Trust In God

I’ve not been feeling well the past couple of days. Finally went to the doctor yesterday and was diagnosed with a Kidney Infection. I knew I had it… it’s one of those things you just “know” you have. They gave me some medicine for it and I should be fine in a few days. Drinking tons of water, which I usually do anyways. Oh – but the really good thing was – my Blood Pressure was good at this visit. Of course I’m still taking my BP medicine every day. Well, one of them every day – one of them I’m a little less-than-good about taking because it’s a diuretic as well and I don’t like that. But they told me whatever I’m doing ~ keep it up because the BP is great and maybe I’ll be able to get off the BP medicine soon. Great news!

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More good news ~ the paperwork came in from the VA for the kids to finally begin getting that “apportionment” that should have been going to them all along. Julie tells me now that it’s really supposed to be nine hundred and something dollars – but I really don’t know. I just know that when Ron died, the VA has money that they pay… part of which is for Julie, part of which is for the kids. All this time, Julie has been getting all of it. In January the VA realized that Julie was not supposed to be getting all of it and so in January 2008 they began investigating to see about getting that money transferred over to the kids.

Ah, the slow moving paperwork of the VA.

Finally, in August – EIGHT MONTHS LATER – I get paperwork telling me that they want to know what my income is… what other income we have… how much Chris makes… IRA’s…. property we own… vehicles we own… how much cash we have in the bank… and what our living expenses are. I told you all this last blog I know, but I’m going somewhere with this, trust me.

Well, I did mine and sent it all in. I assumed they would want an ‘average’ income or if we were able to actually work 40 hours a week. Not what we have ACTUALLY brought in the past month or so. Because, well, as I’ve told you in prior blogs… business has been VERY bad for Chris the past month or two. I put down a good month for Chris, I figured this was what they were looking for.

Julie came over on Saturday. She brought her paperwork with her. She couldn’t understand the paperwork and asked if I’d help her with it. Of course I would and of course I did. I put in exactly what she told me… but under income, she put in $300 a month. “$300 a month?” I asked . She went on to explain that since she moved in July she was only working a couple days a week. Well, heck, had I known we were only using last month’s income… I’d have used that for Chris’s figures as well.

You see, they are going to look at this paperwork, sit down, and figure out how much to give to Julie so she can ‘make ends meet’ – and then how much to give the kids. In their letter to her they say that they don’t want to “cause undue hardship” on her. Well, heck, some might figure -- why work?

Sigh. The system is broke folks. Broke. And we all pay for it. Because people like you and me are out here working our asses off 40 hours a week to pay our bills and other people sit home and collect checks who don’t work because government agencies don’t want to create ‘hardships’. And, sometimes it’s financially better to stay at home and collect government checks than it is to get out and work. The system is broke.

But I don’t mean Julie. I mean, she IS out there trying to work at least. Albeit one or two days a week

I tell ya, my heart really breaks for Julie right now. Here she is at the BEST she has been in a very long time. She’s been out of the hospital for months. She’s moved into her own apartment. And she can’t, for some reason, get her current employer to get her more than $7 an hour and more than 1- 2 days a week to work. So, she goes out to try to get another job doing anything and can’t get anything else… not McDonalds, not Sweetbay, not Publix, not 7-11, nothing. She has no High School Diploma, which rules her out of a lot of jobs and she’s unable to pass a GED – she’s tried. Dang, she is TRING so hard.

At her best………. This is the best?

My heart is breaking for my sister. I mean… it SHOULD be GREAT for her right now, ya know? She really should be on disability. She needs to get a lawyer and get on disability. I wish she could come into a little bit of money to hire someone to just do that for her. Without question, Julie is a CLASSIC case of a person who has a mental illness which qualifies them for disability.

I mean think about it… even IF she landed a beautiful job right now… one that paid her $8 an hour – how much longer REALISTICALLY is she going to be out of the hospital? She is now on her 6th month. She’s never gone more than 9 months… so we are getting close. So, she gets a job, and then has to go into the hospital to be balanced out because she gets depressed. If she was working for someone very caring who knew of her history and understood it that’s one thing; but a place like McDonalds or Burger King – they just don’t care. They will turn over staff – fire her and fill her spot while she is gone.

So again, my heart breaks.

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Tonight there is a meeting at Church. Jeff, the executive director (who booted me off the praise team) wants to talk to everyone. I have to tell you, my heart is heavy on this one. My heart is beating fast as I type this just thinking about it.

