I parked in the driveway of our lodge-style home nestled among towering cedars and flowering dogwoods. Even returning from an everyday errand, bringing my youngest kids home from school, I couldn’t help but admire the view and feel blessed.
John and I had milled each log ourselves, back when our family business doing custom milling was just getting started. I dreamed of growing old here, our six children getting married in the backyard. Emma’s November wedding was only eight months away.
Strange, I thought. There was a white piece of paper taped to the front door. “Look,” I said, “maybe someone’s invited us to a party.”
Ten-year-old Jack, my youngest, grabbed the note off the door and handed it to me. “What is it, Mommy?”
My eyes fixed on one word: FORECLOSURE. I stared at it in disbelief. John had been trying to refinance. There has to be some mistake.
“Mom, are you okay?” Amy, my 12-year-old, asked.
I forced a smile. Stay calm. Don’t scare the kids. “It’s nothing,” I told them, shoving the notice into my pocket. “Go get a snack. I’ll come inside after I call Dad.”
I punched speed-dial 1 on my cell. “John, I just came home to a foreclosure notice on the door.”
“What?!” he said. “I thought they’d give us more time. But please don’t worry, honey. I won’t let it get to auction.”
Don’t worry? “John,” I said, fighting to keep my voice down, “I knew we were behind, but you didn’t tell me we’d missed another house payment.”
Silence. “I’m sorry,” he finally said. “I’ve been praying a big job would come in. Something. I didn’t want to upset you for no reason.”
No reason? A stew of emotions boiled up inside me. Anger, fear, sadness—I pushed it all back down, like trying to shove a beach ball under the water. Blowing up at John wouldn’t help. I knew how our business was struggling. No one was building or remodeling.
Even worse, we’d bankrolled everything with a home-equity loan. We could lose everything.
No! I couldn’t let myself think like that. We’d been through tough times before. God had always come through for us. I had to stay positive—for John and the kids. That’s what they needed most from me. Not panic.
“I’m coming home,” John said. “I want to talk with everyone. Then I’m going to make some calls and get to the bottom of this. I’ll work it out.”
We gathered in the living room: Jack and Amy, Scott, 14, Mark, who was taking a semester off from college to save money, and Nathan, recently back home after five years in the Marines. Only Emma was on her own.
“We got some bad news today,” John said. “We’re behind on our house payments and now the bank wants the money or they say that they will sell the house.”
“But where would we live?” Amy cried.
“It’s not going to get to that,” John said. “I’m trying to get a new loan from the bank and I’ve got some big milling jobs I hope will come through. I know this is upsetting, but we have to trust that God is in control.”
The kids looked at one another, the younger ones’ eyes panicky. As much as it worried me to think of losing our home, I hated even more seeing everyone so scared. I had to say something to make things better.
“No matter what happens we have each other,” I said. “That’s what counts.” The kids stared at me like I was speaking a foreign language.
With each passing day it grew clearer that there was nothing more John could do. Calls to prospective customers went unreturned. He applied for loan modification programs only to be rejected or be told we’d owe even more than we did.
We discovered our loan had been sold to a different lender, but they were no more willing to work with us.
“All they said is that the auction is scheduled for May,” John said. “And with penalties and fees, what we owe is nearly double. It’s like they don’t even care.” He slammed the phone into the charger.
I told myself it was just a house, just pieces of timber fitted together. We’d find a new place to live, start over. After all, that’s what we’d done when we moved here 10 years ago from Minnesota.
But then I went to kiss Amy goodnight and found her crying in her room. “I don’t want to leave,” she said. “All of my friends are here. It won’t be the same somewhere else.”
It broke my heart. I wanted to tell her I was afraid too. But she was hurting enough so I tried to reassure her, “You’ll make new friends. You’ll see, honey, everything is going to work out.”
I thought Jack was holding up better, until Scott asked if he could sleep in the living room. “Jack wakes me up every night,” he said. “I think he’s having nightmares.”
