Pretend you are a 19-year-old Type One diabetic.
Every day, around ten to twelve times, you prick your finger. Every three days, insulin pump sites rotate around your bruising stomach. Every month, you check in on the progress of your next month’s supplies. This time, insurance seemed to make you wait longer to refill your prescription. Earlier you didn’t think much of it but now only 50 units of insulin were left in your pump. It would be enough for a day if your blood sugars stayed regulated.
But when you call the supply company, something isn’t right. It should be a simple process to order all your medical supplies. Yet they claim your insurance changed. You wonder how. You met your deductible last month. All your insulin, needles, test strips, etc. should be cheaper now. They are joking, you pray. Surely, they are not expecting you to pay 720 dollars just for your insulin. Being a full-time student, you can’t afford it. Neither can your working parents. But you need it. Insulin keeps you alive. Without getting your next prescription, and the remaining insulin in your pump fading fast, you fear becoming the next diabetic news headline. What are you going to do?
I’ll tell you what I did because, for me, this wasn’t simply a scenario. This happened to me on the Thursday before Easter, and I completely panicked. My mom and dad spent hours debating insurance over the phone, calling my hospital in Cincinnati and multiple pharmacies. I planned out my next few meals, trying to use as little insulin as possible. Friday morning came and my anxiety worsened. Now I only had 12 units. It wouldn’t last long and my blood sugars were already on the rise. We still hadn’t heard back from anyone. Insurance wouldn’t budge.
At my house, my mom arrived on her lunch break. She suggested checking the fridge, just in case there was a bottle of insulin we missed. I doubted it, but still, I listened to her.
At first, I didn’t see anything. Leftovers and take-out containers were the only things in view. But then I moved the milk jug to the side. There were my emergency injection pens. Perhaps I could find a way to use them even without the needle caps. But then I felt an urge to look behind the pens. When I saw a small, white rectangular box, I wanted to cry. Within seconds I held it in my hands: an unopened, not expired, completely full vial of insulin.
Some of you might say my family and I didn’t look hard enough to find the insulin. Or maybe we should’ve called the pharmacies sooner to avoid the dilemma. However, there are limits as to when you can refill your prescriptions. According to their records, I didn’t need mine yet. Even an emergency prescription my dad called in didn’t arrive until the next night. About my family not looking hard enough, that simply isn’t true. We had checked every drawer, every bag and every section of the fridge in my dorm room and my house. Trust me, as the person who had their life on the line, I had looked everywhere.
I don’t tell you this story for pity or to bring awareness to the broken, monopolized diabetic healthcare system, even though I know changes need to be made and fast. I need to share what happened to me during a time where I felt a whirlwind of fear and dread because that is where God showed up. With all my heart, I know He provided the bottle of insulin on Good Friday. He seems to always provide, sometimes with what we want but mostly with what we need (even if we’re not aware of it).
In 1 Kings, there was a famine in Canaan. God instructed Elijah, whom He called to be a prophet, to travel to the east of the Jordan River. There, He gave Elijah ravens to feed him bread and meat and a brook to drink from. It is a true story where God’s care for the one who listens and seeks His will is very evident. Living in 2021, Elijah’s provision from God might look strange. Yet throughout the Bible and in our world now, God’s love is often shown in unexpected ways. And as humans, we are never going to be able to fully understand how God functions, but we need to do our best. This means trusting Him for provision, as Elijah did, and remembering His plan might not align with yours.
God is not bound by a timeline. He is too vast and His love goes too deep for that. When you believe you need something right now, God knows you need to wait. Is that always convenient or easy for us? Of course not. But it strengthens our relationship with Him, the Creator of the universe who sacrificed His only Son to die on a cross for us. He is greater than space and time, but over and over again He still chooses us.
I don’t know what’s going to happen with my insurance. I don’t know how long the insulin I have will last or how much more I need, but God does. That’s enough for me.
