Ann’s Story

Site created on October 19, 2020

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Journal entry by Ann Wiles

Hello everyone. I regretfully inform you that this Caring Bridge/GoFundMe campaign is ending.

I still need surgery. I still need financial help post-surgery, a place to stay post-surgery, home health care post-surgery. But I am not able to secure all these important components, most significant of all the financial support.

Last night, the only viable financial resource I had turned into sinking sand. It has been a terrible blow emotionally. It changed my ability to move into suitable housing for the surgery, my ability to pay for my most basic living needs when all my excess university financial aid is surrendered to that new landlord, etc. Thankfully, I was able to visit the apartment complex this morning in time to stop the approval process before I became legally bound to a signed lease (that I cannot maintain now with that lost financial provider).

The only way I can take care of myself is to stay in university student housing--with all its COVID restrictions prohibiting all visitors, including home health care visitors. With God's help and provision, I can take care of myself...if I don't go through with surgery. Along with this decision is not using surgery donations to buy the necessary student health insurance coverage. The window to buy it closes near end of January. Months of needed coverage for a surgery that I cannot see through....now all for naught. It would be wrong to misuse funds, so I will not have coverage.

The week before, I spent a sleepless night putting together 6 different Excel budgets, trying to figure out how to live after the surgery and 6 months of unemployed recovery.  They all would've failed miserably--even going back to my home area to recover post-surgery with home health care--until I remembered this verbal commitment made to me. Suddenly, the budgets could work! I praised the Lord for what I considered a miraculous Godsend: James 1:17, "Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows."

Those financial projections all hinged upon this steady commitment of financial backing. Shockingly, this person completely disregarded  all that hard work and evidence of consistent needs when he made the decision to negate his verbal financial commitment.

Hours of hard work and prayer, months of hope...all down the drain.

And I've spent a sleepless night last night crying out to God trying to decide where to go from here. The only avenue left to me is to continue on with my life as though I never got injured, as though I don't need surgery.  As a single woman, I have no other recourse. I must entrust God with His ability to keep my left arm and shoulder together, as He helps me pick up the pieces of my life.

By faith, go I...into the abyss.

By faith, I sign up for Spring courses. I give myself into God's Hands, to resume my primary mission.

By faith, I sign up for the no-visitors-allowed residence hall for Christmas Break and most of 2021.

By faith, I resume my job search. With no surgery looming over me, I pray that God will bless me with my own finances again, and keep the danger of sudden shoulder dislocation at bay.

Slowly, but surely....I will make it in Jesus' strength. I will make it. I'm not alone. He's with me all the way.

Proverbs 25:19, "Like a bad tooth and an unsteady foot is confidence in a faithless man in time of trouble."

I know this person is very uncomfortable with the label that Proverbs 25:19 provides. Yet, the Bible is very good at cutting through into the very core of people's issues.  My financial situation and that person's internal faith issues are just not compatible. Neither can I stand in judgment of this person's ultimate destiny; only God can do that.

And I acknowledge my mistake at having put trust in the promises of man. I should have prayed more to God about whether this verbal financial agreement was truly from Him. After all, James 1:17, "Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows." For whatever reason this financial offer was extended to me, if it came from the Father, it would not have changed like shifting shadows.  Goes to show that people's good intentions can still come out of the flesh, and not from the Holy Spirit.

Being burned this way makes it much more difficult to have faith in non-contractual financial arrangements of any kind in the future.

I don't blame God for this failed arrangement. But He allowed this suffering. All it can do is make me a better person from having survived it. So to God, I say now in this dark place:

Job 13:15, "Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him: but I will maintain mine own ways before Him."

Proverbs 3, 5-6, " Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct thy paths."

Donors who are reading this will receive notice from GoFundMe in the coming days of a refund returning to you. I understand it can take 1-2 weeks to process my refund request.

I will keep this journal up until the end of December. After that, this Caring Bridge site will be taken down.  Thank you readers for your continued thoughts and prayers.

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