Tit's up . . .

Months have passed;  things have changed, things are still the same . . .

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Tit's up . . .  DOA . . .  the fat lady has sung . . . .  

For nearly a year I have been working with the idea in my head that I can, and perhaps more importantly should, sell my way out of my current financial situation, pay off all my creditors, and having done so I could, and probably would, be proud of having done "the right thing."

Ain't going to happen.

As of this month I have accepted that it is not just a possibility but a fact that I have failed financially.  My creditors will not be paid, my obligations will not be met, my good word was not so good.  

Wow-  I would love to wake up and realize this is a dream but  . . . it's not.  I am thoroughly bruised from pinching myself but I am as awake as I am going to be.  

I have failed to live up to my word -  I have proven myself not to be a person with the level of integrity I have always believed.  

And the sun still came up today.

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Interesting that the entire US economy has gone into a tail spin when I missed payments this month.  Investment bankers are failing, AIG has been taken over by the feds, Freddie and Fannie had to be bailed out by the government . . .

I never realized how important I was to the economy.

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When I was in my last year of high school(my junior year but that is another story)  I became a Christian.   Since that time I have moved my beliefs so that I don't probably meet the strict definition of a Christian but there are several ideas that I consider truly wonderful "take-aways." As I try to put a life together "from where I am with what I have" it seems helpful to grab anything that helps-  later I may add others but right now - what can I use from my Christian faith?

• forgiveness-  Yeah!  I made a mistake, (or a bunch of them in this case), but I am forgiven.  There are consequences that must be paid, but my errors don't make me evil.  
• repentance-  Hey-  this is important.  Repentance must mean to stop, to change directions, learn the lessons, and to choose differently.   I think in order to be forgiven I must stop, change directions, and BE different in the future.
• rebirth-  "you must be born again."  It seems to me that being re-born requires that divine intervention that makes it possible for you to be a new person-  with that divine rebirth I am empowered to respond and behave differently.  Having been given the gift of that new self I have an obligation to choose to use that gift to choose those responses and actions that reflect who I will be, the new me, rather than those that reflect who I have been.
• being loved-  I have never completely understood the concept of absolute divine love but I do believe that each of us are specifically and personally loved by God (the universe, the divine, the force, the Tao, the goddess, whatever/however we choose to define the unknowable eternal creator) If we are loved that way then we are deserving all the good that is!
• Easter-  whether you take the story as being historically factual or not, the retelling of the tale has become a wonderful mythical analogy for that whole process of accepting my sins (flaws, errors, mistakes, actions, lack of actions, bad choices, etc), allowing them to kill the me that was responsible for them, and having died to them, rise up as a new person who is alive to all the wonderful possibilities of the endless limitless future.
• Christmas-  regardless of the history or the mythology, I just love the holiday.  Nothing to do with my situation, I just love the warmth, the awareness of love and support and giving and family and friends and the needy and . . .  Happy Christmas!
• Faith-  "the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen"   Substance.  Hope.  Evidence.  

The point of all that is that through all this mess I depend on my faith to remind me that I must accept the "death" I am experiencing to the life that I thought I was living; the forgiveness for the mistakes made; and then to display my repentance by choosing to live-choose-act differently; and then having been born into a new life I should demonstrate moment by moment that I am that new person.   I love, I am loved, and will celebrate both the loving and the being loved.  

I am also looking forward to Christmas!