When Fears are Realized... At Least for Now

One of the main fears I have (excluding all of my phobias and the common fears like having a child die or becoming paralyzed, etc) is not having health insurance - or having it be so expensive that I can't afford the copays.

My husband of almost ten months had said he would never get married before we met - and even the first four years of our relationship. Like me, this wasn't his only fear, but it kept us from taking that next step for a long time. 

He was afraid he wouldn't be able to provide for me.

Well, it ended up that he got fired from the job he had most of our relationship. He had been at that job for a while but a combination of developing an auto-immune disease that would flare up occasionally, a change of management, and having to work from home due to COVID, his performance went downhill.

Then add nervousness about the possibility of being fired and he was a wreck - and continued to do worse.

Even though he had been there 10?, 11? years before this happened, when he finally got the news, he blamed himself. He had been successful all that time but he chalked it up to not trying hard enough.

But this ended up being a good thing. Kind of like my job loss (explained in another post: https://www.spotlightonstigma.com/2023/02/no-longer-afraid.html), he found another job that paid much, much better.

Though it's not the only reason he decided to ask me to marry him, I know that factored in.

As with many couples (or anytime there is more than one person giving an opinion), each of us has a unique perspective on everything. It's easy to assume the other person has the same thoughts and beliefs that you do.

Remember how I mentioned health insurance being one of my biggest fears? Even though I knew I'd marry him no matter what, his health insurance benefits concerned me.

He kept telling me that he had great insurance and though he never verbalized it, that I shouldn't worry about it.

However, when I finally did get the details about the plan, I came close to freaking out. 

Yes, it was a really good policy. Every doctor we wanted to see was covered, the vast majority of prescriptions were covered... all with a pretty low co-pay. 

AFTER we each met the $4000 deductible, that was.

Maybe you are thinking, "That's normal for insurance plans nowadays," but you need to realize that I'm self-employed - and poor. Keep your politics in check with this... I got a really nice plan from Marketplace. Not only did it have a low co-pay and many of my doctors and prescriptions were covered, the deductible was markedly lower than $4000.

Still, I was pretty sure that I would have to have rotator cuff surgery on my other shoulder this fall and that would wipe out the deductible mostly by itself, once you factor in the PT I would need.

So, I went to doctors, therapists, and got tests done like I had before, knowing that it would work out to be not that bad over the course of the year and all I would have done.

Here's the irony: 

First, let me tell you something that I joked about when I was trying to calm myself down about the $4000 deductible... I actually remember thinking, "What if we lose the insurance as soon as we met that deductible?"

Back to the irony.

We did.

He got fired again, literally a week after meeting the deductible. 

In hindsight, he shouldn't have taken a job that was so similar to the one he had been burned out over, even though it did give him a significantly larger income. I could go into my theories on why this really smart man wasn't hacking it at this job, but I won't.

I do know that the new job was killing him, stressing him out incredibly. It wasn't worth it.

In some ways, I'm really glad he got fired because it frees him up to find something that won't be so hard on him. I've had some jobs that I loved and some that I hated, but he and I are alike in that we will almost never leave a job voluntarily, even if it's killing us.

Every...

single...

time...

it's worked out to be much better (not perfect, but better.)

But back to the title of this post - fears being realized. 

On getting the news, his biggest fear - that he can't provide for me - has been realized. (Side note - when I'm strong I remind him that the job didn't provide for us, God does.)

And mine - not having health insurance that I can afford to use - has also been realized. (Side note - we do qualify for Marketplace but between the two of us, though still poor, we aren't as poor as I was alone and the plan has a pretty high deductible for only five months left in the year.)

In the big picture, though, I know that we'll be okay. Each of us has been through worse - and God has been there the whole time.

This time of both of us having to face our fears may seem like a coincidence... but God has it all under control.

...or at least I know He does when I'm strong.