Dear Lord; This morning, I want to apologize to You for something, and at the same time to thank You as well.<\/p>\n
When my son Jonathan came into the world, he was born with a very rare and very serious disease called Langerhans Cell Histiocytosis which threatened to take him from us.\u00a0 He was on chemotherapy and a variety of other stringent treatments starting at 10 weeks old, and we spent the following year and a half basically living in the Oncology Ward at A.I. Dupont Hospital for Children.\u00a0 It was a terrifying time for my Wife and I, and we lived every day not knowing if he was going to be with us much longer.\u00a0 Like many others have in that position, I asked You WHY, WHY, WHY were you doing this to us\u2026 No answer came.<\/p>\n
While we were staying there, I was introduced to the Pastor for the Hospital.\u00a0 He was a quiet man, and although he walked through a place where there was immeasurable sadness and suffering I remember that I always felt an aura of peacefulness around him.\u00a0 He tried very much to comfort me at the time, but my heart was not ready to hear what he was saying, so I simply informed him that \u201cGod and I were having a difference of opinion at the moment as to what was and wasn\u2019t reasonable.\u201d\u00a0 He smiled, and said that he understood but that when I was ready, he\u2019d be there.\u00a0 While I didn\u2019t realize it at the time, this was the start of my Spiritual Awakening.<\/p>\n
Time passed, and my little angel bucked all the odds and not only came through the treatments, but managed to thrive in the process.\u00a0 He\u2019ll be 11 soon, and has been in consistent remission for a little over 9 years.\u00a0 He is very likely my greatest Blessing, and I thank You from the bottom of my soul for continuing to allow me to have him in my life.<\/p>\n
Anyways, to get back to the statement I began the email with, during that period of my life I can honestly say that my Faith was at it\u2019s lowest point.\u00a0 I felt angry, tired, and persecuted and blamed You for all of it.\u00a0 However, from all of the time we spent at A.I., my eyes were truly opened in a way that I never thought possible.\u00a0 We witnessed tragedies, and miracles, and amazing acts of compassion and sacrifice.\u00a0 What I came to realize was that while I was busy blaming You for all my fears and problems, You were actually teaching me about myself, and WHY my Faith is so important.\u00a0 So Father, I\u2019d like to apologize for my misdirected emotions, and at the same time Thank You for all you taught me through the process.\u00a0 Amen.<\/p>\n
~Phather Phil<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Dear Lord; This morning, I want to apologize to You for something, and at the same time to thank You as well. When my son Jonathan came into the world, he was born with a very rare and very serious disease called Langerhans Cell Histiocytosis which threatened to take him from us.\u00a0 He was on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[124,646,12,101,27,37,4,5,89,120,121,116,119,118,123,19,18,117,114,122],"class_list":["post-328","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daily-emails-to-god","tag-a-i-dupont","tag-apology","tag-blessings","tag-challenges","tag-comfort","tag-compassion","tag-family","tag-healing","tag-health","tag-hospital","tag-illness","tag-jonathan","tag-langerhans-cell-histiocytosis","tag-lch","tag-oncology","tag-pain","tag-sickness","tag-son","tag-thank-you","tag-treatments"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p18mMc-5i","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=328"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":368,"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328\/revisions\/368"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=328"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=328"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=328"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}