ‘This is your best chance.’ That was a really scary feeling.”

But on the wall in Charlie’s hospital room were pictures of his newborn daughter. Charlie had spent hours looking at them.

“That was a pretty good motivation to get better,” he said.

THE ROAD TO RECOVERY
Charlie was mostly unconscious for the next six weeks.

Faith visited him every day. He would respond to her voice. He would squeeze her hand. He would cough.

She would play worship songs or read Scripture. He would respond to that, too.

He doesn’t remember any of it today.

But the treatment slowly worked.

The ECMO treatment ended on Oct. 7. The ventilator was removed Oct. 12.

Summer had turned into fall, but it felt like a matter of days to Charlie.

He was still wearing an oxygen mask when they brought Charity to him for the first time. She was already 2 months old.

His baby girl reached for all those tubes attached to him.

“The baby was sweet,” he said.

From that point on, Charlie said, “It was really one step at a time.”

He’d lost 40 pounds while in the hospital relying only on a feeding tube. So, he had to figure out how to eat again.

And he had to learn to walk again.

He was sent to a rehab hospital near his home. He moved from a wheelchair to a walker.

He finally came home on Nov. 6.

Today, Charlie is back to work as a graphic designer.

He still isn’t 100 percent. He doesn’t have full use of his right foot yet.

But he recently began doing more chores around the house. He’s taken the trash to the street. He’s done the laundry. He’s changed a dirty diaper.

“I never thought I’d be so excited to do those things,” he said.

Most importantly, he’s been able to pick Charity up out of her crib to hold her.

Things could have been much worse.

Charlie said he suffers from no brain damage—a very real possibility after being oxygen-deprived for so long. After he woke up, a worship pastor from his church stopped by the hospital with his guitar. He offered it to Charlie to try.

Charlie picked it up and began to play.

“It was amazing. We didn’t know whether he would be able to do that again,” Faith said.

GRATITUDE AND THE GOSPEL
Charlie and Faith are filled with gratitude.

They talk about thousands of people who have prayed for them during the past six months—many of them from New Day Christian Church in Florida and Southeast Christian Church in Louisville.

People sent cards, and they sent gifts for Charity. Faith jokes she won’t have to buy diapers for a while.

Meanwhile, Charlie and Faith’s small group—they attend the Riverdale campus of Nashville’s LifePoint Church—kept the family’s lawn mowed. They also delivered groceries for the family for weeks, even while they were away at the hospital.

And small-group members installed grab bars and new shower heads that were needed in the house when Charlie returned home.

“Our church was awesome,” Charlie said.

He said his story is an opportunity to share the gospel. While he’s grateful for God’s healing, “I’m even more thankful for the hope of Heaven and that Jesus Christ died to save me from my sin.”

Faith said she hoped all along that God would be glorified by Charlie’s story.

“He is truly a miracle,” she said. “I want to scream it from the rooftops what God has done.”

The journey of Charlie and Faith—and little Charity—will live on for now on the “Charlie’s Road to Recovery!” Facebook page. It has 9,700 members and has become a clearinghouse of sorts for the prayer requests of others.

Faith remembers reading comments on the page while Charlie still was in the hospital and she was up late nursing Charity.

“It kept me so encouraged—all these strangers I didn’t even know,” Faith said.

Now she sees posts from other people asking for prayers that remind her “so many people are still hurting.”

“I will definitely keep it up,” she said.

Charlie jokes he hopes Faith’s next post will be especially positive.

“I hope that soon she’ll be able to post that I’m driving again,” he said.

Chris Moon is a pastor and writer living in Redstone, Colorado.