Words of Truth

We moved to Indiana in 2005, and at that time we enrolled our kids at a Christian School. Our son attended there from 3rd grade on up through 8th grade. Our oldest daughter attended from kindergarten through 4th grade, and our youngest daughter went there for kindergarten.

Three years ago the economy went south, my pay changed at work, and we could no longer afford to keep all three kids enrolled at the school. So we elected to keep our son enrolled and homeschool the girls (since he was oldest). After a year of that, we realized that we simply couldn’t afford the school at all for any of our kids. We have homeschooled all three kids for the past two years.

Indiana started a private-school voucher program a few years ago where they would allow certain families to send their kids to private school with a financial subsidy paid by the state (which means taxpayers, let’s not forget). I looked into the program at the time, but our school was not one of the schools listed, so I didn’t look into it further.

A few weeks ago we were informed that, not only had the state of Indiana made some changes to the law, widening it for use by more people, but also, as of the 2013-2014 school year, our Christian School will be one of the schools on the voucher list. This means that, if our kids qualified, we would be able to receive help paying for their school. Considering the fact that the taxes we have paid for the past eight years have gone to pay for the public education my children never took advantage of, I received this news with excitement.

Then I did the homework and realized that my children do not qualify…..this year. The qualifying conditions for admission in the program are twofold:
1. First you must have a financial need. There is a chart showing different incomes for different family sizes. If you make more money than the number on the chart for the number of people in your family, you don’t qualify.
2. Next, you must meet one of two conditions. Either your children must already attend a public school, or you must live in a public school district that is receiving a failing grade from the state.

If you meet these conditions, your children qualify for the voucher program, and the private school where you enroll your children will receive funding from the state equal to either 90% or 50% (based on your income level) of the funding your local school district would have received if you had put your child in public school.

I called my local school district and was told that the per-student funding was approximately $4700 for last year. That means that, for my family of five, if I made less than $51,000, my kids would get funding of $4230 per kid. That would pay the entire bill for their schooling at the Christian School. Unfortunately (ha!), I make just over that, so we would fall into the category of people who would receive 50% of the per-student funding, or (in our case) $2350. This means that we would get funding that covers the difference in what our homeschooling costs, and what private school costs. So we’d be paying the same as we are paying now, but the kids would get to go back to private school. Yaay!

But, unfortunately (ha!) we don’t live in a failing school district. This means that, in order to participate in this program, at least one of our children would have to attend public school for the 2013-2014 school year, and then all three of them would qualify for the voucher program for the 2014-2015 year (another provision added by the Indiana legislature this year: one kid’s attendance qualifies all his or her siblings).

So yesterday we registered our youngest daughter at our local elementary school. She is excited because she will be going to school with all the girls in the neighborhood with whom she plays every day. We decided to send her because we feel it would be more of a shock for our older daughter to go to eighth grade or our son to go to eleventh grade, both after being homeschooled for years. Plus, the exposure to the things we don’t like about public school would be less in fourth grade than it would in junior high or high school.

This fall our youngest daughter will go to public school for one year. Our two oldest will continue to go to school in their pajamas. And, Lord willing, next fall all three of our children will go back to the Christian School. Thank you, Indiana legislature, and thank you, Governor Mike Pence, for making this a possibility.

Well Obamacare has hit. I am loathe to discuss specific things from my workplace so I do not get fired for talking about work, but I will discuss one major change here, since it affects me.

I had worked “weekend option” for five years before leaving the main hospital and going to the one in Carmel. People in a weekend option position get paid an extra 12 hours for agreeing to work every weekend. For example, I worked Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights, and got paid for “four nights” of work because I worked every weekend. This arrangement is called by some “the golden handcuffs” because it’s a lot of money, but you feel like you can’t leave and work someplace else because any change you make is a pay cut. I worked weekend option until the fall of 2010, and in the fall of 2011 I moved to Carmel on day shift.

In the fall of 2012 I started my master’s program at the University of Indianapolis. One thing they told me in the initial interview was that it would be a good thing if I could get a weekend option position since the clinical schedule in the second year can get hairy. And so I asked my boss if I could get into one of these positions. She said there were none available, but she would see what we could do. Several months ago she told me that it had moved from a possibility to a probability. She just had to get the position approved, and things were moving in that direction. It looked like I would be weekend option again sometime this spring/summer.

And then last week happened. Hospitals have been hurting financially due to several provisions in Obamacare regarding Medicare/Medicaid reimbursement (and other things which are too complicated for me to go over here). One provision is that if you readmit a patient for any reason within 30 days of their discharge, you get financially penalized for that second admission. This article from last fall shows this is happening already. So hospitals are having to adjust their sails, so to speak. My hospital announced last week that, effective sometime in July, weekend option is no more.

