Dear Lord; Happy Monday Father!<\/p>\n
First off Father, I want to thank You for the weekend.\u00a0 As we discussed Friday, Shannon and I both went into it sick and we ended up spending most of the weekend inside.\u00a0 I did manage to sneak out a couple hours on Saturday with Jonathan for a trip to Barnes & Noble, and made a quick grocery run on Sunday but other than that it was a quiet, reserved couple of days.\u00a0 Thankfully, Shannon and I seem to be on the upside of this bug, but it\u2019s obviously going to take a few more days to completely clear out.\u00a0 Either way, although our weekend didn\u2019t exactly go as we planned I did get to spend lots of quality time with my family.\u00a0 \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n
And then, Monday happened.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n We were actually doing unusually well for a Monday morning Father.\u00a0 Everyone got up on time, got things together and out the door on schedule, and we made it to the kids\u2019 school with time to spare.\u00a0 About 10 minutes after dropping them off however, came the call\u2026<\/p>\n With no warning, Jonathan had vomited on his way to class.\u00a0 ~sigh~<\/p>\n I dropped my things at the office, and made my way back to school to retrieve him.\u00a0 He\u2019d been complaining about some headaches for the last week or so, but other than that this was the only symptom he presented with.\u00a0 Unfortunately, because he still has a VP shunt in place we have to look at those two particular symptoms very carefully as they can indicate problems with it\u2019s operation.\u00a0 I picked him up, made a call, and off to the pediatrician we went.<\/p>\n The wait to be seen at the doctor\u2019s office was typical for a Monday morning; a little over an hour.\u00a0 We sat waiting in the truck (the office lobby was full), me spending time reading in Exodus on my Nook Color (I\u2019m really enjoying my new toy) while Jonathan quietly played a puzzle game on my phone.\u00a0 When we finally got in to see the doctor the appointment was short and to the point, and we were quickly sent next door to have some sinus x-rays done.\u00a0 Those too, went without issue and about an hour later we received a call from the doctor indicating that his sinuses looked perfectly clear, and that if his symptoms persisted we would need to have Jonathan evaluated by his neurologist.<\/p>\n So\u2026 No immediate answers; just more questions.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Each time we get a reminder of Jonathan\u2019s unique medical needs Father, it\u2019s a vibrant flashback to some very scary times.\u00a0 For the most part, we\u2019ve slipped back into \u201cnormality\u201d<\/em> in regards to his health; sniffles are just sniffles, not a trip to the emergency room at 2AM.\u00a0 When situations like this come up though, we\u2019re thrust back into the world of the unknown and the \u201cwhat if\u201d <\/em>scenarios.\u00a0 It\u2019s a place we know far too well, and pray often to avoid.<\/p>\n And yet Father, I know in my heart that You\u2019re with him.\u00a0 And armed with that bit of Truth, those \u201cwhat ifs\u201d aren\u2019t nearly as frightening as they once were.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n I still worry of course. \u00a0That\u2019s my job as his father, and I love him dearly.\u00a0 You\u2019ve entrusted him to our care, and I\u2019ll do whatever is required of me to honor that assignment.\u00a0 However, knowing that all the while he\u2019s in Your Loving Arms brings amazing peace to my spirit.\u00a0 Thank You for that confidence Lord.<\/p>\n Heavenly Father, please continue to watch over Jonathan and bring to him Your Healing Touch.\u00a0 I thank You for the comfort of Your Presence, and pray that all those in need of reassurance can also feel that peace.\u00a0 Through Your Love Father, \u201cwhat ifs\u201d<\/em> can truly become Amens.\u00a0 Amen.<\/p>\n ~Phather Phil<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Dear Lord; Happy Monday Father! First off Father, I want to thank You for the weekend.\u00a0 As we discussed Friday, Shannon and I both went into it sick and we ended up spending most of the weekend inside.\u00a0 I did manage to sneak out a couple hours on Saturday with Jonathan for a trip to […]<\/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":[350,549,107,27,98,915,635,624,4,173,628,444,731,5,89,140,593,916,251,519,116,222,879,190,133,96,479,641,141,304,1083,506,845,392,648,25,1068,217,41,695,463,291,673,748,69,585,629,174,227,232,524,732,836,95,631,114,40,250,897,785,738,1082,481,49,192],"class_list":["post-744","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daily-emails-to-god","tag-amazing","tag-avoid","tag-care","tag-comfort","tag-confidence","tag-dear-lord","tag-doctor","tag-exodus","tag-family","tag-father","tag-friday","tag-happy","tag-head","tag-healing","tag-health","tag-heart","tag-heavenly","tag-heavenly-father","tag-honor","tag-job","tag-jonathan","tag-joy","tag-just","tag-kids","tag-love","tag-loving","tag-loving-arms","tag-medical","tag-mind","tag-monday","tag-monday-morning","tag-morning","tag-need","tag-obvious","tag-office","tag-peace","tag-pediatrician","tag-pray","tag-presence","tag-problem","tag-quality-time","tag-question","tag-questions","tag-quickly","tag-quiet","tag-read","tag-saturday","tag-school","tag-shannon","tag-sick","tag-sinus","tag-situation","tag-situations","tag-spirit","tag-sunday","tag-thank-you","tag-thankful","tag-touch","tag-trusted","tag-truth","tag-unique","tag-vp-shunt","tag-week","tag-weekend","tag-worry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p18mMc-c0","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/744","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=744"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/744\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":747,"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/744\/revisions\/747"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=744"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=744"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=744"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}