A casual observer is sipping a cappuccino at a cafe table outside of a French bistro.
When he looks up, he spots a woman walking toward him. She’s well dressed, and her golden blonde hair is pulled back into a low-slung ponytail. The observer watches as the woman digs around in her expensive-looking handbag to pull out her car keys. A black BMW Z4 convertible suddenly blinks and tweets to life. The woman opens the driver’s side door and tosses her handbag — along with a small white shopping bag — into the passenger seat.
The observer continues to watch as the woman shuts her car door and then cranks the engine. She takes a moment to check her make-up in the rearview mirror while the convertible top slowly peels open. The woman puts the car into reverse, and the observer watches as she carefully pulls out of her parking space; then, she disappears down the lazy street that splits through the middle of the posh shopping district.
The observer takes another sip of his cappuccino. He wipes his lips, and says under his breath, “Must be nice…”
But what if the observer knew the real story?
What if he knew that the woman just bought a box of bargain-brand tampons, and two mini Reece’s Peanut Butter Cups with all of the quarters, dimes and nickels she had in her coin purse? (She still has 121 pennies in a Ziplock baggie at the bottom of her purse — which I can tell you, she thinks of as her “emergency money.”)
If the observer could follow the woman all the way home, he’d see her gripping her steering wheel with white knuckles as she cautiously drives passed the driveway leading to her luxury waterfront condo. She’s looking for a tow truck or flatbed. Once she sees that the coast is clear, she makes a three-point turn, and heads back toward her building. She gently navigates her convertible down the steep driveway, and into the gated garage entrance. Once she has the car safely parked inside of her private garage, she takes a deep breath for the first time in five minutes.
She made it home.
With shaky hands, the woman fumbles around inside of the white shopping bag to pull out one of the mini peanut butter cups. She quickly unwraps the candy and pops it into her mouth. As the stiff chocolate and peanut butter melts on her tongue, the woman closes her eyes. Tears slowly slide down her cheeks as she searches for the courage to savor this indulgence that she knows she doesn’t deserve.
I’m the honest fraud.
I’m the woman with the fancy clothes, the sexy convertible, and a life that no longer matches my appearance. I never meant to be living a life I couldn’t afford, but everything happened so quickly. For years, my life resembled a basin filled to the brim with fresh, sparkly water. Then, someone unexpectedly pulled the plug, and my whole world started to rapidly recede… And the next thing I knew, we were circling the drain in this crazy vortex of events that sucked everything I had down the tubes in one noisy and violent swallow.
So let’s go ahead and get it out of the way. You know you’re thinking it. If it makes you feel any better, I’m thinking it, too. So why don’t we say it together?
Boo hoo! The rich blonde girl’s BMW convertible was being repo’d! So sad… (Not!)
I don’t know about you, but I feel better now! And there are so many other layers of my former life that were stripped from me in a humiliating string of events that ultimately don’t make me seem like a very sympathetic character. Even though it’s not attractive, most of the time I don’t naturally feel sorry for spoiled people like me who experience ruin. And I typically prefer to root for the underdogs, and the “over-comers” in life — not the top dogs or the folks who seem to have it all.
The truth is, even when my husband and I were getting evicted from our luxury condo, and dodging calls from creditors, I felt scared, but I didn’t really feel sorry for myself. Back then, I had a very big life with loads of lovely things in it, and my husband and I had the money to support it all. Until one day…
We didn’t.
Let me tell you, the fall from the top creates a lot of velocity that makes the impact shocking and horrific. At least it did when it happened to me.
There are so many other blogs you should be reading about amazing people who have done inspiring and courageous things in their lives. But for some reason, you’re reading about me. (Thank you for that, by the way.) But let me assure you that I’m not remarkable or special in any notable way. I’m just a woman in her late-forties who is doing something the rest of the world does every day, too. I’m surviving.
Normally, when I start writing a story, I prefer to tell a fiction tale. I guess the control freak in me enjoys having all of the say in how the turbulent life events I put my characters through shape them and change them for the better. I like the power and omniscience I feel when I take my characters through some of their worst days, knowing that I will surprise them with the most wonderful joy they’ve ever known if we all just keep reading!
But this time, I’m telling the story “Someone” else is still writing about me.
And just so you know, this is not the story I would’ve written for myself! But I don’t believe I could ever write my own story. I’m not capable of knowing how to perfectly set the plot shifts in my own life for maximum impact; and, I don’t believe I would’ve been brave enough to risk my own safety, security, and personal identity for the sake of an epic tale.
Plainly put, I know for a fact that I’m way too cowardly to write the story God has written for me so far. Yet as an author myself, I can see how specifically God has woven my dark times together with my Light-filled moments to create an interesting, sometimes stranger-than-fiction-life-tapestry that I get to call my own.
Every life is a story. And if you’re totally honest, your own life story doesn’t fit neatly inside of one genre. Mine doesn’t either. My story is a mix of extreme highs, demoralizing lows, and miles and miles of mediocre in between. And just because I decided to blog about the collection of events that make up my past doesn’t make my life story more worthy to be told than yours. It’s not a competition.
But for me, writing about my life is the only thing I know how to do. My hope is that maybe you can share in my honest moments of clarity, and then “laugh-cry” with me when I tell you about the horrors and the humor of living out of a car when you and your husband are total opposites.
But before I jump into all of that, let me set the tone with just a handful of things I’ve learned during the past decade or so of my life:
- You can never really know what’s going on in anybody else’s life – don’t kid yourself about that.
- Creditors don’t care about your sob story; they just want you to pay what you owe.
- Just because you don’t have the money to pay your bills doesn’t mean you lack integrity.
- Your friends and loved ones will try to understand your situation, but they won’t. So have grace in your heart for them when they say things that make you feel completely judged and like a total loser.
- Bargain brand tampons don’t save you money —
so do everything you can to buy the name brand. (That’s what the emergency penny stash is for!) Oh. And don’t skimp on laundry detergent either. (I highly recommend Tide Original. It’s literally worth every penny.) - Be honest with people about your life, but don’t be pathetic.
- It doesn’t make you a bad person to be broke, so don’t pretend.
I want to give you full permission right now to judge me as you read the entries in this blog because when I look back on it, I know there were different choices I could’ve made along the way that might have helped me… But
After what I’ve been through, I realize now that I simply have no room to criticize anyone for doing their best to keep it together. It can be very overwhelming and daunting to figure out how to move forward when your life completely stalls out – especially if you are a perfectionist. But there’s no such thing as “perfect” in this world.
I know that now.
One final thing I need to mention: I’m here today, and in the unique position to tell you this story, because of God’s grace, and the deep love and devotion of so many people in my life who never stopped loving me, believing in me, and, who were willing to let me impose on them along the way. Without these people, I might’ve given up hope. They will know who they are when they read this blog — even if I changed up their names to protect their privacy.
This blog is dedicated to the glory of God — the author and perfecter of my faith — and to the faithful people He placed in my life to support me along the way. I hope the fact that I openly love God won’t scare you away from reading my blog. I promise that I’m never going to preach to you… But I’ll probably just keep preaching to myself!
So anyway… I guess it’s time to start this blog. I want to thank you in advance for joining me
