Upon exchanging an email with California track coach Jonathan Lindquist, besides the actual message he sent, the first thing you notice is his, "Proud Father, Proud Coach," signature.
"I've always been a proud father, I've always been a proud coach because I love my kids," Lindquist said. "Whether they're my kids or my track athletes, I call them my kids."
Jon and his wife Mollie have two boys, Jonathan Jr. and Franklin Lindquist, and they're expecting a third child. But the road wasn't always easy for them, especially for their youngest, Franklin.
"You don't know love until you have a kid," said Jonathan. "Relationships and dating, that's nothing until you have a kid. You don't know hurt, you don't know pain, you don't know love until you've had a child."
Shortly after Franklin was born, the Lindquists would encounter four different miracles, as Jon would recall them, and overcome a test on Franklin that was 99.7 percent accurate.
"We were expecting everything to be normal and healthy," Jonathan said. "The ultrasound looked good. But when he was born, my wife was holding him and she said, "Hey Jon, this doesn't look right.' The doctor didn't notice, I didn't notice it, but she was ghost white so I knew something was wrong."
Franklin was born with a condition called Bladder Exstrophy, which is when the bladder doesn't form right and is exposed outside of the body. They were given an option of either going to St. Louis - where the doctor recommended because he knew of a specialist - or Kansas City.
"Most people would have gone to St. Louis because the doctor said, "Hey I know there's a specialist in St. Louis that works with this.' Even though he said St. Louis, my heart and soul was saying Kansas City, but I didn't want to tell my wife," said Jonathan.
It turned out, Mollie was thinking the same thing, as miracle No. 1 began to unfold. Jonathan said they "took a stab in the dark."
"So we get there and there are two doctors," said Jonathan. "They happened to be two of the best surgeons in the world for this particular problem, and they only see about four babies a year from all over the country because it's pretty rare. I know it was a miracle because there was no reason for us to choose Kansas City."
But more bad news hit the Lindquist's. Since they just performed a procedure, it would be another three or four months before they could do the surgery on Franklin. The two doctors had other responsibilities, so they could only get together once very few months to do those kind of surgeries.
"We learned to just pray and let God take care of it," said Jonathan. "Probably about an hour later I told Mollie, "I have a feeling he's going to come back and tell us that they're going to do it today or tomorrow.'"
Lindquist's feeling was right. The doctors informed them a few hours later that they would pull an all-nighter to do the surgery.
Miracle number two.
As everything started to go their way, the Lindquist family hit another bump in the road. Franklin wasn't getting blood flow to an extremity, so it looked like he might lose that extremity. While Mollie stayed by Franklin's side in Kansas City, Jonathan had to travel back and forth from California for work.
"So I had to come back home and I was pretty devastated," said Jonathan. "I was talking to my dad and he said, "well, what's got you through this to this point,' I said, "just praying.' He asked what's stopping me now. So I went back up and I just had a feeling I needed to lay my hands on my son and pray for him."
After another trip to Kansas City, then back to California, Jonathan got a phone call from Mollie telling him that everything was healed, something the doctors have never seen happen before.
Miracle number three.
"Just bam, bam, bam, miracle after miracle," Jonathan said. "I'm sorry, but these are miracles. When you have doctors saying, "Wow, I don't know what to tell you.' It wasn't luck."
But unfortunately more bad news loomed.
The Lindquist's don't have any genetic diseases in their family, but they both carried a trait for Pompe Disease. After routine tests shortly after Franklin was born, they found out he had the rare disease. Pompe Disease can affect a person's muscles and their ability to function normally, and onset can begin when the baby is a few months old or it could affect them as an adult.
"Of course with everything we've been through, that was just another punch right in the stomach," said Jonathan. "To test to see if the disease onsets, they had to take urine samples constantly. It's so rare that they didn't know how to classify him, if he was going to onset at all or as an infant."
During his planning period at school, Jonathan decided to go play basketball to get his mind off the situation. During that time, his phone rang and Mollie was on the line crying. She told him they had to order the medicine because he had onset already.
"You can ask any kid that was in the gym, I screamed and fell to my knees in pain," said Jonathan. "I've never felt more pain in my life because at that moment, I knew I was going to bury my son."
After discussing a second opinion, they got a call from the doctor who ran the original test. A test that is 99.7 percent accurate, and with no known false positives, the results were wrong.
"That morning I woke up and I was in a really good mood," Jonathan said before he got the good news. "You don't wake up in a good mood when you're going through things like this. I thought this was weird. I asked my wife how she was doing and she said, "Jon, I don't know why, but I'm in a really good mood,' and I said, "that is so weird because I am too.'"
Miracle number four.
Franklin is now 20 months old and healthy, and as Jonathan says he's very advanced for his age.
"He's not even two and he is dribbling around with a basketball," said Jonathan. "He shoots and makes 10 out of 12 baskets. He's a freak and he's just so far advanced with kids his age. The funny thing is, they wouldn't even let him move for more than a month. He's just gifted."
The love for his children translates to his track and field team and to how he lives his life.
"That's how I approach life," said Lindquist. "I think that's why the kids respond to my coaches and me. I think you have to love the kids. That's really shaped me as a man, just approach everything with love."
He describes how his coaches when he was a kid were jerks because they wanted the best out of him, but today, you have to relate and be honest.
"Kids need that person they can trust and be honest with them," said Lindquist. "That's how I approach them. I'm never going to trash them. I'm always going to have their back, but I'm going to let them know when they're wrong. They know a fraud when they see one."