Life is full of challenges and seasons. There are certain seasons that you pray that God will keep you in them. There are other seasons that you pray for God to get you through. For the past year, as many of you are aware, we have been going through a difficult season with my son. For those of you who know the story please bear with me as I relive the process.

A year and a half ago my son developed some drainage from one nostril that contained a foul odor. We took him to a pediatrician who checked for foreign objects and said it must be an infection so she placed him on antibiotics. When this didn’t clear it up she referred us to an ENT (Ear, Nose & Throat) doctor.

The ENT said that it was probably allergies. He prescribed a different antibiotic, antihistamine and steroids and confidently said that it would be gone in two weeks. When this did not clear it up the ENT ordered a CT scan. He was partially sedated but Owen did not respond well to being taped to a board so the image was blurry due to Owen’s movement.

The ENT assumed that he must have sinusitis and put Owen on another antibiotic. Strike three for the antibiotics. If all else fails…since his adenoids were slightly enlarged we were persuaded to allow them to remove them. Shame on us but when a highly trained ENT (supposed to be the best in Central Florida) tells you this will take care of it once and for all we bought it. For three days the nose was clear but as you are all really perceptive you already know that it came back.

We did get the satisfaction of hearing the ENT tell us that he shouldn’t have removed his adenoids but that was little compensation for having to bear hug your son as they give him the sedative as he is screaming “they’re hurting me daddy”. Even as a type these words the thought of that brings a tear to my eye. So the ENT has exhausted his ideas so he refers us to an Infectious Disease (ID) doctor. I don’t know if you have ever seen the TV show House but I believe he is an ID doctor. Being that my wife and I love that show we thought we were headed down the right path.

So she swabbed his nose and came back with a diagnosis of Influenza H. You guessed it…there is a great antibiotic for that. With all of the great outcomes we had previously with antibiotics I do not know why we had any hope at all. It comes to a place where you just want your son to be better.

When this didn’t work the ID doctor ordered another CT scan and culture but with full sedation to ensure a clear picture. This time the diagnosis came back as Pseudomonas Aerunosa. The fact that we know how to spell that is a sign that we have spent too much time at the doctor’s office. This diagnosis came with a twist because if this particular germ worked its way into the bone it was fatal. Obviously this sent us into a pretty solid panic. We enlisted our friends and family to pray for us. People responded immediately and The Gathering Place even held a 24 hour prayer vigil.

The medical solution was to insert a pick line in Owen and have home health come and administer yet another antibiotic every day for 6 weeks. And if our three year old couldn’t handle having a pick line in at home we would have to admit him to the hospital for the remainder of the 6 weeks.

This just seemed like an unbelievable treatment and we wanted to get another opinion. Having been turned off by the road that we were currently on we opted to go a different route. We opted to take Owen to a highly recommended holistic doctor. His feeling after running some diagnostics (the only terminology I have to describe it) was that with a strict diet and some natural supplements we could have it taken care of in 3 months. This was certainly better than a pick line.

So after taking everything that tasted good away from our son for two months we weren’t seeing a significant change. Having relocated to south Florida and wanting to find a local Pediatrician in case of emergency we started the whole process over again. That leads me to the positive parts of this story. I left out the bad doctor’s names but I will brag on the ones that helped us. I do want to say that I don’t blame the holistic doctor because he assumed that the ENT and ID had done there job. I won’t throw that stone because we were under the same impression.

We went to visit Dr. Michael Morrison at West Broward Pediatrics and he and his practice were very aggressive and the day of our first visit we were at a local lab giving nine vials of blood. He wanted to cover every base and Owen was awesome. I guess 18 months with doctors has made my son tolerant of just a “little pokey”. The day after that we had another CT which I blogged about previously.

Now for the great stuff… He referred us to a new ENT, Dr. Steven Singer in Hollywood, FL. We had our first appointment with him today. He listened to our story (which is quite long I know) and told us all of the signs lead to a foreign object up his nose. To be honest I was not optimistic to his presumptions based on the previous occurrences. So he gave my son a local nasal sedative and said we were going to start by taking a look around. So with a miner’s hat light/magnifying glass, a pair of small spreaders, a suction tube, and tweezers he went to work.

With one look he steps back with an expression of shock and said “there it is right in the front”. So opening Owen’s nostril with spreaders and reaching in with the tweezers he pulls out a 2″ long piece of sponge. Don’t worry I’ll leave out all of the details. Within 45 seconds of starting Dr. Singer had ended 18 months of drama and trauma. The best that we can figure it Owen had put one of those little pill toys that turn into sponge animals up his nose and the moisture in his nose caused it to expand.

So why did I write this book today. It wasn’t to speak against the sponge toy manufacturers, they didn’t tell my son to snort their product. First I want to say that prayer does change things. You may have read this and thought how did prayer change anything? Well for 18 months of trial God was with us the whole time. Short of losing some adenoids, that are overrated anyway, my son is perfectly healthy. The odor is completely gone and the discharge has ceased. My son does not have any of the terrible things that they said he had. We also have the ability to sympathize with parents who are going through similar seasons.

