Anticipation Does Not Make Things Easier: Finding The Bank Lock on Our Home

Sometimes anticipation is a good thing – but not always – and when I stopped at our former home today I was unprepared for seeing the bank lock on the front door even though the anticipation that it may happen had been there for a while. It made the foreclosure process even more real and even more frightening and painful.

Due to our inability to collect child support and the court’s failure to enforce collection during a pending supreme court action, the mortgage on our old home has not been paid since last January, eleven months ago. My credit rating, which had been a solid A, is now an F, better than only 2% of the US population; our home is in foreclosure proceedings, and, while I know I am optimistic and hard working so will not be in this position forever, I am also realistic enough to know I am powerless to change any of this right now.

We put the house on the market about seven months ago, but the boys and I had to move out. Our home was too hard to heat on our limited income, and there were other factors too.

Most of our things are already out, but there is stuff I was hoping to sell or to donate:  a beautiful dining room set my husband and I happily bought together just a few weeks before his sudden departure, a gorgeous crib, two carpets – one from my Grandmother, an antique piano, and more.

Again, I had been anticipating the bank lock and foreclosure only because of the possibility of them coming true, but seeing the heavy-weight bank lock actually hanging on the door left me facing the harsh reality of the impending foreclosure and feeling a bit nauseated. I sometimes cannot believe this is really happening, that this is my life, the life this man whom I had so loved, would choose for all of us.

Well, the anticipation is over.

My mother taught me to always leave things better than I found them. This house was built by our owns hands; our sweat and tears went into that house. So many of my hopes and dreams were in that house. My children painted faces on rocks and wrote letters to future generations. We placed those things inside the walls, and I assume they are still nestled in the insulation. Our handprints are in the cement in the garage. Our plans revolved around having a house large enough to welcome children and grandchildren many years down the road.

That lock box and its impending foreclosure was more concrete proof that all those dreams have been shattered.

I must remember that the things of this earth do not belong to me though. I am just a visitor here. I owe everything I’ve got to God. What right did I have to think I could hold onto the “stuff” anyway? I sometimes have to give a half hearted grin to my own arrogance, but it definitely makes me sad too.

Good-bye stuff. Good-bye life I thought we shared. Good-bye dreams.

Hello bank lock.

They can take away our stuff but cannot take away our faith, hope, and love unless we allow them to.

I will not allow them to.

I will keep smiling. 🙂

photo credit

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The brother in his lowly circumstances should take pride in his high standings, and the rich one in his lowliness, for he will pass away like a “flower in the field.”

James 1: 9-10