Dear Lord; Good evening Father!<\/p>\n
As You\u2019re aware Father, I\u2019ve struggled with high blood pressure for quite some years now.\u00a0 It\u2019s one of the few true health issues I\u2019ve had, but has always been reasonably well controlled through medication. \u00a0Therefore, other than the ritual of taking my pill each day I\u2019ve for the most part been able to forget that the problem exists.<\/p>\n
Until a month ago.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Due to a series of unfortunate circumstances, Shannon and I lost our health care insurance effective the beginning of April.\u00a0 We\u2019ve been researching a number of options to correct it, but so far none have been found that fits our needs or our budget.\u00a0 Thankfully, Shannon\u2019s medications are all generics and therefore reasonable to purchase without the insurance, however my blood pressure prescription is not which makes it a bit expensive.\u00a0 On top of that, our Primary Care Physician closed his practice at the end of February, so my options for looking into alternate medications are extremely limited.\u00a0 Weighing all these items in my head, I therefore made a decision to try and go without the blood pressure pills for a while, and see how I made out.<\/p>\n This was not one of my better ideas Father.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Over the course of the next couple weeks, my BP slowly began to rise and I started reverting to the pre-medication days where ringing in my ears, headaches and uncomfortable chest pains were the norm.\u00a0 I of course prayed for relief Lord, oh I prayed, but the symptoms continued to get worse.<\/p>\n Then I realized Father, You\u2019d already given me relief, I\u2019d just decided to stop taking advantage of it.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Your solution for me hadn\u2019t changed Father, I was simply trying to second guess You by looking for an \u201ceasier\u201d<\/em> option.\u00a0 Just because the remedy was a more difficult path than it used to be didn\u2019t mean it still wasn\u2019t the proper choice.\u00a0 As the Apostle Paul reminded us in First Corinthians:<\/p>\n \u201cDo you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own;\u00a0you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies.\u201d \u2013 1 Corinthians 6:19-20 (NIV)<\/strong><\/p>\n Needless to say, I went and bought the medication and started taking it last Saturday.\u00a0 It\u2019ll take a week or so to level me out again, but I\u2019ve already started feeling somewhat better.<\/p>\n Heavenly Father, please help me keep focused on Your Blessings and true plan for me each day.\u00a0 Guide my decisions to honor Your Will, and direct my gaze to not seek answers outside Your Wishes.\u00a0 Amen.<\/p>\n ~Phather Phil<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Dear Lord; Good evening Father! As You\u2019re aware Father, I\u2019ve struggled with high blood pressure for quite some years now.\u00a0 It\u2019s one of the few true health issues I\u2019ve had, but has always been reasonably well controlled through medication. \u00a0Therefore, other than the ritual of taking my pill each day I\u2019ve for the most part […]<\/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":[1123,359,168,419,12,511,107,1189,82,27,581,973,899,807,915,154,546,173,619,1186,42,843,105,966,686,731,89,1187,593,916,804,1188,592,251,879,763,389,141,845,19,81,637,16,217,695,613,683,652,629,227,117,777,40,733,1019,481,504,212],"class_list":["post-890","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daily-emails-to-god","tag-apostle-paul","tag-bible","tag-bless","tag-blessing","tag-blessings","tag-bodies","tag-care","tag-chest-pains","tag-choice","tag-comfort","tag-control","tag-corinthians","tag-correct","tag-days","tag-dear-lord","tag-decisions","tag-difficult","tag-father","tag-feeling","tag-first-corinthians","tag-focus","tag-forget","tag-gaze","tag-god","tag-guide","tag-head","tag-health","tag-health-care-insurance","tag-heavenly","tag-heavenly-father","tag-help","tag-high-blood-pressure","tag-holy-spirit","tag-honor","tag-just","tag-level","tag-lost","tag-mind","tag-need","tag-pain","tag-path","tag-physician","tag-plan","tag-pray","tag-problem","tag-real","tag-realize","tag-remedy","tag-saturday","tag-shannon","tag-son","tag-struggle","tag-thankful","tag-uncomfortable","tag-used","tag-week","tag-will","tag-wishes"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p18mMc-em","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/890","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=890"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/890\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":893,"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/890\/revisions\/893"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=890"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=890"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=890"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}