The Future

We have sort of moved into our new home, while still living half in our old home, and cleaning both homes at the same time.

I am stinking tired. I need a vacation again.

Our old home is beautiful, and the buyer will be quite happy. We already have three investors who are seriously interested and begging for our permission to haggle with our mortgage company already.

Our new home is beautiful, and we will be quite happy here once we are truly moved in and the extreme stress of an unsold home on the mountain is long gone.

I cooked the first home made meal in weeks for my family last night - BBQ country pork ribs, cheesy/onion cornbread, green beans and rice, and walnut fudge brownies. I think they were happy and feeling a little more like normalcy might be in our future.

I woke them all with breakfast this morning, taking orders and serving them all so that they would not look for distraction inside a fast food joint. Last Friday night, against my strong objections, my family chose to eat at a local burger place and three out of four of us got food poisoning. And we all still had to move and carry heavy objects all day the next day.

I have painted a fresh coat of paint in just about every room of the old house, steamed all the carpets, washed all the windows and bathrooms, and vacuumed four million times. Tonight, we go there to get more stuff and mow the lawn. In the new home, I have been working on training my children not to run up and down the stairs and scream at will when playing. The nearly deaf old woman next door says we are not loud, but she can feel the thumping around.

I think it has been more than a decade since I have felt such stress. We have all lost weight and there are migraines and stomach ailments abounding - though there is very little complaining. It is a very strange adjustment. It is as though we have only been renting our home on the mountain and now we are returning to our 1905 home in the last town that we lived in. Both older homes are very similar - though this rented one is nicer. The only thing I am really obsessing about at this moment is selling our other home before foreclosure and making our rented home economically sound during the winter. I have lots of tricks I employed at the 1905 house that may work here. We shall see...

Who knows anything about the future? Not me.

Forgiveness is Hard

Forgiveness provides us with much graces.

Forgiveness can be a real pain in the butt at first.

The other day, while moving my cookie sheets into my new home, I spied our elderly neighbor.

"Do you go to that church?" she asked, pointing to the Roman Catholic parish just a few feet from our front porch.

"Oh, no," I started. "We are Catholic, but..."

But she didn't hear me. She waved her gnarled Rheumatic fingers toward the building. "I go there. I have gone there for 60 years," she said. "I just love it."

"How do you like the new priest?" I asked her.

"Who cares?" she asked. "He's alright. It's the Eucharist that matters."

True enough, I agreed and we started to talk like two cradle Catholics on a Tuesday summer evening on our porches - about All Saints Day parties and Easter egg hunts and house blessings and priests who used to like to play baseball with the kids of the neighborhood.

Gone are those days, I thought.

She asked where we had gone when we lived on the mountain. I pointed to the other Roman Catholic parish across town. She said her ladies club meets there once a month.

"Beautiful church," she said, allowing a wide smile across her face. A pretty face, even for one who has gone to the same parish for 60 years. "But not very friendly."

I just nodded, and told her nothing of my husband's hard work and effort there, of the three years he served the parish children in the Sacraments and religious education. And especially, I kept quiet about the youth group - his true passion - that he had spent more than a year planning, designing, regulating with the diocese, and fasting and praying over. And then how he was chased out the very first fall meeting, because Sunday nights interfered with sports - even though all summer the youth group had been growing and was quickly much-loved by a small group of local kids.

The old woman went inside her home to get me a bulletin from her veteran Irish parish. I did not read it until my sweetheart and I were back in our car, driving back up the mountain to the home we are selling.

Clear as day, the bulletin noted the "new regional youth group" being started by a brave new Director of Religious Ed.

Interesting...

When Lee left the parish, he left all his curriculum, his notes, his keyboard for music, his lesson plans, his diocesan contacts, everything a future youth group leader would need. They took it completely from him without a thank you, used his format, and then claimed all the work for themselves, and this new Director of Religious Ed gets paid handsomely, where my husband was told, "This will have to be volunteer, because we cannot even pay a janitor anymore."

This DRE takes all his work without notice and pretends the wheel has been reinvented and gets paid full time for Lee's work. Nice. We are getting kicked out of our home, in large part, because of all the work Lee did there without reimbursement, and this new youth leader probably gets that really great diocesan health care plan.

I hope the ungrateful parents who threatened the youth group last year, will at least, give this paid leader a tad more respect.

In one year, we get kicked out of our parish and then, out of our home...Thank God for the Russians. They make all other suffering seem so minuscule.

I have much to forgive. Thank God this week I go to confession.

