It Was A Mistake

Recently I have become more acquainted with the words, “it was a mistake.”  That phrase struck me as curious when uttered by the seller of real estate I am under contract to purchase.  The seller has breached the contract and that was his phrase.  And I have to agree.

• It was a mistake not to have a title search done or to have purchased title insurance when he purchased the land.  A title search would have disclosed the oil and gas lease.
• It was a mistake to lease/option the property without recording the lease.  There is a procedure and order with real estate.  Everything that affects or could affect chain of title and potential claims against it must be recorded with the County Recorder.
• It was a mistake for the seller to sell land with a right of first refusal vested in someone else.

What has come of all of these “mistakes?”  I am racking up lots of attorney fees, spending a lot of time, losing interest on money that could be in a bank, and facing the potential of having to bring a lawsuit to preserve my right to purchase the real estate, an idea I am loathe to entertain.  In addition my house is cluttered with furnishings that should be moved to that real estate instead of daily tripping me up.  How do I even celebrate Christmas when my Christmas things are under and behind piles of stuff?  A mistake is a something that can be erased, undone; that is not the case here. 

Last night I dreamed that I had won the approval of my teacher, but to show my courage and bravery I plunged into a frigid lake to rescue a floating beach ball even as the wind drove it past me and the current pulled me away from shore.  Sometimes I wonder if the property is worth all the time, trouble, and expense.   

Right now I’m telling myself that if it weren’t me, someone else would have to take this on and suffer as I have.  My comfort is knowing that I am saving someone else all this trouble and expense and that’s my Christmas gift to that unknown person.

Have you ever been in a situation where you were second guessing an earlier decision that seemed so right?  Did you stick with your first instinct or back out?  How did it work out for you?

 

 

Search image By Tall Chris at Flikr.Panyd at en.wikipedia [CC-BY-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], from Wikimedia Commons

Game board By Lucius Kwok (Own work) [CC-BY-2.5 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5)], via Wikimedia Commons

Gift house By Howard Dickins from Cardiff (Gift House) [CC-BY-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Both Sides Now

I’m stealing this title from a Judy Collins song of the same name from the mid 1970’s.  Even if we try can we see both sides, or simply an illusion?  Let me illustrate.

The other night I walked into a candy store argument.  I walked into an Anthony Thomas Candy Store to purchase the requisite Christmas gift for my mother-in-law.  (Now, don’t tell her; she already knows.)

Engaged at the counter were an irate customer and the store manage, the only employee present that evening.  After my husband and I stepped into the store, a few other shoppers walked in.  We all listened to the argument because it was loud and passionate, filled with emotion.  Here is how it went (in the interest of time I have condensed 10 or 15 minutes into 1).

Old woman customer (OWC): (loudly and passionately) I need the mailer for each box.  You always have the mailer.  I need the mailer that fits the box.

Anthony Thomas Manager (ATM):  (after she had wrapped and presented the five candy boxes) I’m sorry, but I don’t have any of those large mailers right now, but I can put the candy in a larger box and pack it well for you, so it won’t rattle or shake.

OWC:  I need the mailer that fits the box.  I come in here every year at this time and buy the same order.  You should know that.  I always get the mailers for free.  I don’t want all the candy in the large box; each one goes to a separate address.

ATM:  There is no extra charge for me to box this for you with extra packing in this large box, I simply don’t have any mailers to fit that large candy box right now.  I can put the smaller boxes in mailers for you and put the large box in it’s original container. 

OWC:  (much louder)  I come in here every year and get the mailer for free, why won’t you give it to me now?

ATM:  I could ship the box for you so you wouldn’t need a mailer, but it doesn’t ship from our store, it ships from the factory and costs $X. 

OWC:  (on the verge of tears) I don’t want to pay you to ship it, I want the mailer for free.

It finally ended with the ATM agreeing to keep the OWC’s candy purchase (which she refused to pay for unless she was provided the mailer) behind the counter and they would finish the transaction on the following day.

