Our Quiverfull

Several weeks ago, right after my miscarriage, I mentioned that we were facing a hugely challenging situation, and that I was choosing not to blog about it until it was over. While I don’t feel any need to share every aspect of our family’s life on this blog, I also have a commitment to be honest and not to mislead in areas where I do share. So, in that spirit, here’s what’s been going on here – first assuring you that we are FINE.

If you’ve read this blog for long, you know that Jeff lost his job 2 1/2 years ago, and despite his diligent efforts, he’s been unable to find a regular job. We did OK for a long time and did everything we could to stay on top of things financially, even to the point of cashing out Jeff’s 401K. Jeff has worked hard at our homeschool business, started another small business, and has been helping a friend launch a company, but about a year ago we fell behind on our mortgage payments.

Jeff immediately contacted the bank in the hopes that they would work with us, but incredibly they told us we weren’t far enough behind. By the time we were “behind enough,” we couldn’t see a way to catch up! Earlier this year a number of friends in the homeschool publishing community held a fundraiser for us. We used that money to start the new business I mentioned above, infuse some cash into our homeschool company so that we wouldn’t have to close it, set aside some money for basic living expenses, and planned to use the rest to catch up on our mortgage.

What followed was a complete comedy of errors (except that it wasn’t funny at all). Turns out you can’t just call your mortgage company and mail them a check to catch up. We had to jump through zillions of hoops, and it was obvious that the right hand didn’t know what the left hand was doing – for example, it took JP Morgan/Chase almost a month just to tell us how much we owed! We were told that we needed to restructure our mortgage, and again were given many hoops to jump through. We never had a dedicated account manager or single person helping us. Instead, we just called a call center and had to explain everything each time to a new person. These people often gave us conflicting information.

We finally reached the point that Jeff had about 80 pages of paperwork to fill out and fax in for the restructure. We were alarmed to be told that we were in foreclosure at that point, but were repeatedly reassured that as long as we turned that paperwork in on time, we would be fine.

Jeff faxed in all of the paperwork, and since he wanted to be diligent, he called to be sure the paperwork had been received, only to be told that no one could find it. He faxed it all in over and over, calling each time with the same results. The fax center wasn’t even in the call center, so it wasn’t like anyone could get up and look for it. We were told that we couldn’t not overnight the paperwork or even fly there to hand deliver it – it had to go through the fax center and then through a number of places to stop the foreclosure. Our house was scheduled to sell on a Monday morning, and by that Friday afternoon they had only found the first few pages and the last few pages out of all the copies Jeff had faxed.

We called that Monday morning very early and were told that they had found all of our paperwork, saw that it had all been sent in on time, but that no one at the call center had the authority to stop our house from being sold. We had a lawyer, but even he was unable to stop the sale at the last minute. He said that Chase is like a bunch of trains going different speeds on different tracks that never cross. (f you work for Chase, I’m sorry – I’m sure that there are many fine people there – but the SYSTEM is deeply flawed.) Our paperwork was on a slow train and the people selling our house were on a fast train. The different departments couldn’t even communicate with each other. It was truly unbelievable to be told that they KNEW we had done everything right but that they could sell our home out from under us anyway.

No one bought the house at the auction that day, so it just reverted to the bank. At that point Freddie Mac was handling it. Jeff contacted them the day after the auction and explained the situation. They seemed easier to work with and we had one specific person we could speak with each time. They sent out a real human being to gather all of the paperwork again in the hopes that we could still do a mortgage restructure and stay in the house. We were told that this process could take a VERY long time, and that if we were turned down we would have a minimum of 2 months notice to get out of our home.

We’ve been working with Freddie Mac for a few months now. Every now and then they would ask for additional paperwork, Jeff would send it, and they would confirm that they had received it.

In late September, out of the blue, we were given 10 days notice to leave our home. We had never received any paperwork or letter from Freddie Mac and didn’t even know we had been turned down. The person assigned to our case stopped returning Jeff’s calls. A lawyer was unable to help – since the house had reverted to the bank, they had a legal right to evict us even with no notice, despite any assurances they had made to us. The lady at the sheriff’s office persuaded them to be “compassionate” and give us 14 days because of our large family and because of Noah. She also scheduled the lock out as late as possible which gave us a few more days.

