The Ugly

The Good: We are all home together and healthy!!

The Bad: We aren’t sleeping enough and everything smells like sour milk. πŸ˜‰

The Ugly: Medical Bills. πŸ™

We have health insurance through Stuart’s work. It’s been pretty good for us thus far. I have only the very basic understanding of insurance. We pay them when we don’t need help so that they can help pay when we do. That’s about the extent of my grasp on the process.

It’s a LOT more complicated than that…. a LOT!

I can’t wrap my head around deductibles and how only certain charges ever apply to it. Or why if your out of pocket maximum is a certain amount you can still end up paying (in a normal year) twice that. And don’t even think about the whole “in network/not in network” thing they like to pull as well. Especially when you really have no choice of who your provider is at the time, that’s an extremely frustrating thing.

We’ve started to get a little glimpse of the magnitude of the bills that we will need to look in the face here soon. The little emergency flight, in particular, is an unfathomable expense! Seriously, if I knew it was THAT expensive I would at least have demanded an inflight meal!! And we haven’t even seen the numbers for the extended hospital stay for the girls yet. I’m trying to brace myself for that one, but my chest gets tight and it’s hard to breathe every time I think about it so for now I’m trying not to.

Everyone in the hospital from doctors to social workers suggested applying for medicaid. Apparently it’s a standard thing for preemie hospital stays. Since the hospital we delivered at was not in the state we actually live in there’s no way we would qualify.

One day last week it started to weigh really heavily on my mind. All these expenses and “what ifs” and unknowns. I know worrying about it won’t help, of course, and that God knows all of these things and knew about them far in advance in fact. πŸ™‚ So as I was sitting outside watching hummingbirds in our yard and really trying to give the burden over to God, (Much easier in theory than practice, I can tell you!) an old Sunday School song came to mind. It’s one I hadn’t heard or thought of in ages and ages, but it came to mind at the perfect moment for me.

He owns the cattle on a thousand hills,

The wealth in every mine.

He owns the rivers and the rocks and rills,

The sun and stars that shine.

Wonderful riches more than tongue can tell.

He is my Father so they’re mine as well.

He owns the cattle on a thousand hills,

I know that He will care for me!

It was the perfect little song for that moment and as I mentally sang it to myself the burden lifted. Β I know that there are going to be hard days as we work through all of this stuff and the various ramifications that may come with it, but I’m trying to rest in the comfort that God’s got this! Β It will only last for a time, and in light of eternity, really, it’s a very small thing.

That’s good to know!

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