I am increasingly amazed at the insight that losing a house is providing to me as well as to my customers facing foreclosure. The idea that things are out of your control is one of the most important insights, because you cease to be able to count on your plan to bring you to the place you want to be. Even that place is obscured by having to live in a daily dependence on outcomes that you cannot predict. It comes down to truly experiencing the faith that you may have proclaimed, and yet never actually walked in. At the root of your circumstances, there are also many clues to the things you would change in the future.

I am presently walking with several people on this journey thru the mortgage disaster, all there for different reasons, but facing the same uncertainties. I am amazed and delighted at the positive outlook that each family is embracing, albeit in their own time and in their own way. It is as if a huge burden has been lifted and the real solutions are beginning to emerge, as the responsibility for the problems are accepted. There is a massive coming out of denial that seems to be going on around and within.

This crisis could be a huge 12-step program for the addiction to materialism that has gripped this culture and time. The re-aligning of values with the way in which we spend and prioritize our spending will be an excellent outcome of the crisis we now face, and perhaps, in the end, will actually save us from ourselves.

In the midst of facing foreclosure, it is not unusual to seek out the advise and counsel of a bankruptcy attorney, and so I did this week. I have to say it was a most comforting experience; a safe place in which to review the financial picture of my life at this moment and, armed with more options, a place to make choices about my future .

However, being the person I am, I came away with insights that may never occur to most people in this position. The biggest one for me was my reaction to his asking about jewelry. I said, very honestly, I have none. Now, mind you, I hadn’t removed any diamonds from my fingers, neck or earlobes, in an attempt to look impoverished. I honestly don’t have any. Anything I ever have had somehow got lost during my ownership of it. I just never cared enough, I guess. When other women would remark, “Did you see that rock on her hand?” in obvious awe and envy, I usually had missed it. It just never mattered to me.

So my answer was a relief to the attorney, but my reaction over the next few hours was somewhat of a surprise to me. One of the first things I did when I got home was to make a call to a long lost friend. I realized that my jewelry box contained letters, cards and memories, but no actual gold or diamonds. It held reminders of the real gems in my life, my relationships. To hear a voice respond happily to mine, after seventeen years in between, as though we had spoken yesterday…..now that’s something to treasure. The value of a person who has touched your heart, and whose heart you have touched, contains every bit of the alchemy that turns a rock into a gem that perhaps only those involved will ever know about.

I have often thought of myself as a diamond in the rough, a potentially wonderful woman, waiting for someone to discover her and polish her up. I am quite confident now that I was always a diamond, it just depended on the eye of the beholder, and whether they could recognize one when they saw one. I am so grateful for the eyes that found me, and for their owner’s ability to communicate what they saw back to me, in words that I could hold onto. My reflection was more beautiful than I had ever imagined. And in the manner of the old saying, “it takes one to know one”,  I guess it had a lot to do with the fact that I had also briefly glimpsed their magnificence, and honestly reflected it back to them. It appears that I have the eyes of an alchemist as well.

Is love ever different in a different time? Gabriel Garcia Marquez wrote about love in the time of Cholera, but isn’t love really the same, any time you are lucky enough to find it? Doesn’t it escape time and most of the parameters we put on things in time? When you look back, doesn’t an old love conjure up the same wonderful memories as it did when it happened? Or at least a warm smile that spreads sweetly across your face without your realizing it?

I have recently been in contact with some old loves. Being single, this will bother no one in my present, but the memories are very important to me. They point out the course of the river of my life. The times I have lingered to dance awhile on different shores along the way, stopping just long enough to glimpse a reflection of my soul in another’s eyes. Long enough for a quick recognition of two minds connecting at a rest stop on their winding journey. The memory of love as found, not lost, is always good for the soul to remember.