I called every rental agency, every apartment complex, every rental in the paper, and every word of mouth source available. None of them worked out. Anything running through any kind of agency had a policy of 2 people per bedroom . . . and there are 10 of us! Other places had no central air – not an option with Noah. Other people just didn’t want to rent to a big family, or the place had just been rented out right before I called, or the rent was astronomical. We were reminded of the Scripture that says no good thing will He withold from them that walk uprightly. I knew that Jeff had walked uprightly in all of this. He is a good, diligent, honest man who did absolutely everything he was told to do. We encouraged each other with that verse and other verses, and the Lord reminded us that His idea of “good” might not match up with our idea of “good” (easy, comfortable, pleasant) – but that His good would truly be better for us than anything we could arrange.

At different points it looked like we had a lead and had found a place to rent. One was in a truly scary neighborhood, and the other was teeny tiny – under 600 square feet. We were OK with those options, because we KNEW that the Lord would put us where He wanted us to be. Every lead fell through.

In the meantime, I was trying to pack up our home of 12 years and our business without knowing where we were moving or how much space we would have, all while trying to recover physically from my miscarriage. Just days before we had to be out, I was on the phone with a friend telling her that I was eager to see how the Lord was going to come in and show Himself since there was NOTHING else I could do – no more leads to follow, no more places to call, no more options. As we were talking, another caller beeped in. It was a landlord whose home had been rented out right before we inquired about it. Turns out that rental agreement fell through and the house was available if we wanted it. We didn’t know anything at all about the house, the location, or anything, but we said we would take it!

With a lot of help from family, friends, and church family, we were able to get the house all cleaned (it had been empty for 3 years) and get everything out of the old house into the new house just in the nick of time.

This new home is amazing. It is very large – larger than the home we left. It has a bedroom for Jeff and I, one for the boys, and one for the girls (this is the arrangement we had before). There is a massive family room just like we had before – but this one has a window seat. There is a large front room that holds our ginormous dining room table and our desk (like we had before( for a combination dining room/school room. There is a more than adequate kitchen about this size of my other one, and a laundry room/pantry the size of my kitchen!! There is a pretty, sunny playroom that is open onto the kitchen and the dining/school room, so my little ones are very close and happy to play near Mommy.

It sits on a gorgeous 1 acre lot with tons of fruit trees/bushes, beautiful landscaping, and all sorts of places for the children to play. It is immediately adjacent to a very, very, nice, quiet, established subdivision and we have met a number of our neighbors. There is no traffic and the children can ride their bikes, take walks, etc. While our town is small, and nothing is very far away, this house is VERY convenient to everything – 2 minutes to shopping, just around the corner from our children’s favorite park/playground, and even closer to church than we had been before. It’s even much closer to Noah’s doctor! The landlord has been amazing and is asking LESS in rent than we were paying for our other home! (I have to admit that it has been incredible just to call someone else about a leaky faucet or a problem with the air conditioner LOL).

Because we didn’t know where on earth we would be living, we got a POD rental container right off the bat and started dramatically paring down the things we hoped to move with us, then put everything else in the POD. I literally brought maybe 1% of our books, 20% of our games, and 20-25% of our toys. We limited the children to about 7 outfits each and 3 pajamas each (much more for Noah and Mary Faith since they often need more than one outfit per day due to spills, etc.). I am really enjoying having so much LESS to deal with . . . or I guess I am theorizing that I will enjoy it since we had only been in the house for maybe a week and a half when I got sick. We are storing our POD at our church and haven’t burned any bridges in our down-sizing since we can always go get something if we really have to. We thought and prayed a lot about what to bring, though, and I hope we won’t need to take much out of the POD for a long time. Getting the POD was an excellent decision and it made it more manageable to prepare for the unknown so quickly. Ideally we would have had a yard sale and so on, but there just wasn’t time.

I don’t want to give the impression that this has just been a happy, giddy, tip-toe through the tulips experience. It has been physically very hard, and my utter, bone-numbing exhaustion from the move almost certainly was a factor in how sick I got so fast last week. Out of our very limited number of days to move, several were tied up with big Noah appointments (some in Greenville), one whole day was spent calling different rental places, and a couple of days were spent just cleaning every surface of the new house. It was probably the most difficult thing I’ve ever done in terms of the volume of work compared to the amount of time we had. Our dryer died the day we moved it over, and while it was still under extended warranty (praise the Lord!), the part was back-ordered for almost 2 weeks which meant daily trips to the laundromat to dry several loads of laundry in addition to everything else. Talk about a time killer!! Of course, the washing machine proceeded to die next, while I was in the hospital, so we (meaning Jeff LOL) were back at the laundromat each day until that was fixed at last just this morning.