I’m hoping there will be a chance for some of us to be able to ask questions or to speak our minds. And if so, I’m hoping I will have the courage to do so. I have just been SO unhappy. Not just because I am not a part of them… I enjoy singing… I enjoy standing up there and giving God all I have with others. It’s a gift, a giving of my soul to glorify God. They took that away. And I’m hurt. And I can’t FIND JOY anymore. So, hopefully we’ll get to talk about it.

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And now I am back. It’s a new day and last night I did indeed get a chance to talk at the meeting. Although if you can call it “talking”. I cried mostly. What a BABY I am. He talked about there being times when you do something at Church when you “light someone’s fire”. I feel that – by singing, be it in choir or on praise team or even in Toast of Tampa, I was lighting fires. It was infectious. I could feel it, God working through me many times. Touching lives. Touching souls. Then he talked about how he felt that – through the actions that had come about… they had put out some of those fires in people. Well, I told him that – yes indeed, without question, I felt that their actions had indeed squelched my fire. I was actually pleased to hear that analogy. In that one sentance, he had summed up how I had been feeling all this time.

I had been going to church, looking for joy – unable to find it. Gone to choir trying to sing and trying to smile and find happiness, unable to do so – not sure why. Sitting in different sections at church looking for God to “find me” and fill me with some sort of joy that I once had from singing praise and worship to him – and it just didn’t happen ---- why? I just can’t find happiness at this church anymore. So, what am I supposed to do – I asked? Go to another church? Is that what God wants me to do?? But… I love Vandyke – God Himself LED me to Vandyke. (And with that I completely broke down into tears.)

Uh, yeah… I said all this IN the church. I don’t think I was supposed to do that, huh? You know me… speak your mind… with your heart… think about it later.

Chris asked me afterwards if I ‘felt’ any better. I did feel better for at least telling them how I felt about the whole thing. I still don’t FEEL better, I mean, I still don’t have that JOY, that PASSION for singing again. And I don’t know how to get it back.

I keep thinking that maybe the ‘key’ to the whole thing is part of the VA benefit money. When that money starts coming in, it’ll free up some of our regular money. Maybe what I’m supposed to do is go back to Barbershopping. I know I loved it so much. I mean – I know I can’t go back to the way it was before… I can’t go back to being the president and section leader and in charge of everything under the sun. But I can go back and sing on Tuesdays and practice my songs during the week. I can go to retreats a few times a year. I can go away every other year to the International Competition, and to Regional Competition in between. Maybe one of the things the kids need now is a happier Auntie Tina / a happier Mom / a happier wife.

Then again, I always have this inner struggle with myself. Do I want to go back? Do I not want to go back? Will I feel like it is never really “right” because it is never like it used to be?

Oh, the things that run through my head – you guys – if you had any idea of how MUCH I think about. My head should EXPLODE because I think too much!

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I’m making $100 bucks tonight for drinking beer. Go figure. Hey, with things as bad as they are right now, if I can make $100 in an hour or two, without breaking any laws or doing anything immoral, why not! Budweiser is paying me $100 to taste beer at Busch Gardens for an hour. Then they’ll feed me afterwards, so I don’t drive home drunk (which I can’t do because Michelle is going as well and she is driving). Give me beer, feed me, give me $100 bucks and send me on my way – LOVE IT!

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So, I check the cell phone records today and see that Kayla has been on her phone the past 3 or 4 days talking to 2 phone numbers on her cell phone. We extended their cell phone use (because the kids REFUSED to abide by the 10pm rule) and allowed them to talk to their friends until 11pm as long as they were talking to friends on a cell phone. No house phones permitted because that was just WRONG. Nobody should be on a house phone after 9 or 10 pm. Heck, I don’t use MY house phone after then unless it’s an emergency. So….

I see a lot of calls to these two numbers… 17 minute phone call at 11:55 pm, 12:39, 1:44 in the morning, 1:22 in the morning, 12:40 – you get the gist. I decide to CALL these numbers, since there are only the same TWO numbers recurring over and over again. It’s 8:30 in the morning, I’m sure this person would LOVE to hear from me so early in the morning.

The first number was a fax machine. Odd… but then I realize that all of the calls on the cell bill from that number were incoming. Odd, but then I noticed that after every fax call there was the call from the other number.

So, I called the other number. It rang and rang and rang and rang and rang. No voice mail. Odd – but heck – I’ll let it ring – why not? Ring, ring, ring, ring, ring, ring, ring. Finally… that stumble to the phone answer happens… you know the one… when someone is knocking the phone off the night stand answer. And a teenage girl answers in a soft and VERY TIRED voice “hello”.

