I know I haven't written for a while but quite honestly I have not only been over whelmed but far too heartbroken to even form the words to express all it is that I am feeling. I have read that spilling one's heart onto paper can help to heal it though so I thought I would finally muster up enough strength to try.
A little over a year ago we discovered we would be losing our house. It was something we choose to do after a battle that was not our choice. Although we probably could have fought to keep it we felt like the amount of money it would take did not out weigh the peace it would bring us since it was a home that had clearly run it's course for us and was no longer fitting our large family. Little did we know at the time that letting go of our house would mean far more than simply that.
After all what started this was us simply trying to save some money in a falling economy. We were told 5 years ago when we purchased our house that we were required to carry flood insurance which we did. We were also informed that new FEMA maps would be coming out and if we no longer fell in the flood plain we would then be able to drop it. We checked yearly for the new maps and finally they were released so without hesitation we dropped our insurance since even according to the "old" maps only the front and back corner of our waterproof foundation home was actually IN the flood plain.
On our next statement we discovered that due to the lack of flood insurance we would have it added on to our mortgage. We disputed and was requested numerous times to provide proof of no longer being in the flood plain which was fax and mailed by not only ourselves but our insurance agent as well. This continued for over half a year as they continually told us some excuse be it they didn't receive it or the certificate was "old". All the while they had been returning our mortgage payments since we were not paying the "full" amount and tacking on late fees as well.
By the time all this was discovered we were so far backwards on everything and emotionally beaten down we just wanted a fresh start. We filed bankruptcy and allowed them to foreclose on our home. Within months we would discover to no surprise that our mortgage company was bought out and in 6 months we would be moving.
It is amazing to me that most people in this country with "good" credit owe a lot of money but yet are treated as if they HAVE a lot of money but once we finally were no longer in debt and had some money we were treated like criminals. The hardest part about all of this by far has been the loss of our home. Not our house so much as our home. Our house we were at peace with letting go of and as I said before even welcomed the fresh start that would come along with it. We prepared ourselves for months over the move... we watched stuff break in our home and intentionally not fix it in hopes that when the time came it would be easier to walk out of a broken house than one that we shared so much of our lives and held so many of our memories. Perhaps that may have been the case had we been able to move into a place where we could pick up again where we left off but sadly that has not happened.
After spending months looking for a place to live we found two places that would have fit our needs. One was not only everything I could have asked for in a place to live but close to everything I have wanted in a home my whole life... the other... a very nice duplex with plenty of space and new carpet. For reasons I still can not wrap my mind around the whys we are living in the latter. My heart aches for the 5 acres of land that would have come with the large single family house but what I think has my heart even more broken over is the feeling that I no longer have a home for my family.
It seems so trivial and I remind myself almost daily that it is just a place to live. Why am I so emotional about all of this? I miss things about our last house... I miss my bathtub, my privacy fence, my sweet neighbors (without dogs that bark early in the morning) but as a whole it is not the house that I long for. It is a quiet stillness in my heart, that safe feeling of being HOME. I have my family and all my belongings but it is a feeling of not being able to put my feet up or let my hair down. To know this is just temporary but not knowing for how long. I am a massage therapist by trade but first and foremost I am mom and I guess with being a "home" maker I feel lost without a home to make for my children... it is almost like losing a part of my soul.
It is funny to think of how my heart has changed with my children (of course in several ways). I use to love moving and exploring new things. I never wanted to get too comfortable in my surroundings, always wanted to see what was waiting over the next hill, the next adventure. Now the only thing I do want is to not feel like a squatter. I just want a place I can dig into, roll around and get comfortable in and nurture my children for the remaining years I have them home with me.
I have been around heart ache enough to know that some of my greatest joys and blessings have come out of my darkest hours so I am trying to not let this break me but it is proving to be much more challenging than even I expected. Which I suppose tells me that is my real lesson from all of this...
"Only the prayers of a broken heart can open the gates to heaven"
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