"Holy Spirit Activate!": How a Tik Tok Trend Reminded Me to Rely on God

When I started writing this article, I was sitting next to my mom's hospital bed. She was battling pneumonia and high fevers. I was battling fear and anxiety.

My mom hasn't been well for a while now. COPD from 50 years of being a pack-and-a-half-a-day smoker, lung cancer that metastasized to brain cancer last year, emergency brain surgery to evict the tumor, and now this infection that's being stubborn mean that neither of us are strangers to hospital rooms and waiting for test results. We're also no strangers to miraculous recoveries though. After the COPD diagnosis, mom quit smoking cold turkey and ended up needing supplemental oxygen only when the weather is especially bad. When they found the lung cancer, the doctors said that instead of surgery, mom was a perfect candidate for a procedure called CyberKnife, an ultra-precise form of targeted radiation. When the brain cancer was found, she had gone to the ER for a possible stroke on Thursday night. By Saturday afternoon, not only was the surgery done, but mom was recovering so well that the hospitalist didn't realize she was less than 24 hours out from brain surgery and almost discharged her!

This time felt different though. I was really, truly scared of losing her. Until the antibiotics started kicking in towards the end of her first week in the hospital, I worried every day that she wasn’t going to get better. I remember thinking one afternoon that I had never before seen someone who’s coloring was so… gray. Added to that, her left side was nearly completely flaccid at the time for reasons that are still unknown. Things just didn’t look good, and as someone who struggles with anxiety, I couldn’t help but fear the worst.

Thankfully my mom is doing a lot better now. Once the antibiotics started doing their thing, she recovered quickly. In fact, she recovered so quickly that she’s had her second brain surgery since she was already in the hospital. We had already known she was going to need another brain surgery, to clean up dead tissue as a result of the radiation after her brain surgery last year. We never expected that she was going to have it so soon after the pneumonia though.

Something that kept me going during her hospitalization was a pin that I saw on the lanyard of one of her nurses. It was a simple pin, just a white background with the words “Holy Spirit Activate!” in black. Mom commented on it to me, so I mentioned to the nurse that she liked his pin. His response was that it was “a TikTok thing, but it works well in the hospital too.”

As a millennial, I love TikTok, so I was kind of surprised that I didn’t know that reference. As a writer, I love my research, so obviously my first action was to look it up as soon as he left the room. I found out that it was a soundbite-turned-popular-TikTok-sound from an episode of Family Feud, where a contestant sang “Holy Spirit activate! Holy Spirit activate! Holy Spirit activate, activate, activate!” before her turn at the game. TikTok creators have taken that soundbite and used it against their own videos ranging from students preparing to take a test to moms dealing with toddler meltdowns.

Now, I know a lot of the people using this sound probably aren’t using it in a religious manner, but as a Catholic I can’t help but think about the religious aspect of it. After all, it’s a prayer that people are praying without even realizing it is, in fact, a prayer. You could say that the spread of this short prayer is the work of the Holy Spirit.

“Holy Spirit activate” is just a simple phrase at first, but how often do we really think to ask the Holy Spirit for help? We regularly pray to God the Father in prayers such as the Our Father, and to Jesus in the Mass, but when was the last time you specifically asked the Holy Spirit to help when you were in a tough spot? For me, the answer is never. I remember learning about the gifts of the Holy Spirit when I was a kid, but I’ve never actually prayed to the Holy Spirit for help.

We should though. The Holy Spirit has so many amazing gifts for us. Wisdom, knowledge, piety, counsel, fortitude, understanding, fear of the Lord; all these things can help us every single day. Wisdom; to be able to differentiate right from wrong. Knowledge; to be able to take in new information. Piety; to live a life of holiness and reverence. Counsel; to be able to give good advice to those in need. Fortitude; strong commitment even in the face of adversity. Understanding; to be able to comprehend information and discern the meaning of it. Fear of the Lord; respect and reverence for God.

All of us; regardless of age or place in life; can and should ask the Holy Spirit for help because we all need the Holy Spirit’s gifts for us. You can’t be successful in school without knowledge and understanding. Relationships, whether platonic or romantic, require counsel and fortitude. Every single day we all need and use wisdom in every single decision we make. And especially as Catholics, we should ask for the Holy Spirit’s help in learning to live pious and God-fearing lives.

I doubt that my mom’s nurse ever thought about the impact that his simple “Holy Spirit Activate!” pin could have, but I’m glad that I was given the opportunity to see it. That simple pin reminded me that God, in the Trinity, wants to help us in our time of need. We wouldn’t have the Holy Spirit’s gifts if God didn’t want to help us.

Thankfully my mom is back home now, almost back to her baseline in terms of health. I don’t doubt that God played a massive part in her healing yet again. I can also say with confidence that there’s no way I would have been able to get through her illness without God’s love, guidance, and reminder that He is always supporting us. I know I will never take the gifts of the Holy Spirit for granted again, and will always pray for His help in better understanding and using them. After all, I know I could use a lot more of all seven gifts in my life!

What gift of the Holy Spirit could you use more of?