It's with a huge gulp of swallowing our pride that we reach out for assistance. We’ve had many blessings and life has treated us very well and we were always the ones to lend a hand to those in need. Unfortunately, our lives have taken a turn for the worse and we find ourselves in the position of seeking help.
My wife and I are Christians and look to the Lord for guidance on a daily basis. We spend time together each morning reading faith-based meditation and a passage from the bible. We share and name the things we are grateful for. When I was looking at a posting on social media, and considering another funding option, I saw the person who wrote the post had mentioned GiveSendGo. When my wife and I were discussing our options, I mentioned the post and that I had done some preliminary research and found GiveSendGo to be based in faith. She said, “It’s a God thing, and could be an answer to our prayers.”
I am a proud and patriotic United States Marine Corps veteran. I've worked in Fortune 500 companies, as well as family-owned businesses, and even with a startup for 7 years. That's where the wheels started to fall off the wagon. The role was a dream come true. I was the inventor (CTO) as well as the COO. The product I invented kept drivers from texting and using social media on their phones while driving, thus eliminating distractions and saving lives. So far, I have amassed 22 patents for the technology in the product. Sadly, 2 years ago my investor abruptly pulled funding. The miracle God had in store for us was about to happen and we had 2 very large clients write our product into their safety policies by name as the only product they would use.
I spent the next 6 months trying to raise money so we could continue saving lives and making the roads safer. I had many conversations with Venture Capital folks, but AI was becoming all the rage, and that's where they all wanted to put their money. I even spent several more months working on getting interest in the product for a parallel market. I had designed it from the start to be able to address several different markets. All in, I spent nearly a year, and all our savings and retirement while working to keep this product viable. This was supposed to be my swan song, our retirement, an opportunity to be philanthropic once again.
I have spent every available minute looking for a new role to support my family. I even spent 9 months in a sales position, which is not a natural fit for an operations executive. I made a significant sale in the high 6-figure range after several months, but when it was time to get paid, the company reneged on the commission we agreed to at the beginning. They changed the commission percentage and have offered to pay me only one third the amount. Sadly, I knew these folks well and unfortunately didn't get it in writing upfront. Painful lesson learned.
My wife has not been able to work for many years. She’s had some terrible accidents in cars and with horses that have led to life-changing surgeries and chronic pain, that at times feels debilitating. As if that weren’t enough, within the last 3 weeks she has traumatically fallen twice and broken bones. The first was a fracture to her left wrist. The second was the humerus bone in her right arm where it connects with the shoulder, which she suffered one week ago. She has a cast on her left arm and her right arm in a sling for the next 6-8 weeks. She is suffering horrific pain and dependent upon me for EVERYTHING. I’ve been taking care of her 24/7 for the last week, waking up at all hours of the night, and will continue to do so for the next week but will need to return to work after that. I don’t even want to think about the medical bills that will start showing up in our mail, as well as the co-pays required for rehab sessions.
Even after all that has gone wrong, we are very grateful for everything the Lord has provided us. Grateful for a roof over our heads and food to eat, and grateful to know God is looking over us and will provide.
A faith-filled man has taken me on to assist his company with building pipe organs for churches. The work is fulfilling and fun, and everyone there is so kind. The pay is nearly minimum wage so every day we get deeper in debt. We've kept all the bills paid by continuously running up our credit card debt. We are on the verge of hitting the maximum limits. We’ve never missed a payment of any sort in our lives, but we are at the breaking point and can no longer say that’s a possibility.
For the last 2 years, we have learned to and have cut our expenses. No frivolous purchases or any vacations. No gifts for each other or others for birthdays, Christmas, anniversaries, or Mother’s and Father’s Days. We’ve modified our shopping behaviors to maximize savings on food and supplies. We are living on level 1 of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs – food, shelter, clothing. And to be honest, we aren’t spending anything in the clothing department. We’ve even gone so far as to sell family heirloom jewelry to keep our heads above water. Items we won’t be able to pass along to our children and grandchildren. It’s been extremely humbling.
We have discussed filing for bankruptcy and taking the hit just to get out from the debt we’ve racked up, even though we never thought it is the answer. We’ve felt it was our responsibility to pay our debts. Maybe that’s still the way we’ll have to go, but we felt like we should at least try to raise funds here so we can avoid that. God will decide the outcome and our fate.
In closing, we want to thank you in advance for reading our story and donating if and what you can. We appreciate you. We have always said that when we strike it rich (that was supposed to be the outcome of the startup) that our goal was to be very philanthropic. Being philanthropic is still our goal. We’ve always given to others first and will do so again as soon as we are back on our feet. With your kind assistance, and a smile from God, we hope to be there very soon.
God Bless you all.
Don & Patrice