I say in a VERY CHIPPER voice (You should call my office just so see how annoyingly CHIPPER I can be - “Well hello there! Did I wake you up?”

She sounds soooo tired and confused…. “........yes”

I reply, again, very chipper “Oh, gee. I’m so sorry about that. Well – ya know – if you were not up until 2 am on the phone talking to Kayla, maybe you wouldn’t be so TIRED this morning, ya know?”

“Huh?” she says

I ask: “Who is this by the way?”

She replies “This is Beba.”

I tell her, “Well, Beba, this is Tina, Kayla’s Aunt. And in my house, we don’t allow phone use after 11 at night. And I just pulled the phone records and see that for the past several nights, you and Kayla have been talking until 1 or 2 am. That’s pretty late. And it’s going to stop. Right now. And if it doesn’t happen, I’m taking away Kayla’s cell phone. Got it?”

She says, “Uhhhh, yes”

I say “That’s good, Beba. Have a good rest of the day. Goodbye.”

And I hang up.

Too funny.

I decided that Kayla had to be punished, of course. So I looked at the phone bill again and see that it’s only the last two nights that she’s been up till 1 and 2 am talking – so – I called her and told her to put her phone on my bed and walk away from it because for two days, as punishment for this since she couldn’t follow the rules, she was going to not use her phone for two days.

Course, as luck would have it – her phone broke today. Guess when her new phone arrives? Yepper – 2 days. She was going to try to use one of the older phones for now. Because she just COULDN’T go WITHOUT any phone! But now she’s going to HAVE to. She’ll live.

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Speaking of living, my back is still killing me because of this kidney infection. I felt horrible last night and now this afternoon it’s getting bad again. I guess I’m not drinking enough water. Only had one .5 liter of water thus far today… not nearly enough I think. Plus people from the choir are sending me words of encouragement and I’m crying out what little water I’ve had today. One choir member wrote “you are being lifted up by all that surrounded you last night and more” – how incredibly sweet is that? I didn’t say anything that I said last night because I wanted to be lifted up, but because I just wanted THEM to know how I felt. Yet – out of that came this… support. I didn’t go there to GET anything. I went there to – heck – to hope to “give ‘em a piece of my mind”, so to speak. And today I have people praying for me. That is soooo sweet. And here I go crying again. Dangit Tina.

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BRACES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We’ll talk about BRACES! Good news there! I finally got the kids an appointment with an Orthodontist who will be their first step in getting braces on their teeth! This is for Justin and Kayte. Kayla doesn’t need them and Jonathan, of course, doesn’t have insurance.

Here’s how it works: There are only a few Orthodontist who take Medicaid, because they pay so poorly. So, they reserve only a FEW spots for Medicaid patients. All the rest of their appointments are for cash paying patients. Once a month or so they tell their Medicaid patients that they can call in and the first few callers can get appointments if and when they have an opening. The rest have to try again later, whenever they open their schedule for the next scheduled calling (again, usually once a month). I’ve been putting it on my calendar at work and calling like a mad-dog every month. It’s like trying to “call-in-and-win” on a radio station. Only I’ve not been able to win yet. This month, I did! Their appointment is for October 29th! This will be their initial visit and I assume he’ll decide if they need braces and if so, when he’ll put them on.

How exciting!

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Speaking of exciting, Chris’s job is going really well. He just LOVES what he is doing now. It’s --- completely different than what he was doing before. He’s not remodeling a bathroom or doing tile work. No ‘honey-do’ list. He’s doing the carpentry work in a mall where they are building a Coach store. I can’t wait to see it!

I know he’s working very odd hours… and very long hours. He comes home very dirty and very tired. One morning he had to get up for work to BE there at 3 am. He doesn’t get home most nights until 6 pm. One night he had to turn around and go back at 9 pm to unload a truck till 1 or 2 am. He’s working 10-12 hour days… but it’s an hourly rate.

God is giving us EXACTLY what I asked for in a prior blog. I said… Chris needs to work. He’ll work hard… he’ll earn it… just give him work to do and he’ll earn the rest. No gimmies ~ no handouts ~ just work. And there it is.

God is good.

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And so I leave you today with this thought:

We all have our days when we feel we can’t survive.
Sometimes our dreams are shattered,
Friendships may fall apart.
We may even lose people we love.
But God will always be there to guide us
through even the toughest of times.
Never lose faith.
Hold onto hope.
Trust in God…. Always.