The End of the Beginning

Written while on assignment tonight for my local newspaper. I arrived a half an hour before my appointment time. So I wrote what was seriously distracting me in order to focus on what I had been sent to the township meeting for.

Today, July 16, 2009 - just five days before my 35th birthday - my husband and I sat on our neatly made bed and discussed creative ways to shield our children from the loss of a home smack in the middle of their Christmas break from school.

Already, we have dragged them all over the better part of a 45 mile radius - during the last few days of their lack-luster/watered down vacation and into our work week - to search for much more affordable housing. But today, every lender in a page long list (handed to us last night by a very kind elderly woman who'd walked us through five available homes far below the price of our current one) said we had no business begging for a loan from any of their fine establishments. It seems that all that hard work we have done over the past four years to improve credit long destroyed by medical bills is not being represented in our credit score. The many thousands of dollars we have spent paying old debtors, reinstating credit we barely use, and living frugally far away from the normal American spending radius, has amounted to absolutely nothing. Every door we have knocked on was immediately slammed in our faces if it was even opened at all.

As our lives stand right now, we have no place to go, and just about the time St. Nicholas is to arrive with promises of blessings, our home could be empty of the Velez family and opened for eager "house flippers" at the sheriff sale arranged to liquidate us. Only this time, the flippers will look to one another, salivating. "These people really took care of the place. They really loved living here."

They will get lots of money for our hard work and effort. Something we, apparently, have no right to. We don't even want to make lots more than we paid for our house. We don't want fancy food or new clothes or books that everyone else is reading. We tithe to three churches - even the one that slaps us continually in the face with indifference. All we want is what we were promised - that some people get without effort. Just a decent credit score reflective of our diligence. Some people get life very easy and others do not. All those people who come to our home so often for cups of coffee and my oatmeal, peanut butter, chocolate chip cookies will have to chose another home to do this in, because we may very well not have a home at all.

I realize we were stupid now in listening to all those snappy financial people with Jaguars and spiritual platitudes. That when they said, "Just pay down your debt any way you can. Refinance and take more money to pay off those medical bills. It will greatly improve your credit," they were only saying these things to line their own pockets.

It was a lie. It hate it when people lie to me. It is the hardest thing for me to forgive, but I hate it even more for people to lie to me in such a way that it will possibly hurt my children, punish their complete innocence by forcing them out of their home for a couple of late (not ignored/not unpaid) mortgage payments. How is it that some people spend months paying absolutely nothing and they are still sitting on their front porches?

We have no car payments. We have almost zero debt. We have paid nearly everyone - even those we probably would have stood a good case against paying had we wanted to pursue it. I did not sue the doctor whose reckless abandon in misdiagnosing me with a terrible disease I never had, and using equally terrible medication that has seemingly permanently made me only a partially functioning friend, mother, employee, nearly killed me. I prayed for him, and honestly, wished him no harm. I cannot physically sustain anything for very long, thanks to steroid induced anemia - thanks to steroid induced arthritis in my spine - thanks to steroid induced vitamin deficiencies that give me kidney stones - thanks to yet another lie from a professional I was urged to trust - at least - a little. Sometimes I think it would be better if kidney stones were deadly and I had some huge trust fund upon kidney failure to offer my children.

I willingly gave my doctor mercy. I was glad to give him mercy. I still am. I hope it was just an accident that he was able to reflect on and learn from. Where is my mercy?

A little has cost us a lot. The statutes of limitations ended before the proof of the damage he did me appeared.

What to do now?

Get a another job that will jar my kidney stones loose?

I called my mother for advice tonight.

"It's only going to get worse," she said, speaking of the nation's economic slowdown. "The Lord will take help you though. He will work it out."

This was only 10 minutes before the last rejection of the day arrived. No one, it seems, will give us any money. Just as my eager and obedient 12 year old had helped his mother pack away most of the kitchen where he prepares his famous egg sandwiches for his five year old brother every morning.

Unlike several sets of friends I have, we have no parents with which to live. I pray, at least, one set will find enough mercy to help us. Mine cannot. They care for my grandmother, and my sister has returned from her teaching job in Europe to live with them for a season before returning to Europe - via Spain most likely.

My brother - who we have supported for the past year - though now he has a job and is preparing for vocational training - still occupies the lower half of my house. My obedient 12 year old's former neatly cared for bedroom and our family room where - in better days - friends came over and watched movies and played air hockey in.

"Are you okay?" I asked him tonight when he heard me brainstorming with my husband on how to make our credit score reflect our efforts.

"Yeah," he said. But he has no idea how high the odds are securely stacked against us right now. But he is exceptional beyond his years - with secret and purposeful stealing of the Jerusalem Rosary to pray in the silence of forest he many get to enjoy for one more bright red and orange PA autumn. It is for him, the 12 year old who makes a point of pretending to be heading toward the bathroom after Divine Liturgy, but when he thinks we are not looking, is really heading toward the Icon of the Theotokos and the Crucified Christ to pray. It is for him that my heart breaks the hardest. For each of our four children. One, two, three, four. We obeyed and were open to life. Now we can no longer provide for it. My head swirls with terrible images of where we will end up with the Pocono winter sets in and the kids are well into the second quarter of the school year they are working so hard to make exceptional for our approval.

I hope God loves them more than He loves me.

If people who pay their bills can have such things happen to them, what more those of you who are even more overtaxed than we are? Heed the warning, and sell your mega house. Mine is far from mega, but it is better than we have ever had - by appearances. We will never attempt this again. For sure. We will tell all those who insist that my husband and I owe it to our large family to give most of them their own room, a large yard to run in, the perfect redneck school to attend - I am literally going to slap them with the attorney fees that have now been added to my ever exceeding home loan.

The one for the house so many have enjoyed, but who will maybe not see us with such gusto very soon.

"This is the beginning of everything for you guys!" one friend said when she first saw our four room bi-level four years ago. "You deserve this."

Really? Why?

I regret everything north of the tunnel that leads to where we are now.