Home by Design

Just putzing on Facebook and learned that our neighbor has a blog.  So that’s my blog for the day: http://barringersblog.blogspot.com/2012/01/joy-part-4-joy-and-grace.html?spref=fb

God’s grace to you!

Been debating if I should keep the blog or let it go. So much to do, so little time. Maybe it should be my “summer thing.” Anyway, the decision was just looming out there with no finite date until…

…I got the notice that it’s time to renew my package. So y’all weigh in, keep the blog or let it go?

Thank you, Lord, for sitcoms that poorly represent husbands. Yes, we can get upset about how badly Hollywood represents husbands as idiotic creatures with the inability to lead their families spiritually or financially.

But those sitcoms are revealing my blessing. How about you? My husband is a God-fearing leader in our home. He takes his responsibility seriously as provider, protector, husband, and father. He is kind and humorous. He is a faithful and diligent, compassionate yet unyielding.

Today, if this is not your husband, pray that God would speak to his heart and begin to cultivate him into his God-given potential. Pray that you stay out of the way of God’s work (I know, that’s the hard part).

And if you have the husband who is not the sitcom husband, praise God for it. Do a happy dance! And purpose to esteem your man to your children, friends, neighbors, and all who will listen.

If you have no husband, pray for the one God is preparing. Pray for the one who left you (forgive him). And remember that God is the husband to the husbandless.

May God raise up godly men in this land to lead our families!

Thanks God!

We live in some turbulent times. Several times this week people have said to me, “Satan is just at work and I’m so sick of him. He’s just everywhere I turn these days.”

I’m going to be honest: I agree, but I think the body of Christ gives Satan too much credit and attention pointing out all that he’s doing. It’s a form of praise that gives him more momentum. When was the last time you said, in earnest, “God is just at work in my life and I’m so grateful for him. He’s just everywhere I turn these days”? Uh…ouch.

Scripture says that praise steals the enemy. That does not mean to praise the enemy!!

There is rough stuff going down. We all acknowledge that. Let’s stop giving Satan our energy and stop gossiping to each other about “did you hear what happened to so and so” or “did you read what happened in such and such country”?

Let’s praise God, author and finisher of our faith. Let’s praise Jesus that he made a way where there seems to be no way. We all know we could pray without ceasing…with all the drama in our world (country, state, town, street, family). So let’s thank God for what he has done, can do, will do, and expect him to do it. Thankfully, joyfully.

Over the next — oh, I don’t know how long, I might even turn it into another blog all its own — I’m going to post what I’m thankful that I get to pray for that day. Please join me! If we all get going on this…imagine what God could do…maybe move a mountain or two!

Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts,

since as members of one body you were called to peace. And be thankful.

Let the message of Christ dwell among you richly

as you teach and admonish one another

with all wisdom through psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit,

singing to God with gratitude in your hearts.

And whatever you do,

whether in word or deed,

do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus,

giving thanks to God the Father through him.

Colossians 3:15-17

He answered my prayer today. I know, God does that all the time. But today I was trying to figure out how to manage a particular situation: call the person, invite them over, invite myself over, write a note, what to do? It wasn’t an easy situation. A confrontation of sorts, bringing an offense to someone and working it out. I hate that. I didn’t want a hindrance to block our time together at Sonrise tomorrow. I think that’s why it was so heavy on my mind. I know I’ve been putting it off.

I was doing my morning grooming as I pondered all of this (of course, cause when else can a mom have a moment to herself to think) and finally just said, “Well, Lord, you’re just going to have to show me what to do.”

So I just left it in God’s hands and finished getting ready. As I stepped from the bathroom into my bedroom, the phone rang. I checked the number. It was the person in question…who calls maybe once or twice a month.

“Okay, Lord, I guess you want me to just deal with it now.”

“Hello?”

And we worked it out. And God was in the mix. And there was understanding and repentance and forgiveness. And now we’re good.

Where have you seen God in your details today?

Do you have jobs in your marriage that are his/hers? Our neighbors have an agreement with the outside work: she mows, he landscapes. No questions. He does NOT mow. Every marriage has those dividing lines with cooking and cleaning, bathing kids and bedtime prayers, and who drives to family events. Sometimes the dividing lines are traditional gender roles, sometimes not.

I’m learning, however, that there are more nitty gritty roles that get divided in a marriage that are more based on temperament and personality. For example, I don’t take off wallpaper. I had the stroke of genius to do it in our last place and got so far before I didn’t care anymore. Henry had the patience and focus on detail to finish the job. I am very much visionary, big picture. He’s much more the execute the details guy. But if it becomes something about words, I’m not the visionary, I’m detailed and he’s big picture. If something needs to be cleaned, I’ll do the detailed work, and he’ll hose it off.

As I’m typing this, I’m looking over in the distance at a mound of socks, once sorted by a 7yo and then dumped out by a toddler. Then re-sorted (in the most illogical-to-my-brain system) by the 9yo. Nobody has socks matched. I should do that job. I don’t want to. It’s detailed.

I’m going to have to turn on a movie and do it absent-mindedly.

But not today.

Ever tried to put drops in the eye of a 4yo pink eye? Back in March, our 4yo had pink eye, also known as conjunctivitis. It’s a very contagious infection, which my sweet husband had the bad fortune to get. After that, it was my turn. Bummer! Because there are so many eye infections out there, adults have to be seen to diagnose and get the prescription. So we both went in. Then it was the 7yo, but he didn’t have it. A couple days later, he had some other issue and went to urgent care again, where he learned he did have pink eye.