Excerpt From My Daily Solzhenitsyn

Goryainov-Shakhovsky! The little old man, slovenly in his old age...he was purged in the interests of "freshening up" the staff. He went to Moscow, and returned with a note from Kalinin: "Don't touch this old man!" It was rumored that Kalinin's father had been a serf of the professor's father's.

So they did not touch him. They did not touch him in a way that was awesome. He might write a research paper in the natural sciences containing a mathematical proof of the existence of God. Or at a public lecture on his beloved Newton he might wheeze from behind his yellow mustaches: "Someone just passed me a note: 'Marx wrote that Newton was a materialist, and you say he was an idealist.' I reply [said the old man]: Marx was wrong. Newton believed in God, like every other great scientist."

From the Rosicrucians, The First Circle, by Alexander Solzhenitsyn (pronounced, Sol-zhen-neetzen, for those who were wondering and found the title too daunting).

14 Years

Yesterday, July 29th, Lee and I (sort of) celebrated our 14th wedding anniversary. It's funny, because only two days ago, while packing up books in the garage we are soon to leave, I found pictures from our honeymoon from Hilton Head Island the summer of 1995.

"Look how skinny we were!" I said to my sweetheart, who immediately replied with, "Look how much hair I had." But there was no enthusiasm in his voice.

We painted yesterday after Lee finished work, and I steamed most of the visible carpeted areas. We scrubbed all bathrooms and consequently, had no place to sleep last night. Our bed was covered in boxes to take outside and shove into the back of the Jeep the next morning, and we were too tired to move them back to the newly cleaned carpets. So we spent our anniversary sleeping on the floor, with Lee barely able to breathe since he had hurt his back carrying something heavy up the stairs of our rented home.

"Happy Anniversary!" I whispered before we fell asleep - which was hard to do since both our 9 year old and our 5 year old were sleeping with us in the living room. They on the couches, we on spread out blankets with the dog. Around 1am, a 5 year old fell off the love seat and onto our heads. He continued to sleep with his head on the ground and his feet on the couch. We had to reposition him back onto the love seat twice in the night. I had a headache this morning when I woke to drink hot Styrofoam cups of coffee with my sweetheart.

And while he showered, I had this thought...

I would much rather go through all that we have been through together (even before this present conflict) just to hold his hand for 14 more years. On the floor, with messy hair and a burping yellow lab, with children falling on our heads and calling out to us at all hours of the night...I would so prefer to have all that trouble just to have Leonardo for 14 years + forever.

Surrounded By Prayer and Oversized Dinners

Our friends are making our lives so much more livable.

Our pal, Nancy, has brought dinner two or three times. Catholic School Sister has worked her Italian magic and made us piles of sausage and stuffed shells ("manicot" as my Italian stepfather would say). My brother has helped us move boxes from this side of the mountain to the other in town. Nancy has also agreed to let our precious kitty (formerly her precious kitty) bunk with her family, because we cannot keep her anymore.

Our pal, Homeschool Jennifer, and her family, have agreed to let us rent their beautiful Victorian home from them. They are breaking their own rule of not doing business with pals, because we really need them and they are kind enough to understand that. They have also recommended us to some real estate investment acquaintances...we shall see what God allows.

Our friend, the Byzantine priest, has offered to bless our new home as soon as possible, and wonders of wonders...he is making time to hear my confession this week! True story!

Our pal, Lenya, has packed and cleaned and babysat for us. So has my sister who recently returned from her stately apartment in Europe to sleep in my parent's basement and look for new employment in this fledgling American economy. But she is a teacher, so she will find something soon, and we will help her as she has helped us.

Skinny Sarah called to suggest a mutual Latin Only friend who rents near the home where we are moving. "You could talk to her. I am sure she would help you as well." But we have not needed to do that. Still, she offered and is thinking of us and feeling our pain since she has faced her own financial crisis in the recent past.

My Pentecostal grandmother has prayed incessantly for us, insisting that the Holy Spirit has revealed to her that all will be fine in the near future. That this is all part of His grand plan. I absolutely agree.

Without our friends and all the oversized amazing dinners they have offered us, where would we be? Insane? Feeling completely downcast?

Even more than the dinners, and the cat-caring, and the house renting...prayers are the most coveted around here these days. And they are being offered for the Velez Family from all across the country and world. Even in Eastern Europe and in Africa, people are praying for God's will in our lives. We cannot lose.

And when our friends need us, we will be there. They can count on it.

Sea Sick

I feel like I am riding in a very narrow boat on a wide and randomly stormy sea. Today, I spoke with a representative from the office of the PA Speaker of the House. She informed me that many of our rights appeared violated, though she had no proof. And it is interesting that our mortgage company has been sued for discrimination against Hispanics in many more states than our own.