This means several things to me. First of all, it means that I will probably have to work more weekends since the people who worked every weekend will not be working every weekend anymore (why would they?). Secondly, this means my pay is not going to increase like I thought it would. We’re talking approximately $1500 extra net pay per month. I was planning to pay off some debts by the end of the year, replace the carpet in my house so we can sell it, and take a nice family vacation. I was also hoping that by the time my clinical rotations start in January of 2014 I could drop the third day, and simply work every Friday and Saturday night, and have the rest of the week off for school.

So now I must adjust MY sails. How tacky.

As I type this, we are on the road in Illinois, heading home from a short visit with my family in Iowa. My niece and nephew graduated from high school on Sunday, so we drove over last Saturday. The nine hour trip culminated in swimming at the hotel pool for the girls, and the guys went to see Star Trek: Into Darkness. That is an awesome movie, by the way.

On Sunday we worshiped with our friends at Altoona Regular Baptist Church, and ate lunch with Pastor Humburg, his family, and my friend April Tidwell. Pizza Ranch was an excellent choice. For those of you who have never heard of Pizza Ranch, picture a restaurant in western theme that serves both pizza and fried chicken. It’s like someone put a KFC in a Godfather’s pizza, but the food is better. And they do a buffet, so it’s great!

After lunch, we drove to Chariton for the graduation. These were the last two of my sister’s children to graduate from high school, so I guess this means I never have to go to the Chariton High School again, and that’s fine with me. While in Chariton, I was overcome with a sense that the people I kept running into were different than me, which is odd, since I used to work there in high school. These people all seemed to have not enough clothes, too much skin, too many tattoos, not enough teeth and hair, and not enough sense. I overheard one genius ask another one, “Do wisdom teeth grow back?” She looked like she was hopeful, since she only had three or four other ones. Eek.

The graduation reception followed shortly thereafter at my sister’s church. When it looked like she was going to run out of hamburger, I volunteered to go get more. I grabbed my son and put him behind the wheel of our van. He drove across town to Hy-Vee, I bought the meat, and he drove me back to the church. We didn’t die, and he did a great job not wrecking the van. I got some practice not-panicking. The hole in the passenger side floor of our van will have to be fixed though.

After hanging around for several hours, I drove my mom back up to her house in Des Moines. Along the way, we were treated to a display of God’s majesty and power, and we were thankful that the wall clouds only delivered rain.

On Monday we went to Adventureland Park, which is an amusement park in Altoona, Iowa with no connection to the raunchy movie of the same name. We rode several nausea inducing rides, and a few roller coasters (I rode all three of the big ones). The odd thing I noticed was that the size of the seats varied widely. I have a big butt. It’s getting smaller, but it’s still kind of big. It was a tight fit for me in the Tornado, the Dragon was downright roomy, but The Outlaw coaster was almost too small. I had to wedge myself in there and almost couldn’t buckle the belt. I wonder why the seats aren’t all the same width.

It was just about the most perfect day you could hope for at Adventureland because the weather was nice (72 and partly sunny with a light breeze), I was with my family, and the attendance at the park was way down, due to the fact that it was a weekday when school was still in session in most schools in Iowa. Our longest wait for a ride was 5 minutes on the Raging River (although my wife tells me that we waited a little longer for the Sawmill Splash, but I wasn’t counting). A five minute wait for the Raging River is unheard of. We rode almost every ride in the park and it only took us four hours. Normally it takes all day to hit the major ones.
We left the park and I drove my family to my best friend’s house in rural Iowa, where we spent the next 36 hours. We enjoyed our time in Iowa, but it was too short. A few days with my family and a day with my best friend isn’t enough time. It only serves as a reminder of the reality of death. Death is not the end, it is merely “separation.” When someone dies, they are not gone forever, they are merely living someplace you can’t go. Someday we will all be “dead” and that is why the most important decision you make is your destination. You have to choose your destination while you are here on earth, because there is no changing your mind after you die. When you die, your ticket is waiting for you. If you are trusting in the death of Christ to pay the penalty for your inability to keep God’s law, you will pick up your ticket for an eternity of joy with God and all those who also trusted Christ. If you are trusting in anything else (including your own “good deeds”), you will pick up your one-way ticket to an eternity of suffering and agony in the lake of fire.

I planned this Iowa trip for several days, and it was only for five days. I don’t understand why some people refuse to plan for the trip that every single one of us will make at the end of our lives here on earth. That trip never ends. I can’t wait to make the trip, to see my loved ones who have already left, as well as to meet my Lord face to face. But I ache for those of my family and friends who are not trusting in Christ alone for salvation, because they are lost, and if they don’t trust Christ before they die, I may never see them again.