My brother Evan has been going through some rough times lately.
He lost his job a couple months back and now his wife has decided to divorce him out of the blue.
I’m his older sister and I can’t help but feel the measure of empathy and responsibility to take care of him while he is struggling to get back on his feet. I know he would do the same for me, after all. It took a long heartfelt conversation for me to finally draw out of him that he was in serious financial trouble and he was late on his car payments. It was hard to get him to agree on me helping him but I finally convinced him that I would pay to get his car loan current and even make a couple advanced payments to take the heat off of him for a while. Then I found out that his HVAC system was quite faulty and not functioning correctly. I paid to have an HVAC service technician sent out to the house to take a look. Unfortunately, the technician told us that the HVAC system was on its way out and was leaking refrigerant in several places. The technician suggested that the HVAC system be entirely replaced, but I definitely didn’t have $10,000 laying around to help pay for a brand new heating and cooling system for my brother. I opted instead to buy a window air conditioner for his bedroom as well as a few ceiling fans for some other parts of his house to circulate the air. My brother is in good spirits considering his circumstances and he has even recently found a new job, so I will keep praying that everything will end up looking up for him!