I'm admitting ownership today to one area of shame in my life . . . I am not a good business person. This probably does not seem either to be shocking, especially to those that know me, or particularily shame-provoking. However, each of us as humans can find unique areas where we're prone to shame.
I've only begun thinking about and naming certain shames in my life, although the visceral feelings are of course familiar. What is shame, anyway? Shame is negative feelings or self talk emphasizing who I am, not what I've done. Brene Brown, a shame resilience researcher, calls these negative shame messages the "shame gremlins'"; those messages of "never enough" in our lives. In her book "Daring Greatly: How the Courage to be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent and Lead", Brene describes both shame and shame resilience in depth.
So, how do we turn from shame to shame resilience? It's a simple concept to begin- naming your shame. Secrets and hiding those uncomfortable feelings make the shame stronger; sharing and owning it develops shame resilience and in turn encourages vulnerability. This in turn allows us to live "Wholeheartedly", as Brene Brown puts it. Being who we are, no holds barred, no deceptions, no masks, is the core of wholehearted living.
So, I'm admitting today, I don't have a good business sense. I make fear-based decisions regarding finances, I emotionalize my financial thinking, I procrastinate seemingly indefinitely and I am pretty risk adversive. I don't like fear-based decision making as a rule, but it seems to be my go-to in business. I also don't have a lot of natural aptitude or knowledge about the business or financial world. It's also an area that I feel most vulnerable about- if you want to make me cry, hit me in the pocket book.
Where does my shame about my business sense come from? At some level, as a society, we equate business success with success. When my sister-in-law was growing up, she was playing the game of "Life" with some other Catholic school girls at recess. When questioned about the game by a priest at the school, he responded, "That's not the game of Life, that's secularism." This is the kind of focus on accumulating stuff, then more stuff. The sole marker of success is the amount of stuff you have.
However, when we measure success in non-material terms, we're thinking about all those important and valuable aspects of our lives that aren't part of our finances. We don't need to define our self worth with mere material success. We should have a sense of self worth beyond what our material success provides. Just a belief in our dignity and worth as human beings can help us live our best, wholehearted lives.
That doesn't mean finances aren't important to us, however. While they aren't the only thing, they can have a big impact. For David, my husband, and I, that impact could be framed as more of a big burden, at least emotionally, in the form of a house we left behind in Saint Louis when we moved nearly 9 years ago. At that time, we had been trying to sell our house in Saint Louis for some time. We bought the house when our oldest was a toddler in 2007 and though it was little, it served our family well. We gardened, planted fruit trees, added new flooring, barbequed on the deck, and settled in. By 2012 (and after the loss of my mother), we were ready to move to Colorado to move closer to my family, particularily my widowed father. Since we bought the house before the real estate crash in 2009, we couldn't find a buyer because foreclosures were readily available for purchase throughout our neighborhood. At one point, a larger, newer house up the block from us sold at auction for $10,000. How could we compete with that!
Finally, we found an arrangement that we thought would work out. We stumbled upon renters who would rent with a contract to buy the house after 4 years. We packed our things and moved to Colorado and ultimately discerned that we would move back to Grand County (both of us had lived here in our youth; this being where we met). A new chapter had begun.
During those 4 years, we lived with very little thought of the house we owned in Saint Louis. After 4 years, we were contacted and told that the tenants were not prepared to purchase at this point. This was a huge blow to us but we discussed it and decided to let them continue to rent while they saved up for the purchase. While this decision wasn't a mistake in itself, we did not set any boundaries (another big area of difficulty for us is boundaries) regarding a future timeline for the purchase and the terms of that purchase. We simply went with a month to month arrangement.
A few years into this loose arrangement, an operator of heavy equipment was tearing down a abandoned, neighboring house in a community revitalization effort. During that removal, they struck the addition on our house, essentially just the master bedroom, breaking a support post underneath the house. While the company responsible admitted responsibility, they only would pay to repair the broken post and direct damage. Unfortunately, we were told by several contractors that the repair could not be done that way because the posts used to support the house were no longer to code. The entire addition would have to be torn down and rebuilt to remedy the situation and bring the addition up to code. However, that additional work wouldn't be paid for by the insurance company. Some of the quotes for the addition rebuild were more costly than what we owed on the entire house. Only a temporary repair to shore things up could be done.
