My Christmas Gift

It’s hard to write this post and not give you a brief look into my personal life. This is usually something I avoid like the plague.  I don’t like “broadcasting” my life on the net. Yet here I am getting ready to tell you guys all about me and my “feels”.  😉

I’m a small business owner, a wife and mother.  The last few years my family has gone through several changes and some challenges.

As many self employed families have, we’ve struggled at times especially with the costs of health care.  Providing full coverage medical insurance for self employed individuals and families can be expensive.  We were no exception, but we pushed through.  After years of paying outrageous out of pocket costs for our family, my husband was given the opportunity to change that.  A few months ago we were able to switch to a full coverage employee sponsored medical plan for our family.  It was a huge blessing for us financially but also for a much better level of coverage for us.

I could not have been happier to finally not have huge deductibles to meet, high monthly premiums and prescription costs.  We followed our providers requirements for switching to the new policy and notified our primary care physicians of the switch.  What we didn’t know was there was a catch, the fine print of the Affordable Care Act.  We were responsible for a “buyout/differential” balance for 30 days of services that were not covered or under covered during the switch.  We were left with a huge bill to pay to our old provider right before Christmas.

Well that was disheartening and stressful to receive when you’re in the middle of budgeting Christmas shopping and end of the year stuff such as taxes.  I decided that it only made sense to sell something near and dear to my heart, my Frederick Post Drafting Table.  If you’ve seen my previous post about this table, you know I hunted for that table for over a year. I spent hours and hours working on that table restoring and making repairs to that table.  It was the first thing in forever that I had found for me and restored for me.  I love that table, but this is what I do and we needed the money.  I own a business that builds, restores and refinishes furniture.  I had convinced myself I would find another one later when the time was better.

So I measured and photographed the table, then listed it for sale on my Facebook business page.

After some serious debate I’ve decided to sell my gorgeous drafting table.

SOLD
Antique Frederick Post oak drafting…

Posted by J Burns Design on Thursday, December 15, 2016

Within a few minutes I started getting comments from friends on the table.  Everyone was surprised I was selling it.  Then I got a frantic message from a friend, it was Fran.  She said to call her ASAP.  I figured something was on fire or that maybe she lost Michelle somewhere in the mall.  I called her while warming up the truck to go pick up kids from school.  She wanted to purchase my drafting table and needed an invoice for it.  I was immediately relieved, bummed but a huge amount of stress had just been lifted off my shoulders.

While I waited for Frances to call me back to let me know about shipping or delivery, my notifications on Facebook started going off.  One by one friends started commenting on my for sale post for the table with one word…..SOLD.  I was starting to wonder what was going on when Frances called back.

In the midst of asking her about picking up the table, she interrupted me to tell me “You’re keeping it.”

What?!  Poor Frannie had to have lost her mind and was confused about who she was buying Christmas presents for.  Nope, she had concocted a plan with a few of the most amazing people I know.  They had all gathered together and paid for the table and gifted it to me.  Each one of them making sure that not only did my family not worry about the stress that just landed on us but that I kept something so special to me.  Each one of them who jumped in on this little plan of theirs made it known with a one word comment…”SOLD”.

I can’t even begin to tell you how much this means to me.  I struggled with getting even basic words out while on that phone call. I cried, like a baby and tried my best to say thank you.

Frances Schaber, Michelle Gordan, Molly Cullpepper, Connie Hill, Maria Revollo, Evelyn Wortmann and Lynn Brewer-Fern