This morning I was faced with a banking/health insurance dilemma. Just one of those problems would have me running into the dark Nevada night...but both of them? I wanted to approach my computer with camouflage fatigues ready for battle. But then I spent a few moments trying to finding a calm and peaceful place to deal with a pretty big problem. Our world can be a loud and rancorous place making peace hard to come by. We can't just opt out, we have to deal with the world. And that is where the choice comes. Do we stay in the light where we can see solutions, or do we let go of all control and just let the world have it?
Long, long story short. My health insurance premium automatically came out of my bank account on the tenth of every month. Two different policies, two different accounts. Starting April 1 I have a new health insurance policy and the others were cancelled along with the automatic withdrawal. Or so I thought.
But only one policy was cancelled. Which means the other policy, the really costly one, was automatically withdrawn.
Oh no....
I called the bank immediately and opened a dispute. They said it will take at least 10 business days for them to resolve it. In the mean time fees are mounting and our money is floating around somewhere....somewhere in the nether world.
I spoke with my insurance broker and they assured me it had been cancelled.
I called the health insurance company and they said it will take 30 days to resolve it. I was only allowed to speak with a note taker, no one with any authority and no information really given. After an hour and half on the phone, some of that time just on hold, and no real information or direction given, the note taker asked if there was anything else she could help me with.
What?
Maybe help get my money back before 30 days which was the reason for my call.....
We have created a world of confusion that no one really understands, a land of "you cannot get there from here". A place where folks calmly tell you they cannot help you and there is no solution. They firmly believe and accept you cannot get there from here.
I refuse to accept that. Simply stop trying when people tell us to stop trying? There is always a solution if we peacefully search for it. We can do what appears to be impossible.....I know we can.
I know because of something I saw this morning. A woman stood in front of a group of people from her church and thanked them for praying for her family. She calmly said that two of the people shot and killed outside a Jewish Community Center in Kansas City were her father and son.
They were just living life when it happened. She was at a lacrosse game with one son so her father agreed to drive her other son to a singing competition try out. That's all, just living normal life.....maybe innocently dealing with insurance companies or cholesterol one minute and gone the next.
The mother standing in front of her congregants was peaceful and obviously it was the peace sustaining her. When we choose to hate and use anger we are left on our own to deal with problems. Which fills us with darkness and that leads to hopelessness. When we chose peace we are filled with light and can "see" solutions we never would have before.
My bank/insurance problem, while annoying, will be resolved. In 30 days or 10 days or 10 minutes...but they will find the problem and fix it.
The mother in Kansas City reminded me to honor peace under all circumstances and I am grateful for that. I have seen grace under pressure before and it always inspires me to do better, be better. While hatred and anger, even seemingly justified, only leaves me sad and confused and certainly without peace. There is something to light and darkness, no matter what your belief system is.