I have no idea where this will lead us. My prayer, and please pray with us, that we can simply offer the deed over and be able to offer some other family a beautiful new home to live in affordably. The attorneys - who refuse to mail us our reinstatement amount, which would allow us to stay in our home - are charging us $41.00 a day. Already, they have been working against us for more than 20 days. We did not even know they existed until they had already charged us several hundred dollars for two weeks. No one informed us of anything.

Some nights I go to sleep praising God that He simply loves us all enough to offer us His life. And other nights, my husband tells me, that directly after making both the Western and Eastern Sign of the Cross, I grind my teeth so sharply in my sleep that he prays that I won't bite off my tongue or break a tooth.

I have this sense of numbness now, like I am experiencing things from the outside of my own world. People stop me and ask me about the situation and I can actually speak about it as though it is someone else who is living through this. Perhaps, it is a survival mechanism of some kind. My pal, MT - the world's greatest shrink - could probably verify this for me.

But in the end, when I have awakened in the morning and have a strong cup of Swedish coffee in my hand, I am aware once again that God is the Reality that is more real than the world I touch every day.

Somehow, we are alive and well and will get through all of this. Glory to God for All Things...as every Orthodox I know says. Glory Be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit...as all Romans I know say.

The First Circle

"The happiness of incessant victory, the happiness of fulfilled desire, the happiness of success and of total satiety - that is suffering! That is spiritual death, a sort of unending moral pain. It isn't the philosophers ...but I personally, Gleb Nerzhin, a prisoner in harness for the fifth year, who has risen to that stage of development where the bad begins to appear the good. And I personally hold the view that people don't know what they are striving for. They waste themselves in senseless thrashing around for the sake of a handful of goods and die without realizing their spiritual wealth. When Lev Tolstoi dreamed of being imprisoned, he was reasoning like a truly perceptive person with a healthy spiritual life." Gleb Nerzhin, Gulag Prisoner.

"You are poisoned by the stink of prison-latrine talk - and you want to see the world through that haze." Lev Rubin, Gulag Prisoner.

- From The First Circle by Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Most of our lives are packed in medium to large size moving boxes. The realtor comes to our home this week at some point to put a price on the house we are leaving. The mortgage company wants the house before Halloween. Even sooner than Christmas. We shall see. I am supposed to be writing them a hardship letter, telling them why we were late a couple of times and why they should help us. This, after they have already told us that they will not help us. We still do not know what our reinstatement amount might be. They refuse to offer us that as well, even though they are required to do so.

Today, we did not go to Mass or Divine Liturgy. I accidentally packed everything except a pile of work clothes and some underwear. Not very liturgically appropriate. I emailed pertinent Fathers to let them know of our absence. So, we prayed the Rosary instead. Too covered in dust and debris to receive the Eucharist just now.

In one week, we were visited by the sheriff informing us of our right to argue foreclosure - though we have no idea what our rights are other than paying off the entire loan. No one will answer our questions.

My uncle is dying in a VA hospital in Oklahoma.

And my iron has fallen so low that I will shortly need a new infusion, because my iron loss is causing Dystonia. This is something that I have had for years, and was probably some of the reasoning behind an incorrect MS diagnosis, but it makes the muscles in my hands, arms, legs, and face contort and contract very sharply so that they cramp up and I can't use them. I have to quit my packing jobs every half hour or so. I have single handedly packed most of my 2000 square foot home, and I have to take pain killers every night to get and do more of it in the morning. The strangeness of all this has certainly made me far more acquainted with my local thrift store, where I have deposited a good 1/3 of our needless household goods.

Yes, even books. I have rid myself of 99% of all my Stupid For Funs. No more Grisham, no more Roberts, no more no names. Just Chekov and Hemingway and Joyce and Doyle. And Twain. All the classics - except my extra Les Miserables. I have a new version now. I kept that and gave the college version to the thrift store.

So, off we go soon. Off to a new home and new life. Truly. My parents can't peak in my windows or insist on weekly angry BBQs with doomsday talk on the horizon. Instead, we will be on our own without the entire world walking in and out of our front door like it is a revolving entrance to the Grand Marquis.

And no one will follow us the Eastern half of Catholicism, so we will be free to worship without irritation as well.

Just some friends. We have several who already live on the street we are moving to and this is great.

Sometimes good things happen in the middle of things that look very bad.

And just as a side note that proves such a notion...I am reading Solzhenitsyn right now at night when my arms get too monkey-like. The First Circle. I highly recommend the Russians when one is struggling with any life-changing event. Well, honestly...I recommend the Russians at any time. Books are my compass. Thank God for the Bible, or maybe I would have become a pagan. Who knows?