I am not a Karen. I just wanted to make that clear before I share my story.

Knowing that I was going to have a few medical expenses this year, I put money away in a health care spending account. If you don’t know what that is, it’s like having an account that you can withdraw money only for your health care needs. You are given a debit card, with your set amount on it, and you use it for your medical expenses that are not paid for by insurance. My account and I had been getting along great until I had an MRI in August. I knew that for an expense that large, I would need to submit an itemized bill from the imaging center, so I requested one as soon as I paid. Before I left, I looked down at the receipt and underneath the clinic header, it said MRI, the location and the cost. I already knew this wouldn’t be specific enough, but I knew that I couldn’t request anything additional from the receptionist standing in front of me.

Sure enough, a few weeks after I had swiped my card to pay for the MRI, I received a notice that I needed to turn in additional information for the charge to be processed. I called the billing company for the imaging center and requested an itemized bill. The representative knew exactly what I needed and sent me a ledger of all of my expenses with them over that particular month. It showed the date, the procedure, how much insurance paid, and how much my portion would be. Perfect! I submitted everything electronically, received confirmation, and then waited to hear back from them. A week later, I realized that I had not heard back. I logged back into check on the status and saw that it was still awaiting proper documentation. There was no phone number to call, so I started a chat with the bot. After a few lines, I was transferred to a real person, who told me that my documentation was not received. She told me to submit it again. So, I did. I waited another week, and when I checked again, it still showed that I needed to submit proper documentation. Back to the chat bot. This time, I got a different person- a guy. He told me that my documentation was not sufficient because it did not show the date of the exam. I pointed out where it did. He said that it did not show the type of exam. I showed him where that was listed as well. Then he told me that I needed to show what my portion was. I showed him where all of this was on the ledger item that I had submitted. He then told me that the amounts didn’t match. He could not approve the payment because I had used the card to pay LESS than what the ledger document showed that I owed.

Wait, what?

I could feel my face getting hot as I was chatting with him. Everything that was required was on the ledger that I had submitted, but he was still telling me that it was not sufficient. He told me that I needed to submit an explanation of benefits from my insurance company. Great. One more website to dig through to find the “correct” documentation. I disconnected with him and started digging through the health insurance website. I found everything, printed it off, and resubmitted- for a third time.

I was really angry. I felt like I was being played. The money that they were withholding was mine. It was a test of the wills to see how many hoops I would be willing to jump through to get my bill paid. At this point, we were 2 months removed from the actual appointment and the clinic still had not been paid yet.  I started to worry. That night, we had our weekly Whispers & Fringes prayer call. After we shared the prayer requests that had been submitted from our community, we each started to share our own. I asked the team to pray for this particular need, chuckling as I shared it. No one was sick or suffering, but I was frustrated and wanted this to be fixed! The team reassured me that no need is too small, and a few others shared that they were experiencing something similar. We prayed for this and all the other needs.

I received an email in the early hours of the next morning to notify me that my expenses had been approved and the payment was sent to the clinic. I was so relieved. My battle was over.

Psalms 107 is filled with verses that show how God responds when His people cry out to him. Verse 19 is very simple- “Then they cried out to the Lord in their trouble, and he saved them from their distress.”

It doesn’t take a crisis for the Lord to respond. He responds to your distress- whatever that might be. I wanted to share this for a very simple reason. I wanted to encourage you to pray for that thing that you think is silly but is costing your peace. God cares. That’s it. He is concerned with what you are concerned about. He cares about the small things just as much as the big things.

-Shiney