...the one where I was blathering about what impresses me - to bring you

A MOMENT OF PANIC!

Well. I have these moments. We're lowering the price on the house. We don't have any choice. There's been a ton of traffic through there, but nary an offer. Nothing, nada, zip. And, come April first, for reasons I won't go into here, we're going to hit a large financial bump. We never, in our worst of worst case scenerio plans, ever thought the house would be on the market this long. And you know that I can think of some pretty bad worst case scenerios. My life, in many ways has just been one long worst case scenerio.

It is so frustrating to be in this situation where we have no control over the outcome. We're just dependant upon ...

the whims of forces we can't see. The market. The economy. People's ideas about the market and the economy. Interest rates. The opinions of potential buyers' mother's. It's maddening.

Through this whole time of financial "restructuring" of household, I have tried really hard to have faith. I am a Christian. Faith looks up. While I am not one of those people that gets on a prayer circle for every little bruise and hang nail, I do believe that God has a plan for people. I believe in "his eye being on the sparrow" so to speak. The little half penny bird. That's me.

Can't He see that I'm trying to settle my debts honorably? Can't he see that I've sold just about everything that I can sell, that has any value? What am I supposed to learn from all of this? What possible lesson or good can come of me being willing to sacrafice the thing that meant the most to me - my beautiful little house - only to have no one else want it? I feel like Cain, with the best gift that he can come up with, and it's still not acceptable.

I was always taught that Cain's gift was rejected because it wasn't really his best. But, if you read the text, and even pretty authoritative commentary on the text, you can't be sure. It could have been anything. Maybe he knew Cain had a black heart ( Islam has the tradition that he was jelous because Able had gotten a better looking wife from somewhere). Maybe it wasn't really the best he could do, or he left something out, thinking surely it wouldn't matter. Maybe God just wasn't in the mood for a meat sacrafice that day. After all, God is God, it's not like he owes us an explanation for his ways. The part that's clear is that getting mad at God and taking it out on your brother is an extremely poor idea. It's sort of like God looked at Cain's sacrafice and said "Nope, try again, son" and, instead, he got angry, clubbed his brother up aside the head, killed him and then lied about it. You can only imagine God coming back to the scene and sighing, " You know what? This ain't gonna work either" In fact, by this point in the story I can easily imagine the Almighty looking around for any chimpanzees in the area and second guessed himself for casting his breath on the wrong sort of hominids. But, notwithstanding all of that, here we are.

By the way, I just have to point out that, even though God caught Cain red handed - I mean his hands were REALLY red, God didn't impose the death penalty. Man did that later - "an eye for an eye a tooth for a tooth". Okay, that's been my anti-death penalty bit for the day.

Sorry. I digress.

My point is that I have done everything I can think of doing. I have given up every last thing I have to give up, and if I'm holding something back then it's a blind spot for me, because I don't know what it is. I gave up my business - I didn't spend money on another chiropractor round when my back gave up. I accepted that and moved on. I've given up a bunch of "stuff", I'm giving up my home, and more than just a little bit of my pride living in my parent's house made a workable rental by their generosity. I've tried to make as much money as I can, I drive over 40 miles to work one way and stick a phone on my head, stuffing the voice in my head that says you're smarter than this down into the black hole under the red ink in my check book where it firmly has to stay at this point. And I look around for things to be grateful for.

But this is wearing. I'm only a believer, I'm not a saint, and I'm not made out of wood! What else can I do? The kitchen is fixed, it's spiffed up, the house is tidy, we installed a dishwasher. I know it only has one bathroom, but for the love of heaven, PEOPLE ONLY HAVE ONE ASS! WHAT DO THEY NEED WITH TWO BATHROOMS?! It's not overpriced, at least I don't think so. I know that there are plenty of ignorant people in the County, hell, in the world, who might not want to live where Latin music plays, but I am supposed to suffer for their narrow mindedness?

We now return you to your normal, more evenly tempered, winged creature....