When we left the store I told my husband, “don’t let me get like that when I am old.”  I said that because I could see myself in that old woman who, when she couldn’t get things the way she wanted them, took her frustrations out on the sole employee.  She was pitiful and needy.  I feel that way sometimes when I’m tired and out of sorts and the menu picture doesn’t match what I’m given in a restaurant. I thought about the OWC and all her wasted effort.  She could have gone down the road to FedEx Office or the post office and gotten a box to fit her candy.  All that passion and effort to send candy to someone in Florida who probably won’t even care when or how they got it. 

The ATM handled the customer patiently, with grace and kindness, but she held her distress internally as any good manager would.  I watched her stress level rise in the face of that OWC who could not, would not be satisfied. 

Are we more like the OWC, only seeing our side of things, or are we more like the ATM, doing her best to keep the peace?  Or do we fall somewhere in the middle. 

If we are one of those two, can we see the viewpoint of the other?  Has something like this ever happened to you?  This Christmas season, please share the love of Christ with cashiers and store clerks and even angry old women and men.   

 

 

http://pinguin.sten-net.de/ “The Angry Penguin“], licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License by its creators [http://red20.deviantart.com/ Swantje Hess] and [http://sten-net.de/ Jannis Pohlmann].

A Moment In Time

Even the shortest of walks from the driver’s seat of your car to the gas pump can provide you with characters that may someday populate your novel.  On a recent gray morning, the Sam’s Club gas attendant walked over to my red Civic as I waited for the tank to fill. 

He stood behind the car. “Oh, I thought it was a Cavalier.” 

“No, it’s a Civic Why, do you have a Cavalier?”

“A foreign car.”  He shook his head.  “I have a 1999 Cavalier that’s been garaged every winter.  I thought yours was a Cavalier, too.”  He walked away still shaking his head.

I didn’t have the heart to call after him that my car was made in the U.S.A. also, maybe even in Ohio.   

What incidental encounters affect you?  How can you use them?

 

 

1999 Chevrolet Cavalier by IFCAR (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Does a Bigger Girth Give You More of Jesus?

You can read in 2 Corinthians 4:8:  we are pressed on every side, yet not straitened (crushed, distressed); perplexed, yet not unto despair; (ASV)

Two of the dictionary definitions for pressed are “to act upon with steady applied weight or force,” and “to compress or squeeze, as to alter in weight or size.”

What happens to you when you’re pressed, compressed or squeezed, or acted upon with steady applied force?

I know what I do: I eat, altering in weight and size. During my mom’s last sickness, death, and the clearing out of her house, I gained 20 lbs. and just the other day I heard someone say her daughter was my height.  She said it as I stood a couple of feet from her daughter looking over her daughter’s head.  So I must have gained some height, also.  How does that happen?

The Bible passage goes on to say that we always carry around Christ’s death in our bodies, so the life of Jesus may be revealed in those same bodies.

It sure doesn’t seem like my weight and size alteration from stress eating is what Paul meant when he wrote that passage.  Changing the size of the container does not allow more Jesus into my life.  But perhaps the long struggle I now face to regain a normal size for me is what will reveal the life of Jesus.  I sure hope there’s an upside to all of this.

What do you think?  How do our struggles reveal the life of Jesus in our bodies?

The Gift That Keeps On Giving

Books are a gift that keeps on giving because any book you give, gives to the one who reads it and their entire circle of friends. The first book I remember being given was

The Yearling

I remember this book well because it was the first hardback book I had ever received, it came from my favorite aunt, and I treasured it so much that it still holds a prime spot in one of my bookcases.  If you want to start a trend in the life of a child or friend, here are some books I recommend in no particular order.  The first two are novels for adults.

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay (with bonus content): A Novel

This book involves 2 teenage cousins, 1 an artistic New Yorker, the other an artistic immigrant from Prague escaping the Nazis.  One wants to make a name for himself; one wants to free his family and especially his younger brother.  An amazing story with plenty of conflict to keep you reading. 

Bel Canto (P.S.)

Bel Canto is the story of a group of disparate people—a politician, a pianist, a priest, an opera singer, and others—taken hostage by a band of Guerillas in a South American country.  Beautifully written.

The Jesus Storybook Bible: Every Story Whispers His Name

Beautifully written Bible Stories for children and adults.

Trusting God: Even When Life Hurts

This is more about trusting God than the hurts of life.  It provides hope and leads to prayer.

