The Right Thing is the Right Thing

It's been a rough couple of weeks for the Groom. Mostly busy, but also facing the unexpected. But in the midst of it all, God has been more than faithful. Every once in a while God will do something to remind me of what He really means when He says, "abundantly more than you can ask or imagine." A lot of prosperity preachers will give their interpretation and in an effort to do so they have to edit the Bible to remove a lot of the passages in which God's people, even Jesus Himself, face hardship or poverty despite their faith and obedience.

But over and over again, the Lord continues to bless me despite my fear, unbelief, and disobedience. A few months ago we discovered that my little boy, now eight months old, has "positional plagiocephaly", which is a medical way of saying that my son has slept in the same position every night and his head has a flat spot as a result. Part of that cause is that he also has "torticollis", or "turtle neck". This just means that the muscles on one side of his neck are shorter than on the other side, so he favors looking to the right, and can look further right, than left. With therapy that is improving, but the misshapen head is severe enough that it won't go away on its own. Which we figured, so we have spent several months going through the process of getting him tested and evaluated and eventually were able to get him a helmet last week.

But God has been faithful and has given us great doctors along the way, and a great orthopedist/prostheticist. With our son's temperament, he has taken well to the helmet and doesn't complain at all about it. However, the insurance won't pay for it, although we can appeal, so we have had to pay up front for it. But as I was swimming laps one evening after paying the first half, a friend showed up with a bank envelope that said, "Loose change", and propped it up against the "lap swim" sign where my goggle case and shammy were lying. Inside was the full amount, in cash, for the helmet! As we appeal the insurance company, we will of course repay him, but this is not a loan from him, but a gift.

We have also experienced an earthquake and a hurricane in the last week. And a tree fell on our house. No one was hurt and there was no significant damage done that I can tell. The tree was dead and was just over the property line on the neighbor's property. So as the neighbor and I try to figure out whose insurance should cover it, we both called our insurance agents and I made a visit to mine to discuss it. I'll be honest. I thought it would be handled differently than it has been so far. My neighbor and I are cool. There's no hard feelings on either side and neither feels the other is trying to stick it to the other; we just want it resolved.

So when I visited my insurance agent, he told us we could file a claim with him, file one with the neighbor's agent, or have the tree removed myself, and file for a reimbursement. This summer, we have had to pay tons of medical bills, extra high bills due to heat, and had to buy a new car, taking on car payments. So paying to remove the tree ourselves is not a great option for us. So we went to the neighbor's agent and tried to file a claim. As soon as we walked in we saw Christian imagery and Scripture verses everywhere, but the attitude with which we were greeted was anything but. Now, let me set the stage and say that the man who runs this agency was present, and he is a bi-vocational pastor in our small town. We've met before. So I was surprised at the tone and the attitude with which our request to even FILE was met. After a brief exchange, I said, "I'll just talk to my agent and let you fight it out." And we returned to our agent and he said, "That's pretty typical. Some agencies will do business that way and will be willing to pay once someone else has paid all the administrative fees through filing. We'll take care of it."

Now, I know it's insurance and their goal is to not spend money. But I've known plenty of businesses personally, in which the professing Christian businessman somehow separates his Christian faith from his business practice and from the history I have with this man and now my visit to his office on insurance business, I wasn't really that surprised.

But what about us at home, gentlemen? Do we separate our faith in God from our relationship with our wives and children? Are you a different man in church than you are in your living room? Or at your son's ball game? Do you speak to your wife the same way at home as you do at church? I'm not talking about perfection; I'm talking about integrity. If we do something wrong, we ought to apologize and commit to change. That's doing the right thing. We ought to do what's right regardless of whether anyone else will know about it or not.

One final example. I was walking into Target a few weeks ago and there was a family with a young boy of less than 3 years old, and he had grabbed something he wanted off the low bin in the front display of cheap trinkets. Rather than taking it out of his hand and putting it back, the father told him, "We need to hurry before they see that you got that." Contrast that with a decision I had to make. I had gone to Wal-mart a couple of months ago and had several big things in my cart and none of them needed bags. But I had also grabbed a tube of toothpaste off the shelf and set it in the cart. When I checked out, she scanned everything while it was in the cart, so it wasn't until I got out to the car and unloaded that I noticed the toothpaste. Because of my schedule that day and the busy-ness of Wal-mart, I committed to pay for it next time. When I returned the next week I grabbed a toothpaste (the same kind and size) and when I got to the register I told the cashier what happened, so she needed to scan this one then put it to the side. She told me I was crazy, but I insisted. I felt so much better. I could easily have walked off. It was only $3, I could tell myself; they wouldn't miss it. But the right thing is the right thing. And my daughter learned a valuable lesson. And hopefully she still sees me as a man of honor, worthy of her trust. It's just one more brick, gentlemen. Build your house to withstand the storms and earthquakes that will surely come, and watch the Lord bless you beyond all you could dream or imagine.