A writer I admire, who is also an ordained Lutheran Pastor & founder of ‘House for All Sinners & Saints’ in Colorado, recently shared about how life can sometimes blindside you so quickly… *”We all, at some point in our lives, will have the stones of our own temples quietly crumble underneath us. There will be times when everything in our lives goes from hashtag blessed to hashtag screwed*” and her words seemed like the absolute best thing any of us can read right now, because they are the truest truth. Some of us, where I work at the Jersey shore, taking care of luxury beach properties, are not suffering any of the changes happening in our communities or country. Some of us, where I work at the Jersey shore, are scared every single day by the changes happening in our communities or country and as wages have been stagnant for years and have not kept up in any way with the cost of living here, people are on edge. I imagine most of us are somewhere in the middle but it increasingly feels like too many people don’t understand that one can go from hashtag blessed to hashtag screwed, blazingly fast, and suddenly one wishes for empathy when one realizes they’ve suddenly become the “other.” To my mind too many have a way of thinking in an “us/them” kind of way, forgetting all along that it has been, and should be, “we.”

Some people manage to get through life like they are at anchor on the 72 foot schooner …Imagine! on a quiet windless Wednesday on the Chesapeake Bay, and others have troubles, turmoil, and trauma year after year, decade after decade, constantly trying to stay afloat like they are aboard the Andrea Gale; everything’s fine, until it isn’t. For most of us, I think it is a combination of the two, whereas we try and try and try to make and manage a peaceful and productive life and sometimes things go amiss and we simply fail and have to navigate that route for a while. I have been on both vessels and know firsthand that the tranquil is far more desirable than the rough. Hashtag Screwed is a tiresome way to live and Hashtag Blessed isn’t.

Like millions of other self-employed working Americans, I never had health insurance until the Affordable Care Act was passed. Roughly 50% of workers in the United States get their health insurance through their employers, but for us who do not have an employer, finding a monthly premium that was within my budget was not at all possible. I was lucky that I do not ( yet ) have any sort of disease, or chronic condition and VERY lucky that I never suffered an injury or accident. Some years I had insurance coverage and some years I didn’t. Once I was able to have a monthly premium I could swing, I was still lucky that I did not have any major needs and have had one major and one minor surgery in 15 years…much like my car insurance, 41 years worth of yearly premiums with never a claim, or my homeowner’s insurance, 28 years worth of yearly premiums with never a claim, …insurance, for the what-if, for the maybe-when, for the possibility that life might go from Hashtag Blessed to Hashtag Screwed in an afternoon.

Millions of working Americans are on the cusp of finding out how screwed or how blessed they are. The federal subsidies and budgets that made insurance affordable for millions are ending and millions of us are going to no longer be able to afford insurance. For me, with no chronic conditions or disease or illness, who quit smoking ages ago but who does need to get to a healthier weight, not having insurance will be worrisome, but I take no medications and see no regular doctors, so it will be manageable. I moved a lot of furniture last month at several properties and am not joking when I tell you that carrying heavy teak chaise lounge chairs down 8 steps from the pool to the yard makes one very mindful about “watching her step.” I moved 21 screens up to an attic with pull-down stairs and every step with one hand, or no hands, because I had a hand full of six foot screens made me careful to watch my step. BUT what if I fall off a ladder and break my leg? If it just needs to be set in a cast, that’s probably an expense that I can easily put on a credit card, but what if it’s a fall that leaves me with a bone sticking out of my leg and I need surgery? What if I need a night in the hospital and an anesthesiologist and an orthopedic surgeon and a physical therapist?? What if I am out of work for weeks while I heal??? It isn’t hard to understand how a person can go from Hashtag Blessed to Hashtag Screwed.

It feels, these last many months for me at least, that there are a lot of people who seem to think that things are fine because bad things are not happening to THEM only to OTHERS. This way of seeing the world only will work in the Hashtag Blessed phase because the Hashtag Screwed phase can catch them totally off guard. A food bank in Hyattsville Maryland opened the other day to hundreds of federal workers who have been laid off for weeks now without pay. One woman waiting in line was quoted, “I’ve not been in this predicament ever. I served 21 years in the military. I’ve been a federal government employee for the past two years. The reason I wanted to become a federal government employee was stability. That stability, that rug, if you will, has been snatched away from us,” These are working people with property taxes, car payments, student loans, kids on traveling hockey teams, parents who need help with their errands, kids who need money for band camp, they’ve got car insurance, broken furnaces, a busted sprinkler line…these are the people in your neighborhoods. She might as well have said everything went from Hashtag Blessed to Hashtag Screwed. The Philadelphia Eagles coaching staff has an expression that they use, “You can’t have greatness without the greatness of others” and it is a good thing to reflect upon right now in my ever so humble opinion. We are all them, we are all us, there is no “other.”