Between the stow-away viruses from our spring break Wisconsin Dells vacation and the pink-eye, we had 6 weeks of doc visits. We resolved a few years ago to pay all co-pays at time of service so there was never a question. We held to that during the time in question. Total bill for our optical troubles should’ve been $95, including meds. So you can imagine my surprise as I opened an onslaught of medical bills the last few weeks that told me that I owed  $12 + $15 + $50 for EACH visit. Add to that the almost $10 for each set of eyedrops and we’re talking $385 for a family of 7 to have a bout of pink eye.

Yesterday I hung up the phone on the insurance folks. After many hours of calling, pressing 1, pressing 2, pressing something else, saying “yes,” and it saying, “I’m sorry, I didn’t understand you” because my children were talking loudly and altered the input, I ended up on a conference call with my insurance company and a hospital from whom we’d received a bill.

Actually, we’ve received 3 bills. I paid ONE bill at time of service. It was equal to the amount of my plan’s co-pay. Then I got a bill for half of that. Then I got a bill for twice that amount.

I spoke with each agency separately. I heard the discrepancies and got them on the phone together. And they both changed their stories and ganged up on me. I needed to drop one child off and pick one up and they wouldn’t call me back or hold for 2 seconds. Then one asked me, “Why did you go when you did? Wasn’t the clinic open?”

No you didn’t. Really? You just asked me why I went to urgent care instead of the clinic. Because the clinic was closed. She said, but the date of service is. I went on to explain that the date she was reading was the first business day following that and if she’d look closer she’d see that… blah blah blah, you get the picture. Then they both started telling me why I had to triple pay my co-pay. I was tired. It was 4:40. I didn’t want to say something I’d regret. So I hung up.

I called the third agency today. He gave me renewed hope — and his direct number with permission to have my insurance company call conference so he could explain it to them. They did. But they didn’t believe him. So he got off the phone. Then we conferenced the hospital again. And we got the guy. The greatest guy ever (after my husband, dad, grandfather, and a few others) said to the insurance company: “You may want to check the code. The code for urgent care is ###. The ER code is ###. Can you verify that because we show an urgent care code.”

She checked. She had an urgent care code with an ER amount. Their error! You go, hospital billing department customer service rep guy!

I was able to wash the dishes in the time it took for me to give her all the associated account numbers for each invoice. There were five in all. They are resubmitting the claims.

All this to say, if you are fighting the insurance beast, stay calm. If you lash out, they mark it on the file and then they’re mean the next time you call. And the reps are not the lawmakers. They are the messenger. Don’t shoot the messenger. Find out the codes; ask folks to verify. I learned so much today.

Pink eye is expensive. And not just cause I had to replace all my eye shadow!

It was 103 degrees today. In the shade. The power went out. It came back on. Praise God!! There are a plethora of topics swimming through my mind of what to resume my blogging about. After all, I’m supposed to be logging my journey to find some order in my life. We saw fireworks that were fabulous this week. We got eaten alive by mosquitoe-shaped vultures. But what I really want to discuss is cheese.

Parmesan cheese to be exact. Parm is one fabulous cheese! You can’t go wrong. Shredded or shaved, it’s just my friend.

Parmesan cheese on a meatball. Parm on pasta. Parm on my hand and put in my mouth.

Parmesan cheese is wonderful!!

Apparently the heat has done something to my ability to blog about all things worthwhile.

It started raining around 9 am, maybe a little before that. Two fast and furious storms came through town from then until about 1 pm. Around 1:50 I piled two littles into the car and started backing out of the garage. It was time to pick J up from his library job. I didn’t get to the library. I called a friend and she retrieved my firstborn son. This is why I didn’t go out (it’s deeper twin was further south on the street).

Pretty intense, huh? That’s nothing compared to the drainage pond behind the house:

Ain’t that something.

Remember the blog about hating my life? In it, I said that I didn’t really hate my life, but I didn’t like the mom that I was within my life.

The Ultimate Blog Challenge includes the challenge to visit the blogs of others and see what they are saying and doing. After posting a comment on my site, I visited encourageyourspouse. What a novel thought in our culture.

Well, she was telling a story about a woman whose husband encouraged her when she was in the pits, “grumpy, frustrated, miserable with her day.” Her husband said:

“It’s not about the mom you were today,
it’s about the mom you’re fighting to be.”

And that nutshelled what I was trying to say. I am finding too frequently that I don’t like the mom I was today. In every new moment, I am fighting — like a salmon swimming upstream sometimes — to be the mom I’m fighting to be.

The trick, however, is that I can’t “try.” I can’t manifest that person. That person exists in Christ. I must open myself up to Him and allow what he pours through me to ooze out to my family.

This week I accepted an invitation to speak to homeschooling moms about prepping for their school year. I was given the title and told to run with it (apparently, she doesn’t know how dangerous that can be). God gave me the coolest perspective using the title.

I had T bring me parts from his toys to use as a demonstration. So as I sat playing and researching, God showed me the  COOLEST thing about it. If you want to know, you’ll either have to come to the event (more information coming for those local, pencil in August 27th, 10 am to noon) or wait till it’s over and then I’ll blog about it.

Until then, I’m going to stop trying to “fight” to be the mom I want to be and start fighting to get to closer to the One who can actually do the job.