Would you rather talk it through with a friend?

When you reimagine a belief, an interpretation, when you consider a different church or entire denomination, if you demonstrate curiosity toward a new hermeneutic or body of biblical scholarship, this creates ripples in the spiritual life you've already built. or When are you two starting a family? And so you can end up just ending up, married with a couple of kids, impelled by some crazy auto-pilot, just because time's getting on. Kind of how, when we were kids, we first trooped into school, then college and then into a job, just following on with all the things that time and convention has pushed us towards. But remember, only you truly know yourself. Only you really know your relationship. So by all means do listen to the people close to you, but don't be pressured by them. Especially since they can't know the full story. They're not living your relationship from the inside but somehow they still fully expect, they almost lunge to make all your irrevocable decisions for you. I mean, there's often a telling difference between the way we deal with bad and good behaviour in our relationship with a person, as opposed to the effective way we deal with it in our canine companions. A dog misbehaves and we communicate that that's wrong and then show them the right behaviour. If you like the doctor you have, you can keep your doctor, too. The only change you'll see is falling costs as our reforms take hold. In fact, he made variations of this same declaration to the public at least thirty-seven times between inauguration and when the law was enacted. 1 I think everyone missed the fine print in this false promise. After public outcry Obama had to clarify his promise: Now, if you had one of these plans before the Affordable Care Act came into law and you really liked that plan, what we said was you can keep it if it hasn't changed since the law passed. 2 Funny enough, that little caveat was never mentioned before. So why did people start losing their health insurance plans? By 2014, just a few years after the ACA was enacted, over 5 million people had their existing individual market plans canceled. What Obama was referring to when he said you could keep your plans was the grandfathered plans that existed prior to the ACA.

These plans were mainly employer-based and could continue without offering the essential health benefits as long as they did not deviate from their pre-ACA design. I understand the compulsion to bury your questions and stay silent. I also affirm the very disorienting, slightly scary internal feeling spiritual de- and reconstruction creates. It is strange to be at odds with the scaffolding that once held up your faith, even if only one part of it. It's lonely. If you are accustomed to following rules like I was, a good Christian soldier, asking new questions seems rebellious and defiant, and your own voice will pile on to the kickback. This is normal, and I'm sorry. I wish spiritual curiosity was celebrated in our community like in the Jewish tradition. For Jewish readers, the tensions and questions produced by Scripture aren't obstacles to be avoided, but rather opportunities for engagement, invitations to join in the Great Conversation between God and God's people that has been going on for centuries and to which everyone is invited - . While Christians tend to turn to Scripture to end a conversation, Jews turn to Scripture to start a conversation. 5 And the exact same with children. In a relationship with an adult, however, what do we do? Oh dear, she's growing distant and becoming less responsive? I'd better buy her flowers! He goes out with his mates and gets wasted until 3 am when he said it was just a few after-work drinks? I'd better serve him breakfast in bed and nurse his hangover so he values me more! No. Absolutely wrong. Everyone in a relationship needs to be explicitly shown how to be better -- how to be the person that we want, and will continue to want.

This means that they actively need (and actually subconsciously desire) some firm training. The benefit to the insurer for maintaining grandfather status is that it is not subject to the ACA cost-sharing limits and did not need to meet the essential benefits status, thus reducing cost per individual. However, although these plans did not need to conform to all ACA requirements, they did have to adopt many of its administrative headaches in addition to the ban on preexisting exclusions, lifetime/annual dollar caps, and covering dependent children up to twenty-six years old. The ACA itself changed insurance policies, which instantly refuted Obama's promise to Americans. The ACA caused the premiums to rise to cover these extraneous additions, forcing many companies out of the market. When President Trump first entered office, he used an executive order to direct federal agencies to gather information as to why individual plans had difficulty maintaining grandfather status and what kept people in grandfathered vs. non-grandfathered health plans. The results supported the argument that the agencies should lessen the 2015 regulations on grandfathered coverage. In April 2019 the Trump administration extended existing grandfathered plans through 2020 to keep these popular, less-expensive options while longer-term solutions are explored. Possible alternatives to ACA provisions include a combination of grandfathered plans, expanding use of HSA funds for out-of-pocket costs, and increasing the duration of short-term health plans from three to twelve months. Regardless of the specific plan, cost sharing should be a fundamental component to the policies. Alas, our spiritual culture operates in absolutes, so natural curiosity is viewed with hostility. Thus it is perfectly reasonable that favoring hard questions over easy answers leaves you feeling adrift. All I have to offer you is my experience, but this is as plain as I can say it: although there is loss built into this process, I wouldn't go back to secret tension for all the public approval in the world. I cannot adequately explain the liberation in addressing your questions and owning your own convictions. I am free. No more hiding, no more back-room conversations with only safe people, no more fear. I'm on the other side of the hard part, and it was all worth it. Our life has become so expansive--full of new people and wide ideas and a fresh movement of God. There is a whole world out here I didn't know about, and it is changing my life.

It is marked by kindness and curiosity, and it insists that the Good News is supposed to be good. Yes, just like that squirming puppy. You must show them what the house rules are: what you'll accept and what you won't, and point out specifically the red-line mistakes that would destroy everything. It's a process as simple as reward and punishment. A reward is your doing nice things, showing more attention, being considerate, thoughtful and available -- she likes those things! A punishment is distance, coldness, and complaints -- he doesn't like those things! We know when we're doing wrong and it makes us discard all respect for the other person when we're allowed to just get away with it or, even worse, when we are energetically rewarded for it. Say he's spending more time at work and growing distant. We can constantly ding him texts asking when will u b home. Complain that we don't see him enough. Wait for him in sexy red lace lingerie. Let me tell you why cost sharing is a good thing. Cost sharing means the insured and the insurer are sharing the cost of medical care. Cost sharing outlays for the insured include out-of-pocket costs in the form of deductibles, co-pays, and co-insurance. Not only does cost sharing help keep premium rates manageable, it also prevents overutilization of health services by deterring unnecessary use. The ACA eliminated cost sharing for many services, including cancer screening. The benefit of this was an increase in overall cancer screenings. However, this contributed to rising costs of care. When the cost sharing was removed from certain services, the price of premiums and other services rose to compensate for the loss. In 2014 President Obama signed into law HR 4302, whose main provisions had to do with Medicare but which also increased annual deductible limits for group plans.

In 2015 the average deductible for self-coverage was $6600 ($13,200 per family); If I used to be popular but deeply troubled on the inside, now I am less popular but wild with holy fire in and out. It all matches, and I would not undo one solitary second of the last few years. This will sound redundant at this point in this article, but you have permission to speak honestly. You get to ask hard questions of faith. You are allowed to reexamine something you were taught. A serious person of faith is willing to evolve. First-century Jewish rabbis would be shocked how this searching process has devolved from a cornerstone of development to cause for alarm. Jesus told that interesting story about wineskins for a reason. This story has been a source of comfort to me for a decade. It goes like this: Before we got civilized and put our wine in bottles, God made people use animal skins for wine storage, I'm pretty sure just to get this one story out of Jesus. But this would be just rewarding him for giving you less attention, a bonus scheme for bad acts. So instead, why not make some fresh plans for yourself? Not romantic plans, just independent, enjoyable plans. Start some new activities that always interested you, dust off your social circle, and have some good fun without him. Your moving away smoothly like this is much more likely to bring him back to you than if you chase. And if this doesn't work, then probably nothing would have. It's a lesson: you've discovered the long-term truth. In action, rewards mean that if our lover does things we like, we positively move closer to them and give them our best. When they behave badly we move away and show them it's wrong, yanking away the things they like until they drop their bad conduct.