Logan Pethel

If you would have told me on May 10th, 2026 that in the next 14 days I would make two separate trips to the Emergency Room, slip a disc that left me unable to walk or pick up my daughter, relapse from a long-standing kidney disease (Minimal Change Disease), contract a gnarly cellulitis infection in my leg while on vacation — spending 3.5 days in the Hilton Head Island hospital — and discover I potentially have a second autoimmune condition called Chronic Autoimmune Urticaria — I would have laughed you out of the room.

I am about to turn 34. I spent more time in doctor’s offices and hospitals in the second half of May than most people do in a decade.

Praise Jesus.

Wait — what did I just say?

Let me back up.

On Mother’s Day, my wife and I went to Passion City Church. Pastor Louie Giglio was giving away copies of his book Don’t Give the Enemy a Seat at Your Table. The sermon was geared toward the moms in the room — as you’d expect on Mother’s Day — but for some reason I couldn’t shake the feeling that it was meant for me. I did what any reasonable husband would do. I took the book from my wife and started reading it the next morning.

Monday, May 11th. I open to the first page, and Louie quotes Psalm 23 — “You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies.” I keep reading. Habakkuk 3:17-18 — “Though the fig tree does not bud, yet I will rejoice in the Lord.” Then the valley of the shadow of death. Fear no evil.

I didn’t know it yet, but God was setting the table.

Two days later, on May 13th, things started to unravel. I was picking up a cold from recent travel. My knees were swelling slightly. I felt puffy and off. My lower back was hurting. That evening, I put my daughter down for the night, and simply lowering her into the crib felt like being stabbed. By midnight I couldn’t walk, couldn’t lay down, couldn’t move. I crawled to the bathroom for Tiger Balm like a man with a plan. It didn’t help. We made it through the night on pain and a prayer, and went to the ER first thing in the morning.

May 14th. After x-rays, a CT scan, eight hours, and more blood work than I care to remember — they confirmed two things. My Minimal Change Disease (MCD) was relapsing, and I had a grade 1 forward slip at L5/S1. The best way I can explain that last one: imagine removing the first floor of a skyscraper. That’s what my spine was doing.

For context on the MCD — I was diagnosed in 2016. Nine relapses since then. When it flares, my kidneys spill protein, my albumin crashes, and I start retaining water from head to toe. At my very first onset in 2016, I gained 92 pounds before getting any relief. This time around, despite knowing what was coming and begging my doctor to let me start treatment early, I watched myself gain 20 pounds in a single weekend. I looked about seven months pregnant. My nephrologist — rightfully cautious after nine rounds of high-dose prednisone — wanted to wait. I understood. The cumulative load of that drug is its own battle. But watching your body fill up like a balloon while you wait is a particular kind of helpless.

Here is what I didn’t expect: I was okay.

Not physically — physically I was a mess. But mentally, spiritually, in the place where it counts when everything else is falling apart — I had peace I had never had before. Eight relapses prior to this one, I had always responded the same way. Why is this happening to me? When will it be taken from me? What does this mean for my future? I asked for healing. I asked for answers. I asked for the cup to be removed.

This time was different.

This time, I thanked God for being present.

I kept coming back to the exact language of Psalm 23. In the presence of my enemies. Not after the enemies are gone. Not once the battle is won. In the presence. Right in the thick of it. The table is set, and God is sitting across from you, while everything around you is still on fire.

That changed something in me.

I have never felt more attacked from every angle in my life — back, kidneys, infection, hospital, missing time with my daughter, all of it at once. And I have never felt less alone. That is not a sentence I would have written after any of the previous eight relapses. But I mean it now.

God never promised He would deliver you from the hard thing. What He promised was that He would be with you in it. In the valley. In the hospital. In the failing health and the unknown future and the body that keeps breaking down in ways you can’t fully control or explain. He may not take it from you — and somewhere in this season, I made peace with that. Not because I’ve given up. But because I finally understood what the promise actually was.

The enemy does not get a seat at this table.

Not the disease. Not the fear. Not the questions I can’t answer. Not the uncertainty about what comes next. I know who’s sitting across from me, and that is enough.

I am fired up. I am more motivated about my faith than I have ever been. I have more questions about my body than I’ve ever had — and for the first time, I’m actually chasing the answers instead of just absorbing the hits. That journey is what this space is going to be about.

Faith. Health. Trusting God. Trying to figure out what is going on in this body of mine.

“This skin and bones is a rental, and no one makes it out alive.” – Jon Foreman/Switchfoot

Here’s to the table.

— LP