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.

The elite intelligentsia and the media have nearly convinced us we don’t know anything, but I still wonder. It seems to me, as someone who is in the trenches everyday with the common man, as we are known, that perhaps they could learn a thing or two if they would give us some respect for what we know.

Like how about the banks accepting partial payments on the mortgages for a while, and letting what’s left be tacked on to the end and dealt with later. If a person has $800 of their $1000 mortgage, they shouldn’t be told, “sorry, we don’t accept partial payments”. They are exhibiting a good faith effort to do the right thing, but they are forced into foreclosure over a few hundred bucks. Then the banks and now the government will lose thousands on that same loan as they take it thru the process to sell it at a loss, and the people are forced out on the street with rotten credit to find a temporary shelter, giving up most of their belongings in the process.

If the government wanted they could suspend mortgage insurance, and cover that themselves, thereby taking $50 to $150 off the average monthly payment. They are insuring the loans anyway, why not make the monthly payment easier without rewriting the entire loan? Seems like a no brainer from where I sit. But I do not have a degree in economics, so I really couldn’t know what I am talking about.

Common sense used to be an important part of our intelligence. It has gone the way of the 8-track tape. I wish that there was some respect for the person who manages to get through their daily lives, paying their bills and taking care of their family. They know a lot about economics, it’s just that no one values what they think anymore.

As the economy is quickly flushing down the toilet, and everywhere I look I see the deer in the headlights gaze of people who are not sure what to be ready for next, I am trying to figure out what went wrong. Personally, years of trying to be everything, do everything, and play the parts of mother/father, husband/wife, have finally caught up with me.

This lifetime was meant to be shared. For many reasons. Not just so that we have company on our journey, but a helpmate for all the many tasks that make up daily life. I know I have what’s come to be known as ADD. However, to me it is merely a part of trying to remember at any given moment in the day, to know which hat I am wearing.

I am taking out the garbage last thing before I go to bed, having mowed the lawn after coming home from an 8 hour workday. I stick the laundry in and grab a piece of toast as I remember I forgot to do any grocery shopping. My health isn’t the best because I forget to eat. I forget to eat well because I forget to shop. Also, because I am working when I would be cooking. Drive thrus have become a daily sustenance to counteract hunger pains so that I can stay focused on the job.

I raised two sons, splitting my brain between their need for a mother and our need for a family breadwinner, and as a result came up short in both categories. As I ponder putting my house on the market before I lose it, I am still wrestling with whether to do the job of the wife and clean and paint and get the house in order, or to focus on the job that will secure my ability to continue to pay the bills.

I always come up a person short.

It is my hope for this country, that we go back to recognizing the importance of family, and marriage. Life has too many facets to be able to do them all well alone. We not only can’t have it all, we are losing everything trying. Smaller, less, cheaper, will become part of the new vocabulary, and perhaps we will return to the lives our grandparents knew. Would it be so terrible?

It took almost a month to get to the end of taxes and get them to the CPA. OK, I did have a week with the flu and a week with bronchitis, but that is still a long time. The funny thing is there was a lot to learn from completing that task. Lots of insight into my life and my decision making. What I found out I wish I had known sooner, but I imagine I wasn’t ready. We don’t want to look until we are ready to see.

Anyway, the more we learn to face the truth the easier it will get to do it more quickly. Actually there is a lot in that little phrase “the truth shall set you free” after all.

I am noticing that I will do almost any job I hate (clean garage, clean closets, vacuum and dust) to avoid what is staring at me from my dining room table: my last year’s tax info, waiting to be consolidated into some form my CPA can work with.

I filed an extension, but this is the worst ever. I have paid the taxes, they were deposited quarterly. I don’t even think my obstinance has to do with thinking I will owe more. It is just pure, honest panic and resistance to an obstacle that appears in my life every year.

It occurred to me today that the reason I resist completing this annual task, is because I am always behind and there is no joy in completing it after the fact. I am already eight months behind on the current year, and all facts and figures are blurring in my memory and will continue to do so at this pace.

My solution, (and I will have to report to you later if I succeed in eliminating this annual barrier), is to jump into ’08 with a fervor, even though I am not safely out of ’07! I am using the program on my computer to bring the current year into financial focus. If this makes me feel more competent and relieved, I am sure putting in last year’s figures will follow easily.

This might ressemble eating dessert first, but sometimes one must change things around if they are not working in a consecutive order. Here’s hoping my backdoor plan works!

Why is it we can clearly see the options for others when we are too defensive to see new options for ourselves? Sometimes a change of course is sorely needed as we drift toward an inevitable, but known, destination.

When we see a friend doing the same thing, we feel obligated to point out how changing something might help them avoid a roadblock, living with the same drama, repeating an unwelcome result. Are they putting coffee in the coffee maker again and expecting….tea this time? Not likely.

Change is often needed, and it is sometimes more scary than the known demons we face on a regular basis. Confronting our fear of the unknown is the fastest way to a new opportunity and a solution. Just admitting to the fear opens the door.

Be Brave….Go after one of those fears this week and, oh yes, grab the tea bags while you’re at it!

I wonder what we can tell about people from the state of their garage? First, do they even keep a car in it? If not, it is probably where they keep everything they don’t want to make a decision about or, more likely, that they once made a bad decision about. So, the volume of stuff might give us a great deal of insight into the state of their mind, wouldn’t you think?

As the second day of cleaning my garage is underway, I am reflecting on these things and many more. Why have I also become the depository for the stuff the rest of my family doesn’t want to make a decision about)?

Am I seriously doing anyone a favor by helping them not make a decision? Sometimes we really need to decide if something is important and if it is and give it a place of honor in our lives, or pass it on to someone who will. Most stuff eventually rots from lack of use or attention and then it is quite easy to discard.

Hmmm. We might just look at our relationships like that. There may be a parallel somewhere. After I return from the dump I will sit down and see who I haven’t been in contact with recently. Could it be they feel like discards in the junkyard of my life?

As for the rest of this clutter some wise person once said, “no decision is a decision”, and bad decisions are forgotten much faster when the evidence of them has been eaten by a giant dumpster!

Does anyone hear a horn that isn’t blowing? Do you look around and say, hey, wasn’t someone holding a horn around here? Wonder if they knew how to play it?

Why do those of us who are uncomfortable with self-promotion always assume that someone blowing their own horn sounds like Bill Clinton on the sax? Let’s face it, he played President a lot better!

We always think it is an irritating, chalk-on-blackboard sound to most people. As a Realtor, I am aware of a lot of horns blowing around me. Of late, though, I am more tempted to believe that most of it does come across as just noise and people have learned to turn a deaf ear. However, what about the people who would have liked to know my name? What if I didn’t tell them?

When they need a professional Realtor they may not be able to make the connection, and may just take the first one that comes along who doesn’t grate on their nerves. I think I may be doing a disservice to those who really appreciate my music, but like a song on the radio with no identification, don’t know that it is mine. I think I need to assume that they might want to hear more, and at least give them my card so that they can decide whether to hold on to it!

If it comes after a substantive conversation, then it is merely a follow-up, not a meaningless, aggressive sales pitch. They may want to hear the music again and just want to know where to find it!