the waiting room

There’s a secret I have that I’m confessing here. My family and I receive two different government assistances: Medicaid (for both of my children only) and WIC (Women Infant Children – a food assistance program consisting of mostly free milk, eggs, cheese, and cereal).

Go ahead all of you political conservatives and Limbaugh disciples. Rip me in two for getting free stuff from the government and call me lazy or whatever. I can take it.

I never planned or desired to be on assistance of any kind. Call me fiercely independent or idealistically naïve. But I’ve been on my own since I was 18.

However, I did move in with my mother for the summer when I was 19, in between my first two years of college. But after that experience, I vowed to never live with a parent again. And I admit, throughout college I received various financial helps from my parents like rent my junior year, and car insurance, etc. But by age 22, I had become completely weaned off the parental financial tit. So call it what you want: on my own at 18 but not fully independent until 22. Whatever.

And I also admit or confess this: I am highly critical of any grown adult who still lives WITH or OFF their parents to any degree. I don’t know exactly why this bugs me, so maybe it shouldn't. Maybe its because my parents split up when I was 18, three weeks after I moved to college and I never had the option to move “home” because there was no home. Or maybe it’s because people just need to freaking grow up.

And lastly, I admit: in recent years I have asked my parents for financial assistance. Twice. But I repaid (or attempted to repay) in full. That’s because I do not want to give anyone, especially family members (who think I need to move from this secret agent life and get a “real” job) the upper hand over my life. I am a grown man. I don’t need any outside influences dictating what I or my family needs. I don't want to receive anyone's assistance thus becoming their slave to bully around.

All that to say: I never planned on receiving government assistance. Ever. It just kind of evolved.

It started almost three years ago when Agent Wife was pregnant with our first. We paid the doctor in cash monthly and I was saving up for the big balloon payment due at the birth. This method is FAR cheaper than insurance, btw.* Anyway, six weeks before the birth we lost all forms of ministerial pay with no warning. I became “unemployed” right before fatherhood. We received a months salary and that’s all we had.

So during our next doctor visit I practically grabbed the doc by his lab coat and begged for a cheaper alternative, as I was now a desperate man. This is when I learned that doctors are far removed from the actual payment process of their patients. This is when I learned that to most doctors, you are just another yacht payment or country club fee.

Anyway, some lady at the office desk suggested we apply for Medicaid as it sounded like we fit the profile to receive it. So we applied. Not only did we get the rest of our medical/birthing experience covered, but our child was covered for the following year. Plus they suggested we get on the WIC program since the requirements are identical to medicaid's.

And a year later Agent Wife was pregnant again. Mental note: don’t trust the catholic birth control methods. So we got on Medicaid again and renewed Agent Offspring #1’s coverage which had expired.

So recently, I went to the Medicaid office to get an application for AO#2 who turns 1 this month. And I’m trying to remember why I’m still doing this. Oh yeah, we’re poor. We barely make enough money to cover bills and food every month. We have no money for the kid’s routine doctor checkups.

As I walked into the waiting room, I remembered the first time we visited that sterile, undignified, and desperate place. It was the first time that we had been on the other side of the counter. At the old izzy group food pantry, we were always the givers. Now we were the ones asking for help. It was humbling. And I could see exactly what the poor went through. The lack of dignity. The desperate posturing.

All those times at izzy, we tried to erase that “counter” boundary. But in the end, WE were the givers and THEY were the receivers. There was an invisible boundary between us and never the two shall mix.

In some weird way, I feel that being on government assistances is part of my extended secret agent field training for some future mission by the CEO.

I hope so. Because my desperate prayer these days is to have an income where I can get off assistance for good. I think that’s an OK prayer to request. Join me if you will...




* - If we had medical insurance, I’m told the entire birthing experience would have cost the insurance company $7000 and possibly up to $10K. And of course, the average insurance for a family my size is about $500 a month forever. Paying cash for the entire birth experience would have totaled less than $3500.