The Story Behind the Sale

It may seem cavalier, requesting help from my friends via Facebook about the financial problems we’re having now. In truth, I am really really scared.  Scared that the sale won’t be enough, scared that I won’t be able to make the tax payments, scared that I will let down my family. See, this is not the first time we’ve been here. After our son died in 1990 and Jen was born in 1992, I gave up a very good paying job to stay home with the kids and we let our house go.  Our kids were more important than the house, but we paid for that decision very dearly over the years. We worked very very hard to get the money to buy this house. Yeah, we could let it go or sell it now, but the truth is, there’s no place we could rent that wouldn’t be roughly the same price monthly as our mortgage.

This old house is nothing fancy, just a big old long 1950's style ranch house built in 1956, but we love it. After I’d lived here a month, I literally could not imagine living anywhere else.  This is HOME.

In June of 2007, after a series of catastrophic events, including a wreck that kept Max off work and on half-pay for 2 months, we filed for bankruptcy.  During our bankruptcy, which ended a year ago, our property taxes got way behind. We paid off every single dime we owed through that bankruptcy, with the exception of a few medical bills that the court dismissed, but there was not a single penny left over after each pay day.  Dissolution in bankruptcy was not an option, so for four years, we lived with them taking $1200 a month right off the top of our income. We lived hand-to-mouth for four long years; the least little mishap was financial disaster for us.

We paid off the bankruptcy a year early, still a point of pride with us.  But by the end, my van was in such poor condition, it was literally shedding parts as I went down the road and left puddles of transmission fluid every time I parked. Our Taurus had 100K+ miles on it; it was fine for me to use around town, but Max had to drive to Houston in it and so he got his new truck. We were fine paying that note.  I had a full-time job and we were making it and had even gotten to a point where we could put a little money back for a rainy day.  In fact, I recently had to order a credit report for a job, and you cannot imagine how satisfying it was to see OK every month we paid the truck note on time.  We made a down payment toward the property taxes and the county set us up with a payment plan.  We paid the down payment and one monthly payment; then at the end of December, I lost my job.

It wasn’t much of a job. It didn’t pay a whole lot and it wasn’t a real easy place to work, but it was a job, and I contributed to the household every week. There wasn’t a lot to put back to savings, but there was some, for the first time in four long years.  All of that is gone now. I wrote checks for the property tax payments every month, but I didn’t send them in because I knew those checks were going to bounce sky high. I walked through every day with this hanging over my head. Even at the height of a good time, like during our bi-annual art shows which I love, the thought would be in the back of my head, “I need to go take care of that. Maybe if I just take them $20 a month, they will accept that until we can make the full payments.”

But a kind of apathy takes you over when you enter a situation like this. If you, personally, have ever been in a disastrous financial place in your life, I know you understand. If you haven’t, God bless you. I wish I’d had the kind of life where there were no crises or drama or hospital stays or old worn out cars, but that was not the path God chose for me.

So, yes, I made a stupid mistake, and yes, it’s embarrassing and humiliating to admit that to everybody I know and their friends, but I did.  I admit it.  And now I’m trying to make good for my family, and I’m just blown away by  how my friends have come out of the woodwork to help, in ways I never imagined I even needed help. It’s not just about the money here; I just don’t want to let anybody down.  So, yeah, I’m scared of all of it...as well as incredibly grateful for the support I’ve been given by my friends. Because without that, my family will be homeless.

So, please pray for us, for resolution, for a successful fundraiser, and for my family to get a break.  I’m an impossibly optimistic person, and I know it’s all going to work out in the end.  But now, today?  I’m freaking terrified.

love to all those who love me,
allison