In all of this, it has been amazing how much peace we all had. There was no panic or despair. The Lord was very near, and we KNEW that He was good and was going to work this for our good. It’s interesting – several times a year Compassion International sends a group of bloggers to one of the areas where they work so the bloggers can report on things first hand. They had a group in Kenya not long before our house sold at auction, and they had a group in Guatemala not long before we got our eviction notice. We always try to follow the different bloggers during these trips, and as we saw and read about families living in garbage dumps and slums and boxes and lean-to’s, we found that we were simply not able to have pity on ourselves AT ALL. We were fully aware that even if we were in the tiniest, yuckiest rental in Greenwood, there would be millions of people around the world who would give ANYTHING to trade places with us. No matter what, we weren’t going to end up living in a box or a garbage dump . . . but even if we had, the Lord would have been there as much as if we ended up in a mansion.

I can honestly say that I never dreamed that we would end up in such a pleasant, abundant home. When we thought that we would be in various “less than ideal” situations, we were truly OK with that – completely at peace and eager to see how the Lord would refine us and use us through those circumstances. I consider this just a beautiful gift from Him, and Jeff and I were so thankful that our children grasped and embraced these truths. What a treasure! We’ve learned sweet lessons and seen God move in ways that we wouldn’t have seen if we hadn’t lost our home.

So – I share all of this to be open with you. I need to change the mailing address for Noah, and the observant among you would surely notice a different background in pictures that I post. I didn’t want this be fodder for speculation. Another reason for sharing in such detail is that I am certain that there are many among you facing similar situations. The whole JP Morgan Chase scandal broke during our move and we were amazed to realize that many people had their paperwork conveniently “lost” and ended up losing their homes as a result. Maybe hearing how the Lord showed His faithfulness to us could help encourage someone else.

The reason I didn’t share anything until now (well, aside from being ridiculously busy), is that I just wasn’t comfortable pulling you all along on this drama-filled roller coaster ride. While we were looking for a home, things were so up and down and changing so fast that it wasn’t practical to share, and I wasn’t willing to share with the universe that we still had no where to go so close to our eviction date. I hope you understand.

Noah has been doing well. He loves this grassy yard (our other was all woods) and frequently commandeers his older siblings to pull him around in a wagon or push him around in his loaner wheelchair. (Keep praying for things to fall in place for his “real” wheelchair!) He had a little anxiety when we were in transition and for a couple of days he didn’t seem to fully understand where his things were going. He was very confused by the fact that I was in the hospital and several times he expressed that he was worried that I got left behind at the old house even though we had been here for a number of days before I got sick. (Oh, and what a blessing there, isn’t it?? I can’t imagine what would have happened if I had gotten sick during the move!!)

I’m feeling better, but not AS better as I would like. I did a very short errand with Jeff late this afternoon and was stunned at how exhausted I was and how much I started hurting. Ugh. It is hard to rest with so much unpacking left to do – while every room is mostly unpacked and fully functional, several rooms still have at least a little left to unpack. Having a working washer and dryer is sure to make things start to move more smoothly, and of course the children have been a tremendous help.

Oh, and in the middle of all of this I had my birthday. I’m 29 again! My sweet husband knew what I wanted most of all, and he got his parents and my mom and step-dad to go in with him to get me a Flip camcorder – yes, a Kate-Proof-Camcorder! I’ve taken some cute footage of the younger ones and look forward to being easily able to share video here now. William also had a birthday right smack in the middle of all of this and turned 16, which I can hardly believe. He was a great sport about not getting a typical birthday celebration. We surprised him by taking him to Wal-Mart on an “errand” where we “just happened” to run into both sets of grandparents. We all went in together and let him pick out a new bike as his birthday present from all of us. He was thrilled and has really enjoyed his new bike . . . and I was thrilled that we were able to please him so easily in the midst of so much chaos that day. He is a great young man and I am so blessed to be his mom.

I’ve written quite a post – perhaps the title of “The Story” was misleading? Maybe “The Long Epic Drama” would be more suitable . . .

Thank you for your continued prayers and encouraging comments. You all bless me more than you can imagine.

Blessings,
Kate

NEW MAILING ADDRESS FOR NOAH:
Noah Estes
101 Sherwood Lane
Greenwood, SC 29649

This entry was posted on October 27, 2010 at 7:38 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.