YOU ARE NOT YOUR OWN

Part 2 - The Day I Lost Lots of Money!

Back in 2003, Shelly and I had the opportunity to start a new chapter in our lives. One that looking back now, changed our whole lives drastically. I was working for a building products company in East Texas and had the chance to move to Oklahoma (Tulsa area) for a new position with the same company. We knew nothing about Oklahoma, Tulsa, or anything other than Texas. We knew no one there, knew nothing about the area, people, or anything. It was a completely fresh start. What made it more difficult was that we had a young daughter and would be leaving family, friends, and really a life of familiarity and security behind. So of course we were all for it! “Adventure is Out There!” is what I would have said had the movie “Up” come out sooner than it did.

We had tried for a few years to buy a house to no avail. For some reason every time we got close things fell apart. Plus, living on a single income makes it difficult to purchase a house (at least one that would not require lots and lots of attention). We decided that we wanted to buy a house in the Tulsa area. I visited a few times and Shelly flew up once and we looked at what seemed like a million homes. We finally found a house and placed a contract on it. A few days later the sellers decided not to sell. Strike! We were back to square one. But we were used to this pattern. We started to wonder if we’d ever live in a house that we owned. Then we found a house and it was not perfect but was going to work out for us. We placed an offer, negotiated, counter-offered, and accepted in the parking lot of the movie theater in Tulsa, OK. We were going to be home owners.

The process began and the day of the house inspection was approaching. I was unable to be present due to some training I was doing learning my new job and my new territory (I was the Sales Manager for Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Missouri. This would later grow to over 14 states but that is another story!) I asked our realtor Brenda to oversee the home inspection for us since neither of us would be there (mistake #1). Brenda called me later that day and told me, “The inspection looks good except one corner of the house needs some foundation work.” I told here as long as the current homeowners agreed to fix the problem that should be alright (foundation problems in OK are a given not an exception).

A few weeks pass. The house is apparently fixed and all is ready to go. It is Monday morning. All of our possessions were loaded on a moving truck and have already left for Tulsa. All we had was a couple of bags and 1-year old daughter. The scheduled delivery time for the truck was Tuesday afternoon, well after our Tuesday morning closing date. We would have plenty of time to close and then unload our stuff. We say good bye to friends, family, and Texas and head to Tulsa with all the pressure of a new life in hand.

That night we check into a hotel and make our way to the home to do a final walk-through with the realtor. Upon walking in the house and looking around I walk in the living room. I’m checking a few things out now that all of the previous resident’s furniture is gone. I walk over towards one of the corners of the room and trip over something on the floor. As it turns out there was nothing on the carpet after all. There was however something under the carpet. I bend down and feel the floor. It feels like there was a piece of pipe or something underneath the carpet and it was bulging up. “That’s weird” I thought to myself. It wasn’t far from the wall so I grabbed the edge of the carpet and pull it back (mistake #2). This process revealed a 1-inch wide gap/crack/cavernous hole in the slab of the house. Not only was the gap wide it was a different elevation on each side. To me it looked like an earthquake fault line or something. Worse, I could not see the end of it. I followed the crack all the way down that wall, under the wall, and into the next room (which was the Master bedroom). I quickly realized that there was about 2-3 feet of the side of the house that (from one end to the other) had broken off and settled. The whole house was affected. By ‘affected’ I mean ‘broke in half!’ The doors on that side of the house would not even shut because the slab was do badly cracked. Whatever had happened had happened after our initial walk through. At this point, my realtor looks at me and I look back at her with a look that says, “Stop everything. There’s not a chance (in you know where) we’re moving into this house.”

Shelly and I know immediately that this spells disaster! Even if the problem was fixable, there was no way it could be fixed before tomorrow morning. It would have taken weeks. Shelly begins to cry. I get very upset. My realtor immediately gets on the phone but by this time it is about 7:00pm. We get back to the hotel room that night and our lives are a wreck. The crying, doubting, and questioning begin. “What have we done?” “God for sure doesn’t want us here.” “Are we stupid or what?” “How do we get our money back?” That last question began to ring in my mind...

The next morning (the same time we were supposed to be closing on the house) I begin a conversation with my realtor that borderlines a crazy man. At this point I am determined to back out of the contract 100%, get all my money back, and make people pay for this mistake. (What had happened is that the foundation people who were supposed to fix a small crack had done a poor job and actually made it worse and had not told anyone). I say to my realtor, “There’s no way I’m going to buy this house Brenda. We were lied to, deceived, and I want every bit of my money back.” I was mad and I meant it. I wanted it all: earnest money, inspection money, all the fees and bills associated with buying a house that we had already spent. I was going to get it all back or the world was going to feel the weight of a ticked-off Texan.

Now, remember the moving truck? The one with all of our stuff in it that was driving somewhere around OK with a couple of guys that had no idea our world had crashed around us? Yeah, that moving truck.

