Blessings in Broken Teeth & Hailstorms

A couple of weeks ago while in Ethiopia Mark sent me an email message saying he had a toothache.

It was the catalyst I needed to schedule long-overdue dentists appointments for everyone. (Side note: Scheduling dentists appointments for 6 people will take no less than 45 minutes on the phone and will occupy 3 different days on your calendar.)

They got Mark in for an appointment the day after his return from Ethiopia – 2 days before he left for Haiti.

The verdict was one broken tooth and one cracked tooth. Mark then realized that it probably happened while dining on some tibs in Ethiopia – that thing he bit wasn’t “just gristle” – it was sheep bone.

The cost? $1100.

Both he and I also needed deep, numb-your-mouth, empty-your-wallet type cleanings. The kind that insurance doesn’t fully cover. Of course. The price you pay for procrastination.

$1,800 in dental work is not exactly what I dream of spending our emergency fund on. Hm, nothing I ever need to spend it on is really a dream is it. Okay, never mind.

But the beauty of having that emergency fund is that you get to react like I did when I heard the bill.

“Really? Dang, that sucks. Oh well. Guess we’ll take it out of the emergency fund.”

And it’s done.

And then something beautiful happens, in a weird way that makes you smile….

A few weeks ago Phoenix had a pretty good hailstorm with golf-ball sized hail. My MIL actually called me to make sure the kids weren’t playing outside lest they be knocked down dead 🙂

Their house got pounded. But there was not one SINGLE piece of hail where we live.

Mark’s car, however, was parked at their house because they live close to the airport. And yes, it received hail damage in the storm.

You’re probably saying “Wait, that’s MORE bad news!”

But it’s not really. You see the one nice thing about hail damage is that your insurance company assesses the damage, writes up the estimate, subtracts your deductible and CUTS YOU A CHECK. It’s up to you whether or not you fix the car with the money.

And since we pretty much drive our cars until they die, we figure someone looking to buy a $2000 Camry with 200,000+ miles is so NOT going to care about hail damage.

Total amount of our hail damage?

$1,800

After our deductible that gave us $1,300.

Now some people might chalk it up to coincidence or being lucky, but honestly, we’ve seen it happen too many times to do that anymore.

Obviously it’s not that we were unable to pay for the dental work, but to us it’s like a little hug from God saying, “I see what you’re doing. I see the financial choices you’ve made. This is my blessing.”