What could I do? I was afraid—no, ashamed—to tell people we were losing our house. Then in early May the auction notice was printed in the newspaper. No way to avoid it now. It was official, scheduled for the same day as Scott’s eighth-grade graduation.
I was glad for an excuse not to go to the courthouse. “They really need volunteers to help set up for graduation,” I told John. “Both of us don’t need to be at the auction.”
Inside the school gym I set up chairs. The other volunteers talked about summer vacation plans. All I could think about were the strangers bidding on our house, like vultures feasting on our misfortune. Dear God, I prayed, if there’s any chance for a miracle…
Late that afternoon John came by the school. He looked drained, exhausted. There had been no last-minute reprieve. “I’m so sorry,” he said. “I hope I live long enough to make this up to you.”
“We’ll get through it,” I choked out. I wished I could believe it.
The next morning we started packing. We didn’t know when the final eviction notice would arrive, but there was no point in delaying the inevitable. I pulled out boxes and old newspapers and wrapped my great-grandmother’s dishes.
John and the kids helped, but it felt like we were in separate worlds, grim-faced, barely speaking to each other. Around me were memories of happier times, only now it seemed as if they were all being packed away too.
We filled the boxes I had on hand. John took the kids to get more. I watched the car go down the driveway. Just an errand, but it felt like more than that, the distance between us more than I could possibly bridge.
I needed to know how to help them. Maybe if I got some advice, or could call someone. I thought of Linda, an old friend from high school. She’d gotten her master’s in psychology.
I told her everything. “It’s all I can do to keep from crying,” I said. “But I don’t want to scare the kids even more…”
“How could you not cry?” she said.\ “Losing your home is like a death in the family. You need to let yourself grieve. And share your sadness with your children and John. They need to know it’s okay to feel sad. Grief is a journey that leads to healing and stronger faith. But you have to go through it and not pretend it isn’t happening and your feelings aren’t real.”
I was sobbing before she even finished, tears of anger and loss, fear and regret flooding down my cheeks.
John and I had been trying so hard to protect each other, to protect the kids. But that meant each of us ended up suffering alone, hiding from the truth, when what we needed was to allow ourselves to hurt and heal together.
I thanked Linda and hung up. I sank to my knees, my whole body shaking. Hadn’t John and I always taught the kids to trust God in all things, that his hands were big enough to hold our greatest fears?
Yet the truth of the matter was, even though I’d pleaded for him to save us from foreclosure, I hadn’t trusted him with my real problem—the roiling feelings that went with losing our home and wondering what the future held.
God, I’m so mixed up, I can’t even feel you with me right now, I prayed. But I know you are bigger than my anger and sorrow and fear. I’m putting it all in your hands. All of it. And trusting you.
When John and the kids got home they could see that I’d been crying. “There’s something I need to tell you,” I said. I hesitated, the words still not coming easily. “But I don’t know quite how to say it.”
“Just tell us, Mom,” Amy said. “We can handle it.”
“I love this house,” I said. “I’m sad that we have to leave. And I’m scared too. I wonder where we’ll live and what will happen to our family. How we’ll get by. I just don’t know and I think that’s what scares me the most.”
John wrapped his arms around me and the kids gathered round. No one said everything was going to be okay. It was enough just to be together and grieve and face our challenges as a family.
It’s been more than two years now since we lost our home. We live in a smaller rental house in town. I won’t try to sugarcoat it. It hasn’t been easy. But we’ve talked more, and sharing our worries and fears has made our family closer and stronger.
We have been blessed in other ways. Emma’s wedding was held in a nearby seaside town where she’d graduated from college, and it was lovely. Our business is picking up along with the economy and we’re feeling good again. Together we’re making new memories.
Maybe best of all is knowing that it’s okay to grieve, that trusting God with our pain and sorrow gives him room to help us find the healing that only he can bring and to lead us to a future that is abundant with blessings.
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