Such a powerful email we received from a father named Thomas who has a four year old son with Autism named Nicholas. He was listening on Sirius XM…

Hello Joel, I just wanted to say what an inspiration you are to me. I was an individual who had faith in God, went to church weekly and prayed. I am married to my beautiful wife Christine and we have a son Nicholas who is 4. He was diagnosed with Autism about 2 yrs ago. When he was diagnosed my heart just dropped. I couldn’t beleive it. I thought to myself “why,why has god done this to me”. It was going to be a never ending fight,and a never ending battle that my wife and I were faced with (emotional an financially). It seems as though the stress levels and and costant bickering have gotten worse. My wife has a strong faith in the lord, prays everyday and thanks the Lord for everything we have. She asks the Lord to pray for me and Nicholas. I have to admit when he was diagnosed I lost a lot of my faith in god. To me I couldn’t beleive that this has happened and that God has done this to me. Over the Las year or so I have learned to deal with it and trying to become closer to god. My son is my life and I would do anything to help him. He has been going to numerous therapies and is getting the help he needs. Financially this is very tough on my wife and I, but whatever we have to do we do. On a happier note I wanted to let you know that you have steered me back in the right direction. I was traveling with my mom ,dad and sister (who is very spiritual )on the way back from a family funeral in Ohio. I have sirius xm, my sister said turn on joel channel. I did and was very moved. Not sure what show # it was, but it was the one where you told the story about CHAMPIONS and how it came about. As I heard you speak about your friend Craig who had 2 children and the third who was born with autism really hit home to me. I had immediately started to cry while I was driving. That was on Sunday May 31,2015. At that moment I knew I had to accept the Lord and raise the bar. I was always feeling down and depressed about Nicky. But as you said the Lord chooses special people for special things. These are my words to live by. If the Lord didnt think we could handle it, he would not have dealt it to us. Sorry for the rant but thank you Joel you are truly an inspiration to me. Again thank you for everything.