Closing Doors In My Face

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Have you ever found yourself praying, “Lord, I don't know what to do. So please open the doors that need to be opened and close the doors that need to be closed”??? Ya, I did that this week. Sometimes I am a slow learner. This is the story of how God closed a door in a big, fat way.

Hubby and I have been going back and forth for a few weeks about our plans for school for the fall. We were leaning toward trying out a virtual charter school where the kids would be public school students, but would do school from home. The best (or worst) of both worlds. Rather than make a firm decision, we decided to put out feelers and decide later.

I filled out the enrollment form for two virtual schools. I submitted the necessary paperwork, did my phone conferences, and had only one step left to go for one of the options before we would be accepted into the school. I needed to take an online orientation class. I was all set up to take the class Thursday morning.

Wednesday afternoon I got a call from the school saying there had been a mistake and my class was really that evening at 5:00 pm. Okay, fine. I can do that. Except when I got home I discovered our internet was kaputz.

And this is where my headache turned into God shutting a door.

Two weeks ago I got my third bill for our new internet/phone plan. The bill was $92 instead of the $40 it was supposed to be. For the third month in a row. I made my monthly phone call to AT&T and got it straightened out. But then I asked in exasperation if I could switch to an internet only plan because it was silly to pay $25/month for a phone line that we have yet to use even once (I added the phone line because at the time it was the cheapest deal available). She said, of course. And hooked me up with a DSL account for $24/month.

A week later I get our change order in the mail. Which says we are going to be paying $41/month. Say what???! So I called AT&T again. And the nicest man asked me why we were using DSL when Uverse was now available in our area. I was shocked. “It is?!?!?! Let me get my husband who knows about this stuff so he can decide what speed he wants.” The guy hooked us up with a great rate and waived the installation and new modem charges of $199. And scheduled our installation for Wednesday morning.

Installer shows up. Discovers our DSL is still on. He can't install Uverse until it's off. He says they won't shut off our DSL until the day of our new installation date so we won't have to go without internet. Perfect. I can do that. I leave the house, do my grocery shopping and come home to discover the red light of death on my modem. Yup, you guessed it. The DSL tech showed up and disconnected our internet without scheduling a new install appointment. Lovely.

I called AT&T because I really love talking to them. I talked to one guy who tried to turn our DSL back on but it wouldn't work (the whole "tech already manually pulled the plug" thing). He transferred me to the Uverse department to see if they could help. Click. Grrr... I called back and asked for the Uverse department. I talked to another guy who tried something, which didn't work. He tried something else, which didn't work. He put me on hold so he could schedule a time for the Uverse techs to come back. Click. Are you serious????!!!! I called back again. I got another guy. I had to go through the whole story for the third time. By this point I was beyond frustrated. The clock was inching toward 5:00 pm when I was supposed to start my orientation, but I had no internet.

The guy set up a new time for installation but then told me I would be charged $199 for it. Excuse me?! I was told I wasn't supposed to have to pay anything for that. He waffled, put me on hold, said they could knock off $99. I said no, the sales rep said I'd pay nothing. I refuse to pay $100. Blah, blah, blah he went and angrier and angrier I got. He finally said he'd transfer me to the sales department and maybe they could help me. He put me on hold...click. Are you kidding me?????  

I called back. I asked for the sales department. And a very nice lady told me I wouldn't be charged for the installation or the new modem. But there was absolutely nothing she could do about the two days without internet. And just like that the door slammed shut like a vault on my making it online for the orientation.

I thought about trying to reschedule with the school. But then I started thinking—why? I prayed the Lord would shut doors that needed to be shut; I was even fasting and praying on Wednesday about the school decision. This door was slammed shut in my face by a very frustrating comedy of errors. And I decided this was God's way of saying “Do not walk in this way.”

He's since spoken some very strong words to me to not try out a virtual school.  Things like, "Do not go down to Egypt.  If you do, I will curse you."  Small things like that.  I decided to listen because cursing?  Not my favorite thing.  I'd much rather reap blessings.  The direction of our homeschool will be taking a turn, but that is the subject of a new post.