Secondly I am writing this to thank all of the people that prayed with and for us. I also want my son to understand what God brought him through as a part of his life testimony. This is not the only chapter he has and at some point I will share some of the other stories.

Third, I want people to realize that sometimes you have to get yourself to the place of your miracle. There is a fairly dramatic story full of obedience and sacrifice that brought my family and I to Weston. Part of that involved giving up a job with great insurance. Given how sick we thought Owen was, it was a huge financial risk. Great risk with God is always equal to great reward. Many will argue if the work of a doctor can be considered a miracle. After the past 18 months God could have healed my son using a homeless person on the street, or any other package, and I would have took it. So remember, don’t give up on God, and follow His directions because He might be getting you to your miracle!

I tried to put this post up yesterday but life happened…

This is my third year on the receiving end of this holiday. The first two were choreographed by my wife but this year my son selected the activity of the day. His intention was to take his daddy on a train ride but the weather didn’t cooperate. I can’t wait to take him up on the rain check. My son is insane about trains. He wakes up talking about them and he goes to bed talking about them. I think he would rather play trains than eat and most nights at dinner time he expresses this desire.

When I was a kid I was the same way about cars. To this day I love cars but my passion has been subdued by the reality that car collecting is an expensive hobby. I guess if I had never discovered real cars I could still afford Hot Wheels. Anyways… over time my passions have been redirected in part because of my father. My dad was passionate about serving God. I think seeing that as a kid made a huge difference on where my passions are currently directed. As a child if I had the option of playing cars or going to church, serving the community or praying, I would have taken playing cars every time.

I now have new priorities based on the same realization my dad had. I came to the realization that our heavenly Father was willing to sacrifice the love of His life (His Son) for me. This concept had much more significance once I became a father myself. I never could have imagined how much love you can have for your child until I experienced it first hand. The thought of allowing my son to be killed, even if it was for the good of the whole world, seems unfathomable, but that is exactly what God did for us.

So on this (day after) Father’s Day I want to first thank my heavenly Father for the sacrifice He made for me. I want to thank my earthly father for showing me an outlet for my passion to be redirected to. To my son, I want to thank him for helping all of this to mean more to me. I will do my best to be an example to you of a man who is passionate about serving God and all that entails. I will also do my best to play lots of trains along the way!

Here I sit at 12:30 in the morning preparing to embark into the world of blogging. I have intended to do this for some time but have been pre-occupied with other seemingly higher priority items. I am incredibly excited to finally put an end to the harassment I have been receiving for not doing this earlier. I know that this is a great way to journal my endeavors in life. Another way to hopefully make a positive mark into somebody’s life.

So where do I start? I was born a …, no that’s not it, I was raised in the small town of… try again, I think I am going to start with today. Today, and most days I am Nathan Griffis. I am a husband, a father, and a pastor. The great thing was today I got to be all three, and I think I was pretty successful. We had to take my son to the hospital today for a CAT scan. I am sure that the reasoning for all that will come out in a later blog, but for right now I am sticking with today. So today, as a husband I supported my wife by being there as we took our son. I didn’t even get upset when I had to drive all the way home to get the prescription during rush hour.

As a father I got to be the first “statue” to lay on the CAT scan table and ride into the “donut”. I have to tell you that I felt like the dad of the year when I was able to make my son laugh as he was strapped to that bed. Which by the way is a big no no according to the fantastic nurses at Memorial (Joe DiMaggio) Hospital in Ft. Lauderdale. For the two minutes that he was a perfect “statue” I was so thankful to God that I was not having to hold him while they put him to sleep, because that was the alternative method for the CAT scan, which we had lived out just four months ago.

As a Pastor there was a young mother with her 2-3 year old girl there for some testing which involved a needle prick of quite a few of the babies fingers for blood samples. I overheard her telling the nurse that this was a day she had been dreading for some time. She also asked the nurse in passing if she would pray. The nurse was apparently preoccupied with the task at hand so I couldn’t help myself. I informed the lady that I was a Pastor and I offered to pray for her little girl. I never asked my wife if I sounded like a dork, but I believe that God honored those seemingly feeble words and the faith of that babies mother because I did not hear one whimper during the process.

I didn’t write that to blow my own horn (okay, I did for the dad stuff) but to remind you that God still desires to operate in our daily lives. I didn’t have to be a Pastor to pray with that lady, I just had to be open to operate as a representative for the love of Christ. The lady told me that I was meant to be there that day to pray with her. I can think of hundreds of places I would have rather been at 10:00 this morning but God placed me there. Since I was I am excited that God chose to use me.

I spent the rest of my day doing some geeky web site and blog stuff. Much of this was related to our new church website. This undoubtedly will be the topic of future blogs but you can see some of the fruits of this labor at www.TheInChurch.org.

I was fortunate enough to get invited over to my neighbors to hang out for an hour or so. I do this so that I can expand my personal descriptions to include friend, and maybe I did okay at that today also. I am beginning to sense how addicting this blog thing really is so I am going to call it quits for tonight or morning. I am excited to have this outlet to share the ramblings of a husband, father, pastor, and friend.