long hard times

it started with my vacation. the first three days were fun. the weather was nice, there wasn’t anything to do really, except what we wanted to do. we went on several long drives, things were green, and calm, and pleasant.

the 18th of the month, wednesday, in the middle of my time off, was the second court date for the beau’s worker’s comp claim. once again, the attorney was unavailable, and there was a fill-in. she was less than stellar, to put it politely. she was more concerned with impressing the judge she thought we had drawn, who apparently was a stodgy old guy in his seventies with no experience as an attorney and was not too familiar with workers comp court. great. but it seems we actually had a better judge than that. still, our fill-in was put out with us both for being upset that it mattered more what kind of mood the judge was in than what she was going to present in his case. when we got into court, she made no abjections, asked minimal questions of the beau, and mostly sat there with a glassy eyed look. the opposing lawyer was more into it than she by far. we were before the judge because we could hardly believe the paltry offer on the table for a life altering injury. evidently our attorney had left out a major part of the claim, that being the subsequent injury to his elbow, that he continually told their office about and that the treating physician refused to address.

this case is not over, so I wont yet go into more details than that. there will be more to come. but we were much disheartened by the way this attorney handled – or rather didn’t handle – his injury. many times the beau tried to tell him that his elbow was a factor, but at the end all he would say was he knew nothing about it and didn’t see anything in any of the reports about it.

absolutely unacceptable.

we recovered some of our joy, and were determined to enjoy the rest of my time off.

God has been providing means for us, and we have managed to keep our utilities on, with only a couple of disruptions in service. since the beau hasn’t been able to get work, it has been a daily walk of faith, but God is always good for His word.

still, people are not. after having paid the ebay account because it had been suspended, the beau relisted everything. several auctions were near ending, and we had several bids. this is more income, so very important right now. right before they ended, ebay suspended the account again and ended all the auctions, preventing last minute bidders from bidding. their reason was that a payment had been returned the previous month. they had tried to get the payment that we had just made from my account, which by the way had posted, from an old account that had been closed three weeks ago. he called them to find out how they could do this, only to spend nearly 4 hours and several conversations with people in an eastern call center who speak terrible english and will not listen to the caller but insist on reading from their prompts. he was in a furious state of mind by the time I got off work. during this time the water had been shut off. we have good neighbors, so I got to shower for work, but still … and God provided, so we got the water back on the next day. but it was a very hard few days to endure. the beau was unable to sleep, and his hand and his arm have been in so much pain.

then our internet was turned off, even though again we had made the payment. the service had been disrupted, we paid and got it right back on, and two days later – during all this other mess – because those at AT&T did not rescind the shut off order once the payment was made like they are supposed to, our internet was gone. once more while I was at work, the beau spent more time than is right trying to get more middle eastern call center workers to turn our internet back on, only to be given the run around and hung up on repeatedly. you think im kidding? I tried too, when I got home, and got the same treatment.

the next day the beau tried again, and got an actual caring supervisor who first listened to what he had to say, and then acted on our – the customer – behalf. he had our internet back on in thirty minutes, and gave us a free month. and he said he was going to deal with the people we had spoken to previously, because all the calls were recorded.

see? there is a God. He has to deal with those kind of people too. most people don’t think about that.

so while it has been a truly taxing and trying last couple of weeks, I believe I see a light, and it isnt an oncoming train. it’s a crack in the roof of this dark tunnel we have been in for some time now. the Lord has made us some promises concerning getting out of oklahoma, and getting us past all this turbulence. He always makes good on those promises.

google Tags: God's promises,trials by fire