However, this arrangement wasn't what the tenants wanted. They still wanted to purchase the house, but not without a full repair. We couldn't afford a full repair. Then, we procrastinated on decision making. We hired a private adjuster to try to get a larger settlement. We fought with the tenants. Tensions remained high and months would go by with full avoidance on our part. Fear based decision making made even discussing our options feel ugly and un-resolvable.
After fraught discussion and many fits and starts, we offered some of our own money in addition to the settlement money at closing to make up for the fact that the full repair wasn't complete. We were expected to close at the end of September 2019. On October 1, 2019, we missed the first mortgage payment (of many) and let it slide since we still thought the closing was imminent. We'd check in with the title company every few weeks and were told that there were delays and we'd move forward in a couple weeks. Hope reigns eternal, but in this case, we were simply in denial. In December, it suddenly became clear that the deal was dead. We hired a lawyer to help end the relationship with our tenants and they moved out towards the end of January 2020.
We had calls and interest from home investment companies, willing to offer us a portion of what we owed. However, since we weren't living in the house, our mortgage company couldn't offer us the ability to do a short sell. We didn't qualify for other programs since we hadn't been living in the home for so long. Again, we couldn't afford to sell the house for what we could get for it. We decided we'd ignore the calls from interested buyers and just wait for the inevitable, a foreclosure which was looming large that spring.
How odd we were! How impoverished in prayer! We prayed for that foreclosure daily. I called the mortgage company begging for it! However, because of the pandemic, foreclosures were forestalled. We were told we'd simply have to wait.
I was so closed off mentally to any alternatives to the foreclosure. So we sat back and let the pandemic unfold, waiting and longing for the escape that the foreclosure represented. We weren't praying for blessing; we were praying for escape.
For those of you who have heard of Dave Ramsey or the Financial Peace University, he describes two financial types- the nerd (like me) and the free spirit (like David, my husband). In that free-spirited nature, in January of 2021, David received several calls from an individual from an investment company interested in the house. Unbeknownst to us and surprisingly enough given the general economic conditions, the housing market in Saint Louis was undergoing an upswing. David obtained an offer for around what we owed; including the late fees, escrow deficits and compounded interest from over a year on non-payment! Knowing how closeminded I was about the whole thing, he quietly investigated the possibility and laid it out to me one evening before bed.
On my part, I felt as though the proverbial Pandora's box was just opened on me. I felt naked, raw- vulnerable. "How dare he hope for this?" I thought to myself. We hashed out the details and I begrudgingly admitted that if we signed a contract and the sale fell through, we objectively wouldn't be any worse off. And if it worked, we would have successfully done what both of us had been longing for- we'd be free of this particular worry. I admitted to my fears and I followed his lead- to dare to hope for a blessing- not just an escape. Three weeks later, we signed the closing papers in our car at the bank's drive-through (to get them notarized) and sent them via UPS Express. In 48 hours, we received the notification that all items were funded and a week later, we received notice from the mortgage company that the loan was paid off in full. It was finally done.
So why do I call this blessing a Covid miracle? Certainly, I credit completely Our Lord and Savior in the blessing of this house sale. From my faith background, he is the Source of all that is good, so it makes sense that I credit him with this invaluable gift. A blessing, yes, but a miracle? Why do I say so? Simply put, without the unique circumstances of Covid, the foreclosure would have happened a year earlier. Those months of delays allowed the time to pass that led to the very changes that made this sale possible. That foreclosure would have been the ordinary result to a typical situation.
Of course, I'm not saying that God sent Covid-19 and its weird changes in order to save my house from foreclosure. That idea is entirely self-centered and just plain ridiculous. But, God is willing to enter in the messy places in our lives. God does an amazing thing where he transforms the circumstances surrounding us and he radically alters them to create blessing. He takes manure and from it grows wildflowers. Yes, God can take a sum zero game and turn it into a blessing, as he did in our case with this house sale.
My hope is that this house on Koeln Avenue will be thoroughly rehabbed and that some family starting out will be able to buy it, and all the blessings that it represents will continue to flow through its walls and yard and rooms and lawn and gardens. May the blessings ever continue!
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