"Sorry to inform you of this exclusion…insurance doesn’t go into effect until the newborn is a week old…since your son died prior to being a week old…these medical expenses are not covered under your policy."
Tommy stared at the letter as though it was a snake. If he applied every penny of his annual salary toward the debt it would still take years to pay it off.
Broken Dreams
“We didn’t know how to go on,” Tommy remembers. “Losing Jonathan was awful and being saddled with all that debt was overwhelming. We continued to pray, read our Bibles and attend church, but we’d lost our joy.
“I’d hoped to do better financially than the poverty I’d experienced growing up. As a kid, I didn’t have money for lunch or food to pack one. Poverty wasn’t limited to my immediate family; it stretched back for generations. I didn’t know of anyone in our family who’d gone to college. Most didn’t make it through high school before dropping out to find a job.
“Pam was the oldest of seven children and her parents were pastors. Every Sunday night after church they’d made the humiliating drive to her grandparents’ house to ask for money to pack school lunches. The difference between Pam and me was that she had dreams. She always dreamed of getting a college education and becoming a teacher. After we married she began clipping pictures out of magazines and designing her dream home. I refused to even look at it.”
Although they continued to struggle financially, God added to their family. In 1975, their son Brad was born. Two years later, Pam gave birth to a daughter, Dwanla.
In 1981, Tommy went into business for himself. He also accepted the call to pastor a church.
Their denomination was legalistic, Tommy said, with a longer list of “Thou Shalt Nots” than God gave Moses. A lot of things on that list, things like wearing a wedding band, could get you kicked out of the church and turned over to the devil, he said.
But of all the things members were forbidden to do, one topped the list. They were never to watch anyone preach on television. Listening to a sermon from someone outside the denomination was considered spiritual adultery.
JAN '14 : BVOV : 9
