Friday, May 14, 2010

...And the Walls came Crumbling Down


Mike and I are looking for a house. This is the third house we have hunted for in our nine year marriage. The first house we bought together, was a huge leap of faith. With two houses to sell and them not even being for sale, we made an offer on what would become our first home together. It was the house we had our wedding reception at. It was the house we became a family in. I have wonderful memories in that house. We had only lived there three years, when Mike got transferred for his job. Tearfully, I packed up and watched the biggest moving truck I had ever seen drive away with every single thing we owned. Another truck pulled up, loaded up my mini van and also drove down the street with my car, not to be seen again for another week, after we had arrived in Houston Texas, twelve hundred miles away from all the people we loved.
Flash forward six years and we are packing up again to find another place to hang our hat. Our current house was filled to the brim with arguing teenagers, barking dogs and paint cans. My kids all went through high school here. Every prom and Homecoming picture has a swing that Mike had built for me for my birthday, years ago. This was our safe refuge when we were trying to figure out how fit in, in the deep south. I love this house. Mike and I painted every wall, laid nearly every tile and fixed every problem with the house and the family.
As I get ready for yet another move, I feel at peace with the decision to sell to another growing family who will have memories of their own. This house needs young kids to sit on the swing, play in the pool and run up and down the bayou. This house begs for a growing family to love and appreciate it. Billy Joel wrote a song a million years ago called, "You're My Home". I look at my beautiful husband and I know for certain that he is my home. We are not our house, or our cars, or our jobs. We are each others shelter from the storm. We are each others home.
Yesterday, we viewed another house that fit our criteria on paper. We had seen it online, and we anxious to look at it in person. In theory it had everything we were looking for. We have been looking at foreclosures, mostly because we are handy and it would give us an opportunity to fix the house as we would like. Not much scares us when it comes to houses that need repair. We are a solid team and work well together. Mike has his strengths and I have mine. I think we may have been house flippers in another life. We went through houses that were abandoned for one reason or another. Some were in total disrepair, requiring immediate CPR while others needed someone to love and appreciate their individual architectural beauty. I have grown accustomed to seeing the collateral damage of the housing crisis upfront and in person. I'll be honest, I feel really bad for those who have lost their homes. As a humanitarian, I feel the loss in my heart and see what can happen when things begin the slow, deteriorating descent to what must feel like hell. Somewhere along the line something happened and things became broken. As I walk through these houses, I don't see Wall Street, or banking logos, I see real people's homes taken from them for one reason or another, and I feel the heartbreak to my bones. Life is a fragile thing, with many unexplained circumstances that can alter a person forever. Some houses look as though the owners quietly gathered their things and left without much ado. Some houses look as thought the angry owners ripped the house to shreds in order to get back at the evil that destroyed their lives and pulled them from their homes. I try very hard not to judge the reasons for the emptiness the house now suffers. The banks were judge, jury and executioner, so I do not have to make that my concern. What I concern myself is with how a house feels. Paint can be changed, but I think houses hold memories and if the damage is too great and the feeling is dank depression, then I must admit, I am out. It has been put to me that I am too sensitive. I think that is ridiculous. I am sensitive to my surroundings and for those who plow through their lives with little or no feeling of what has transpired before them, well, I think they are dead inside. So be it. My mom says, "Each to their own." When I think someone is too icy, that is the phrase I rely on, but not necessarily what I really think.
One house in particular yesterday, caught my eye. It was a house Mike and I had seen and were very interested in. We got to the house and as we got out of the car we noticed someone was inside. "Hello?" our Realtor called out. A young man with a paint spray can in his hand came to the door to greet us. "I am just painting over the graffiti," he stated and went back to the room he was working in. We all looked at each other, puzzled at what that meant. Room by room we walked through the foreclosed house, making our list of what all needed to be done. The house hadn't been updated, possibly since the 1970s when it was originally built. We started walking down the hall to look at the bedrooms and closet space when we saw the young man from earlier, painting over what looked like a giant teenage girls diary on every wall in the room. I could still read through the first coat of cover all things this young girl was feeling as they got ready to lose their home. I stood awestruck by the raw emotion scribbled on the walls of this girl's room. There it all was, the heartbreak, the torment, the humanity of what the housing crisis really is. As I read line after line, I felt this incredible urge to break down and cry. I felt her pain, as if she were standing right next to me. This wasn't about politics, it never really is, it was about the abject horror this girl felt about losing the security of her home. What missteps, or bad decisions her parents made were of no consequence now. All is hindsight. The children of this home, paid the price for any and all things that went horribly wrong. An adult was broken and unable to recover, at least in time to save the family home.
I carried that girl with me all day. As if she were perched on my shoulders, I walked with the heaviness on my chest and a burdened heart. Silently, I prayed for her. Was she alright? Did they find somewhere to stay? Was there family around to help get them through this? I prayed this young girl with the broken home and heart find some peace. I prayed that she would one day look back at this time as a source of learning. I prayed that she might use this experience as a way to help others and be more empathetic to those who fall on hard times.
I will tell you, not everybody recovers from devastating, emotional blows. Not everyone has the ability to regroup and pick themselves back up to fight another day. Some people get hurt, fail miserably and never find hope again. I saw those people in the nursing homes. I watched some elderly die in the exact same pain they had suffered years ago and had not been able to move past. I prayed the young one, whose very heart was exposed on those bedroom walls, would not be one of the living dead. It is always by the grace of God go we. My intention is to always remember that I am not better, I am not worse than anyone else in the world, and it is only by grace that I do not suffer as I have witnessed others suffer. It is in humility, kindness and empathy, I try and keep my heart, so that I won't inadvertently, or purposely cause someone more pain.
Mike and I spoke softly to each other later that day about what we had seen. We whispered about the oppressive sadness the house now bares. We held our hushed voices in reverence and respect for the family, who was forced from the very place they had chosen as their soft place to fall.
May God bless them, protect them and keep them safe. That would be the prayer I would want for my own family, if our bottom were to fall out beneath us. The next time you see a sign listing a foreclosure, I ask that you take a moment of silence and utter a tiny prayer for those who are now lost. Pray that they may one day find their way home.

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