For older elementary school children, teenagers, and adults I recommend the following books by Gary D. Schmidt.

Okay for Now

The Wednesday Wars

William Bradford: Plymouth's Faithful Pilgrim

Trouble

Pilgrim's Progress

Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy (Readers Circle (Laurel-Leaf))

Gas and Oil and Leases, Oh My!

I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about gas and oil. . .or mineral leases.  A momentary thought flits through my brain when I fill my car, but no thought at all when I use hot water or turn up the heat or even fire up my gas grill.

It wasn’t until the Title Company found an old (1960’s) oil and gas lease on the property I am purchasing that I became familiar with terms like casinghead gas,  discovered that Ohio has a database of wells and mines, and learned about Ohio’s laws protecting land owners like the Dormant Mineral Act of 1989.

I was further educated when I took time to actually read the oil and gas lease.  The oil company is given the store while the landowner may be doled out a candy bar now and again. 

I can see it now.  Her hands submerged in foamy warm dishwater she observes the unfolding scene through the steamy kitchen window.  Like a ship emerging from fog, a grand sky-blue car turns into the drive kicking dust and gravel into the dry winter air as it advances past the barn and comes to a stop  

Her hair droops from the steam as she wipes her hands on a towel and watches as the oil company rep, in a suit and tie but no coat, emerges from the car and, with a paper in one hand and a wad of cash in the other, strides to the door.  He knocks sharply.  She hurries to let him in from that cold January day and invites him to sit by the stove and warm himself.  He lays the paper and cash on the kitchen table and  asks her about the neat jars of fruit and vegetables along the wall.  That’s her winter ration, she says.  He asks for her husband and she tells him she’s a widow. 

He speaks to her of free heat and hot water and even free gas for her stove.  How much will a gas stove cost? He asks.  When she shakes her head he pulls hundred dollar bills from his pocket and waves them in the air.  You’ll be rich when the first gusher comes in.  You won’t need to worry about anything. 

He lays the contract on the table and pulls from his pocket a silver pen with his name black on it like the oil that will soon follow.  He carefully prints her name with widow noted below, and tells her to sign at the X.  Her hand shakes as she signs her name.  He pays her $8.75, a five, three ones, and three quarters and winks, then slips her a ten dollar bill.   It’s a signing bonus, he says, because she signed quickly, leaving him time to talk to her neighbors before the day is done. 

She puts the money in an empty canning jar by the stove and thinks of the new stove she was promised.  Soon. 

What happens next?  Nothing.  Nada.  No thing at all.  She’s just sold her mineral rights for $18.75, for a mess of pottage, for nothing.  Now, more than 40 years later, months and thousands of dollars will be needed to remove that useless lease.  I had planned to close on the property before Thanksgiving.  Now it looks like it might be late spring before I can close.

Have you ever done something without fully considering the consequences?  What was the result?  Were you able to fix the problem? 

 

What Can I Give Him? (Black Friday Considerations)

 

In the Bleak Midwinter by Christina Rossetti (1872)

In the bleak mid-winter
Frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron,
Water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow,
Snow on snow,
In the bleak mid-winter
Long ago.

Our God, Heaven cannot hold Him
Nor earth sustain;
Heaven and earth shall flee away
When He comes to reign:
In the bleak mid-winter
A stable-place sufficed
The Lord God Almighty,
Jesus Christ.

Enough for Him, whom cherubim
Worship night and day,
A breastful of milk
And a mangerful of hay;
Enough for Him, whom angels
Fall down before,
The ox and ass and camel
Which adore.

Angels and archangels
May have gathered there,
Cherubim and seraphim
Thronged the air,
But only His mother
In her maiden bliss,
Worshipped the Beloved
With a kiss.

What can I give Him,
Poor as I am?
If I were a shepherd
I would bring a lamb,
If I were a wise man
I would do my part,
Yet what I can I give Him,
Give my heart.

What can we give this Christmas?  Give our hearts; give something from our heart.  Make something.  Bake something.  Cook something, Draw something. Paint something.  Write something. 

What will you give this Christmas?

 

 

Picture by Ricardo André Frantz (User:Tetraktys) (taken by Ricardo André Frantz) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons