Silence and Snot

Our Realtor called a little while ago, sounding subdued. She said, "I really hesitate to even articulate this offer because it's so low; however, part of my job is to pass on any offer that comes in."

She hesitated and then said, "The client made an offer of $130,000."

Yup. You did your math correctly. That's about $25,000 less than our price which we had already cut to a level lower than we can really afford. Talk about letting the air out of our balloon. I felt so sad and disappointed.

I doubt that a counter offer is in the works, because she's so extremely far out of the ball bark that even a counter offer would be horrendously low.

So. There you go.

In other news, we will tell our church family tomorrow about my upcoming surgery. I'm not really looking forward to that. On Wednesday night, we had our weekly staff meeting ; Steve asked if I wanted to share the news or if I wanted him to. I told Steve that I would do it. However, when the time came for me to say something, I teared up and couldn't get a word out. And as they all prayed for me and with me, I just sobbed.

As soon as we got out of staff meeting, I had to pull myself back together to teach my Wednesday night class. I dried my eyes, powdered my nose and at 7 pm, was up in front of my class. Although I didn't feel like I was at my best, at least I was holding it together.

At least I held it together until the end of the class when it was time to take prayer requests. After a few people had spoken up with their requests, I opened my mouth to start to give an explanation of what was coming in my life. I was fairly calm for all of about twenty seconds and then I was done for. Even before the tears took over, though, Steve had already gotten up from the front row to stand beside me.

I dribbled off into silence and snot (wouldn't that be a great country song?) and once again, he took over the unhappy task of giving our church family the news. The people in my class came up and gathered around me and prayed, and once again, I cried and cried.

And now we come to Sunday and our main church service where a brief announcement will need to be made. Since I seem to be completely incapable of talking about the subject without dissolving into sadness, Steve will be the one tell the congregation. I will be sitting safely on the second row beside Sarah, holding Kleenex with one hand and Sarah's hand with the other.

I never thought this kind of news would make me so so emotional so that I cry at the least provocation. Sometimes I even cry with no provocation at all. (I guess I'm just trying to stay in practice!)

Once again, I want to say thank you to all of you who have been so dear to us during these past days. (I can't say you're "near and dear" to us, because most of you are thousands of miles away.) But your words and prayers and comments have buoyed my spirits in ways I'll never be fully be able to express.

I've also gotten some wonderful cheery things in the mail, which I'll write about later.

For now, I just wanted you to know that the house is still unsold, and our housing future is still a little uncertain. Cancer surgery and a house crisis, all in the same week.

Are we having fun yet?