Crying in Costco

            Have you ever sat in the middle of Costco and had a good cry? Me, neither. Well, not until today.

            This hasn’t been the best week. I am miles behind in my schoolwork. I overslept and got to my early class late. Squirrels are eating my cucumbers. My health insurance was cancelled.

            That was the thing that pushed me to the tipping point. I went to Costco to pick up my prescriptions. I am diabetic, and the medicine I take to keep it in check is usually about $15. Not yesterday. Yesterday it was $125. Naturally, I questioned that. “Nope, that was correct. Did I know that my insurance had been cancelled?” Nope, I didn’t know that. I asked them to hang on to my meds while I checked the insurance thing out. After talking to the very nice lady at the school who informed me that I had received a letter about this last spring, I was offered the option of renewing my insurance, at three times the cost of what it had been. None of this was my fault, but it was my reality. The nice insurance man I called informed me that that was 25% of my total income. I already knew that.

            So today I went back to Costco to pick up my medication. The pharmacist was very nice, but paused to ask me if I had gotten my insurance issues taken care of. “No,” I told him. “I’ll just pay for it.” He smiled and told me it would be about ten minutes. Ten minutes turned into twenty minutes, and I sat in the waiting chairs feeling very defeated. The pharmacist came out and handed my prescription to the nice girl at the cash register, smiled at me and left. She called my name, and I went up to pay, credit card in hand. She scanned it in, and the price showed on the display: “$6.99.”

            Wait, what? I asked the nice girl how that could be and if there was an error, and she said that she didn’t how it happened, but that was the price. How would I like to pay?

            That’s how I found myself having a good cry in the middle of Costco.

            “God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, thought the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with their surging.” Psalm 46:1-3

            I didn’t ask God to provide for my medicines. I didn’t have faith that he would. It never even occurred to me that he might. But I am grateful that he did.

            (Mom, I am hoping you aren’t reading this. To my family: I am fine. No worrying. God is taking good care of me. I have plenty to eat and everything I need. Really!)

            God has been teaching me to depend on him. A year ago he asked me to quit my job and just do what he called me to do. So I did. And for the past year he has taken care of the details. I have done my part to stop spending and focus on school, and he has provided in ways I never would have imagined. But money is tight. I am poor. I hate that word, and the very idea. I am rich in many ways, but when it comes to money, there just isn’t any. I am learning to do without it. It’s not a lesson I want to learn. Most of the time I don’t think about it much, but today I thought about it a lot.

            Lately I’ve been thinking about my future a lot, too. I want some specific direction. I want to know what I am going to be doing after I finish school. I want to know his plans, and what I should be planning for. I have asked God repeatedly to give me some direction. His answer is found at the end of Psalm 46, the one I quoted above:

            “Be still, and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth.” Psalm 46:10

I am to be still. I am to know who is God. I am to exalt him. The appropriate response to living with God as your refuge, ever present in times of trouble, is to stop worrying and lift him up.

            That’s pretty specific direction. It’s not what I was looking for, but today, it’s enough. Today I saw him work in my behalf. I will try to live in it tomorrow. 
            But what about those other times? The times when the bill doesn't go down or go away? The times when healing doesn't occur or the house gets foreclosed on, or when the flooding destroys everything you have? Where is God when all you hear is silence? The answer is the same. He is our refuge, ever present. I don't know why he works the way he does. I know that when I can't hear him, I will remember today. Today will be my stone of remembrance, that occurrence that gets me through the silence.

            What are you struggling with today? What do you need to set down, and just trust God to handle? Can you be still, and know that God is God, and we are not, and trust that this is a very good thing? God loves us more than we can imagine. We don’t know why he allows us to go through some of the things he does, but we can trust what we know about him: that he is good, that he is present, and that he loves us. That’s something to praise him for.