Tithe Vs. Medical Bills- What Would You Decide?

 

Bennett in the NICU, Waiting to be Allowed to Come Home

            We had planned on having my first child at home with a midwife, specifically at my parents’ home, which was a 10-minute drive to a hospital with a good reputation for birthing care.

One of the blessings of Midwife fees for home births is that they tend to be flat rates, payable in installments before the birth, and there are no surprise fees. By the time my son’s birth rolled around, we had purchased our birth supplies, paid our wonderful midwife, LaMonica Bryant in full, and had no concerns about future medical bills, as long as everything went as planned.

Things did not go as planned.

My labor was prolonged and I had difficulty getting into an effective labor rhythm. The baby didn’t seem to be in quite the right position. After about a day and half of ineffective labor, LaMonica was concerned that my labor was not progressing as it should and that if we continued on laboring at home, it might become unsafe for me or for the baby. As she explained to me, it is the job of a goodwife to recommend a transfer before there is a hazard to mother or baby.

I ended up transferring to the nearby hospital late at night. About 8 hours later, my son Bennett was born after an epidural, inducement medication, the doctor manually turning the baby inside me, and a prolonged vacuum assisted birth.

Due to the length of the vacuum assisted birth, Bennett aspirated on meconium in the birth canal and was immediately taken to the NICU after he was born. They soon discovered had a Pneumothorax (basically a small hole in his lung). He was otherwise healthy and recovered within a few days and did not require surgery. I ended up going home without him because some of the tests the NICU doctors had ordered became contaminated and they had to take the specimens a second time and wait for new results before releasing him. This turned what should have been a 4-day NICU stay into a 7-Day NICU stay.  

I may not have had the home birth that I had planned, BUT my son
recovered beautifully as did I. The goal of any birth is simply this: Healthy Baby and Healthy Mama.      

Once the baby came home, I was focused on caring for him, learning to breastfeed, and just trying to survive life with a newborn. We had good insurance, so it didn’t occur to me to be concerned about the medical bills.

While I was trying to survive in baby-land, my husband Anthony received a bill from the hospital. It amounted to about $40,000.  Our insurance covered exactly $0 because the hospital we had gone to turned out to be out of network, a possibility I hadn’t even considered researching because, after all, we were going to have the baby at home, right?  

Anthony appealed the insurance company’s decision twice, and twice they rejected his appeal. He made one final appeal and then contacted the hospital to set up a payment plan to pay the debt. The hospital wanted him to pay monthly payments of $2,000.   

We were still in the middle of building our house, and I had just retired from my full-time job as a teacher, so it was not a good time to be saddled with an additional $2,000 monthly payment.

Unbeknownst to me, Anthony was faced with this difficult choice: should we continue to tithe our full amount? If we didn’t tithe, we might just be able to make the monthly medical payments of $2,000 and barely scrape by. The Bible has a lot of painful things to say about debt and it is not God's will that His people live in a state of debt for very long. But the Bible was also clear that if we chose to pay the hospital instead of God, we would be disobeying HIM.

Malachi 3:10 says, “Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, so that there may be food in My house, and test Me now in this,' says the LORD of hosts, 'if I will not open for you the windows of heaven and pour out for you a blessing until it overflows."

The Word of God says that if we tithe, God will pour out blessings on us. It even says to test Him in this! But what about this time? Would God take care of us this time?

After much prayer, Anthony decided that no matter the consequences, we would step out in obedience and pay God first. We tithed to our church, then paid the hospital $1000 for that month. It would have to be enough.

A few weeks later, he contacted the hospital to find out the status of our new balance. They surprised him by telling him that we owed exactly $0. Our insurance had accepted our 3^rd appeal and (other than the $1000 we had already paid), we owed absolutely nothing.

This is the most dramatic example of God’s providence in regard to tithing that has happened to us as a married couple- but it’s by no means the only time we’ve had to make a similar choice. Every time that we have chosen to tithe, or surpass our tithe, God has honored that decision.

We believe wholeheartedly that as long as we follow Him obediently, God will always provide for our needs, until the day He chooses to bring us home.