Above is a picture of me in April of 2012. The device hanging on my shoulder in a VAD unit, or heart pump. On this happy day, I received a call that there was a donor heart that was a match for me and that the VAD albatross that I had been wearing for 9 months would be removed, along with the pacemaker/defibrillator which had been inserted at about the same time that I entered the transplant program. this story of my heart problems and eventual new heart is long and not the point of this particular blog. Maybe another day......
I'm writing this to give you a picture of just how valuable each of us is to God. When I became disabled with my heart problems, I was told " You'll never work another day in your life." Great prognosis, huh? But, step at a time, day at a time, month at a time, year at a time, God kept me going (actually, I think it was my wife's prayers that kept me going). I was on Medicaid and Medicare, but the only income I had was my SSI and the small stipend that I was receiving from the New Hope Baptist Church. My wife couldn't get a job, because caring for me in the shape I was in was a full-time job. The big shocker came when I turned 65. Medicare dropped me like they never knew me, leaving me without sufficient medical coverage for my VERY expensive anti-rejection medications, insulin, and a whole slew of other health-related and necessary things. Suddenly, we needed a new source of income. My wife took her retirement which (unjustly, I feel) only compensated her her past ten years of employment -- the same ten years that she had been taking care of me. Her monthly income was barely enough to cover our Medicare premiums (don't fool yourself, you are not paying for your Medicare with that weekly payroll deduction), the supplemental healthcare program (because Medicare only pays about 80% of your medical expenses) and a prescription plan for each of us. So, her small monthly check didn't help us afford anything but coverage for medical expenses. And even that was not enough. Deductibles and the "donut hole" (we knew nothing about) still left us with medical expenses we couldn't afford. My wife still had to be my full-time caregiver, so she couldn't hold a job. I had to have a job! I have been a pastor since 1984, but I was a hard-working printer for most of my adult life. I know how to work. (As a quirky side note, a recent pew poll revealed that 80% of church members think a pastor shouldn't hold an outside job. The same survey revealed that 50% of church members believe the church shouldn't be a pastor's sole support. Go figure.) I began looking for a job, but at the time my resume was painfully out of date and my skills as a printer were not as much in demand as they were in the 20th century. Nobody seemed to want to hire a 65-year-old pastor with a transplanted heart and diabetes. "Why?" , you ask. Well, because I was 65-years old, a pastor, a transplant recipient, and a diabetic. Oh, sure, they never said that was why I was not being hired for jobs that I was fully qualified for. |
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