Tenacity

Tenacity or being Tenacious has become one of my new favorite words recently.

A while back, actually maybe it was like 3 years ago or more, a good friend of mine told me and the Giant that one of the reasons we were still together is because we are both too stubborn or tenacious to give up on each other. It really is so very true.

I have a strong will. I am not one who likes conflict but if I feel strongly about something there really isn't anyone who can make me change my mind.

A year ago I started talking with our banks about our mortgage in Sparks. I told the bank people that my husband and I needed help. I told them that we couldn't make the fatty mortgage payment that we had due to job changes. I told them that not only could we not make that payment but that it wasn't really financially a smart move for us to stay in that home for what we bought it for. They told us that they couldn't help us because we hadn't missed a payment in that said year. I told them that is because we missed payments elsewhere so that we could pay that ONE big payment and hopefully save our house. I told them we cashed out our retirement, used all our savings, every bit of our tax returns, to stay in that house that year. They told me they couldn't help until we were delinquent on our payments. Delinquent is NOT a word that I like. I was tenacious with our house payments for a year that was one of the most stressful I have ever experienced. I was tenacious about doing everything I possibly could do, talking to everyone I could, writing letters to everyone I could, taking side jobs to pay for groceries, turning hobbies into jobs to pay for bills, and going without health insurance still to date. (Something that before used to scare the CRAP out of me but now not so much, a topic for another day) To say that we were "Robbing from Peter to pay Paul" would be and understatement. So to hear on the other end of the phone that all my hard work in trying to save this house for our family was in vain was very discouraging. It was also relieving at the same time to hear that I should stop paying this payment that had sucked the life out of me and my family for far too long. So last May we stopped paying our fatty mortgage payment in exchange for an amount that the guy on the phone told me to pay. We started to pay the payment he told us over the phone(never got it in writing, ALWAYS get in writing) and in that time the bank said they would review our loan and get back to us. They got back to us, in the form of a foreclosure notice posted on our house 2 months later. When I called the banks to say, "What up?" they said they had no record of this payment arrangement but that they could make another one to the tune of just a few hundred less than our original fatty mortgage payment, to which I replied "CLICK"!!



Before all of this went down I told my Giant that if we did lose this, our 3rd house that we had owned over the years, that I didn't want to be reminded of it everyday. I didn't want to be in the same town where more of this might happen to others that we know and loved. I told him I wanted to move to the Pacific Northwest area, something we had talked about doing for a lot of years but never had the guts to do. We had nothing left to lose. It is a terribly frightening place to be in life, having nothing left to lose because it turns out... there is always more that could be lost.

So here we are in PNW and we love the area but what we have lost is more than I can put in words.

Funny thing is, because of the God I serve I know that what was lost will be found, what has been robbed will be returned, what has been broken will be fixed, what has been sick will be healed, what has been taken away will be, WILL BE restored to us. Of this I AM SURE.

Maybe it won't come in the form that it was before. Maybe it will be a more simplistic lifestyle with less worry and stress. Maybe it will be in the form of finding more truth. Of living out our truth.

Finding who I really am and who I want to be is what I really hope to come from all of this. My thoughts, wants, and desires are being purified in this process. I have never been more thankful for my husband and my own God given tenacious spirits.

"Tenacity is more than endurance, it is endurance combined with the
absolute certainty that what we are looking for is going to
transpire. Tenacity is more than hanging on, which may be but the
weakness of being too afraid to fall off. Tenacity is the supreme
effort of a man refusing to believe that his hero is going to be
conquered." Oswald Chambers


I REFUSE to believe that MY HERO has been conquered!!