When God Embarrasses You

God embarrassed us this week. He left us slack jawed, and astounded. He left us thinking "How did we ever doubt him? How do we deserve this?"

 When Malia first told me we were having a baby my first words as I lay on the floor icing my back, were "What? How will we pay for that?!" I will admit not my most articulate moment.

But it was something I often thought of, and then when Malia was admitted, and Jack was born six weeks early I was staring at a bill that could reach $12,000!  My earlier question leapt to the front of our minds, yes thank God we have a healthy son but man thats a lot of money!

But as we negotiated the paths available to us financially and as we broached ourselves to take out our savings and pay the bills, our friends, church, and even strangers stepped up and said "We got this".   We raise all of our salary for my (Peter's) job and we are used to people being generous but this was on a whole other level. People who I have not seen in 10 years gave, people we had never met gave, people who already give to us gave EVEN more. We were inundated with financial support.

But we still expected to pay with some of our own money, we were prepared to do that. This week as we called insurance companies and the hospital, a strange thought came into our heads - we may have to pay nothing! First it sounded like we mis heard, so we asked again -"Sorry what did you say the balance was? It sounded like you said zero?"

And so it was, we did not have to pay ANY money from our own pockets for Jack or Malia's health care bills. Over $10,000 of bills, were absorbed by our supporters, and insurance companies! We even had some money left over to pay it forward with Children of the Nations support!

I remember being envious of some friends insurance policies, with lower deductibles or co-pays...well in the end we paid less than they did. The irony is not lost on me. And so we are left wondering how to respond to God's abundant blessing... It is very apt that during Holy Week God would again show us his love for us.  All we can do or say is thank you.