Yep, it was scheduled to arrive that afternoon with or without a house. That meant that we had just under 3 hours to find a place to live in order to unload our stuff. (This is another great story here but I’ll save that for those who are interested. By God’s provision, we did find a place and it ended up being wonderful).

Over the next couple of weeks I proved to all that I was a jerk and I had rights as a person. Plus, I did get my money back. In fact I had talked to enough people that I had gotten back everything from everyone (which is next to impossible I’m told) except our earnest money. If you’ve ever bought a house, then you know this is no small chunk of change either. The only way to get that money back was to file for mediation and appear before the homeowners along with both realtors. I was going to have to fight for it and fight I did. Like a big fat jerk, I fought for it with a bad attitude. I filed for mediation and it was scheduled for a Monday morning in downtown Tulsa.

During that time, since we were new to the area, we were church shopping. We had visited several churches and had not found one to call home. The Sunday prior to my mediation we visited a church and the sermon that morning was based out of Luke 6. This was the text. “But I say to you who hear, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. To one who strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also, and from one who takes away your cloak do not withhold your tunic either. {and this is the part that I hated to hear...} Give to everyone who begs from you, and from one who takes away your goods do not demand them back. And as you wish that others would do to you, do so to them."

I remember thinking that day, “I wonder what poor sap this message was for. It sure wasn’t for ME!” Like a fiery pit in the soul of your stomach I was hearing from the Spirit of God. It was not audible (but I wish it had been). “Robert, why are holding on to this? So what if you get it back? Will that make you a better person? Will that make you fulfilled? Happy? Will you have won? How many people will have been hurt in the process?”

Here is the part of the story that I hate telling because it shows how much of a jerk I was. The homeowners who owned the house were a young couple like us with a child. They had also just had a new child. The wife had to go back to work within a week or two after the birth because during the selling process, they had gone ahead and purchased another house. So when we backed out of the agreement they were forced to pay for two homes. I felt sorry for them I really did but my excuse was that I had been deceived and that I was in the right. They should have been more careful themselves.

So as I sit there, listening to that sermon, I felt God’s hand of love on me like a 10-ton wall resting directly on my heart. I was broken. We left that morning and ironically never went back to that church. However, God spoke to me there for sure that day. I told Shelly that I was going to cancel my request for the money and she was shocked at first but because she is a better person than I am she quickly agreed. It was too late to call off the mediation for the next day so I was going to have to go through with it. Except this time I had a different agenda.

That morning, in downtown Tulsa, I sat in a small room with my realtor; a very distraught just-had-a-baby - tired of all this crap-homeowner, along with her realtor, and an innocent mediator who was just doing this one more time that day. Like a person sitting next to you, I felt the sense of God’s presence around me. The five of us not sure what the next few moments were going to unfold. Since I had called the mediation I was given the chance to speak first. I saw the feelings of frustration on the face of that young mother and knew that she had probably practiced a thousand times what she would say to the man who had made her life a living hell for the past few weeks. So I offered her a chance to go first. I wanted to give her the opportunity to speak her mind. She deserved it. She bitterly said, “No, I want to hear what you have to say.” So I began...

“I called this meeting with the full intention of getting my money back. I feel sorry for you guys and your circumstances but we were lied to and deceived. I feel as if I do have a legitimate argument and could probably make a case for getting my money back...”

{I paused here. Maybe for dramatic effect or maybe for prayer I’m not sure}.

I continued, “But I’m a Christian, and I feel that being a Christian causes a person to do some things that sometimes do not make sense. Things that maybe even feel awkward and foolish. I’m sorry about what you and your husband have had to endure and I’m sure you feel just as cheated as we do. So while we need that money ourselves, if it would help you guys out in your circumstance, I would like to give it all to you.”

[Silence] is too small of a word for what followed.

After a few seconds, the weeks of hurt, sleepless nights, and bitter feelings burst out in that young mother like nothing I’ve ever seen. She was crying. Her realtor began to cry. My realtor was crying. I was almost crying. The Mediator however... he was very much at a lost for words. He just sat there with a stupid expression on his face. He had never seen anything like this. He began slowly, “Uh... Uh...., so I guess... we’re uh... done here?” He looked at me with a look that said, “Please explain what I’m supposed to do from here.” I looked at him and said, “Yeah, we’re done. Let’s go!” Before that session was over the young woman’s realtor had invited us to visit her church (she had heard we were looking).

A few days later my realtor sent us a card and a cross (which we still have in our living room). In the card she said this, “I’ve never seen Christianity lived out like that before. We all preach it all the time, but it is refreshing to see someone actually trusting in it.”

As I drove back to our little two-bedroom duplex that day I felt a flood of emotions. Anger for allowing myself to get so wrapped up in ‘my rights.’ Compassion and pain for that young couple who still had a lot of difficult decisions to make. Humility because I had just been a part of something that was beyond me. However mainly I felt satisfaction for doing the right thing. Not because it was necessarily the right thing to do... but rather because it was what the Spirit had told me to do, and that made all the difference. That made it right.

Sometimes it’s just about obedience.