Insurance

And you also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation. Having believed, you were marked in Him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession—to the praise of his glory. Ephesians 1: 13-14 (NIV)

I spent most of the afternoon trying to make heads or tails of our insurance policies. With four cars, two motorcycles and house, we work for the government and the insurance companies. To make it worse, we live on the coast in a hurricane prone flood zone and two of our cars are driven by males under the age of twenty-five. Our insurance keeps going up, but it is not only because of the additional drivers. There are all these little clauses that have compelled us to add more coverage. We even took out an umbrella liability policy earlier this year. As much money as we send to the big mega corporation that issues all these policies, you would think that someone would help us understand exactly what we need and don’t need. Not only is our agent in the business of selling us more coverage, but I truly believe that most of the staff in our local office do not know anything about insurance. Unless we speak to the owner of the agency, our policies are entered under the incorrect names or with bad information. The last time, we insisted upon seeing the owner, but even she made a mistake putting the wrong son’s name on the new policy. She gave us a $10 phone card to make up for it. That won’t even pay the handling charges on one month’s worth of our payments with them. We have tried to change agents, but it is against the mega corporation’s policy. We are required to stay within our zip code even though we have a friend who works for the same company down the street from my office. Rumor has it that our homeowners policy is about to be cancelled. If so, we will move our car insurance as well. It would be nice to find a company with employees who know who we are and will work with us on understanding our needs. I built a spread sheet and went through each policy comparing them. I do not know how this happened but every vehicle varies in coverage, and it is not because of their make and model or driver. One has rental car insurance. One has a towing package. Another has loss of sight and dismemberment coverage. Every one has a different deductible, and some have medical while others do not. No wonder I have not been able to figure out why we are charged the amounts we pay. At least one insurance policy is easy to understand. Christ died for us to guarantee our place in Heaven. Instead of a piece of paper with a lot of numbers that I cannot figure out, He gave me the Holy Spirit as proof of my salvation. Come to think of it, the Holy Spirit is probably the reason that I can remain polite when I speak to my insurance agent. Wouldn’t do to be calling her names when she knows I am a Christian now would it?