Counting the Cost: The Check ISN’T In the Mail

Last week I woke up and noticed my mail stuck in my screen door. I don’t normally check the mail in the morning, but my landlady must’ve stuck it in the door really early. There was a letter from the hospital where I’d had my surgery. I almost chucked it figuring it was another survey. I’d just filled one out about my stay in the hospital. I wasn’t filing out another one. Got the surprise of my life when I opened it and it was an itemized list:


Room-Board/SEMI      $6,720.00
Pharmacy                         $    728.00
OR Services                      $4,199.00

And the itemizing kept going til it got to the grand total of $16,174.00.

My heart stopped.
I’m sure of it.

If I wasn’t awake when I opened it, I definitely was by the time I got to the total line of the letter. Where was I going to get $16, 174.00??? Then my heart re-started when I got to the very bottom and it said:

*THIS IS NOT A BILL*

I’d like to know what sadist thought to put that on the bottom of the letter??

It did get me thinking about counting the cost, though. I had no idea how much my surgery cost. I have insurance. All I had to pay was the $75 a day co-pay for my room and board for the six days that I was in the hospital. Actually, the hospital only charged me for five days and my dear friend and mentor paid for two of those. SO I got off paying very little. Counting the cost? I thought I had. There is no way that I could have come up with that kind of money, so if it had’ve been a bill… the check was never going to be in the mail.

Counting the cost? It made me think of Jesus and how I needed to count the cost of what he’s done for me. And that’s when I hit a wall. Writer’s block doesn’t hit me often, but when it does the silence echoes in my mind. I don’t understand all that he’s done for me… and anybody who says that they do has put God into a box and there’s no box big enough to hold him. Having never been to heaven or hell I have no real idea what he saved me from or what he saved for… and I haven’t gotten a whole lot of answers during this down time either. I did not have some big “spiritual experience” in the hospital like I did last year. Since I got out of the hospital I’ve plowed through most of the epistles and the book of Revelation and I still don’t have a clue. There have been no angelic visitations, audible voices of God, prophetic visions… it’s just been me staying home being me.

I tend to feel better about myself when I have a plan or I’m involved with some project. Too much time on my hands generally ends up being a really bad thing. I’ve been struggling with my sexual addiction. The only thing is when I’m too entrenched in my plans and lists and charts I start to think that I’m saving me. I tend to act out less when I’m gainfully occupied. I know that God will love me and accept me no matter how short of the mark I fall. I know that when I sin he sees me even if I never tell another soul. It is not God’s acceptance that I’m trying to earn. It’s not even the acceptance of people because I know that my friends and my church love me. They accept all the unlovely bits of my life and nobody judges me. The only person who really judges me is me... oh and that ex-friend who wrote me that snarky email a few months ago. But since neither one of us is God, when am I going to realize that the only judgments that matter are his??

I started actively trying to kick my sexual addiction in 2006 and I have come a LONG way. 2012 is the year I want to nail it to the cross and crucify it. If you are only a slave of that which you allow to be your master, then it’s time I found the Underground Railroad and made a break for it. I reached that realization today… that I’m not God and I need to stop trying to save myself. Then I found this video on YouTube that showed me once again that God knows exactly where I am. There is no way I can save myself. If I was presented with a bill for my salvation I couldn’t pay it. There’s not enough money in the world to cover that check. There is no way for me to count the cost of what Jesus did for me because he’s still doing it. Last year he freed me from struggling with a lifelong mental illness. This year I’m praying that he breaks the chain of this lifelong sexual addiction. What is the cost of freedom?  I’ll never really know the answer to that question…I just have to be thankful for the fact that whatever the cost, Jesus paid it.