Bits and Pieces of my life

"This is not What I Bargained For"

That is a line from a song by the Indigo girls. I don’t know how many times I thought this during the time from September 2003 to April 2004. I’d been through some rough times, and simply refused that the worst was yet to come. But I think there was a part of me that was afraid, very afraid.

I’m not going to say I made a deal with God. That means it’s got two sides, I do my part, and He does His. I had made a commitment, “Your will, not mine” and I was bound and determined to see this through. When I left WI, I thought “What if I never live with my husband again” and I never said to myself, that will never happen, but instead I said “God, You are in control, and I trust that WHATEVER You ask of me, You will give me the strength to get through it”.

God have given me a job I loved, a new home that felt more like “home” than WI ever did. My husband and I had a better relationship than we’d have for a long time, but things were far from settled. It was risky buying a second home. Financially we were doing fine, as long as nothing happened with my husband’s job, and there were so many rumors flying around that place, we really didn’t know what might happen.

We got all the animals and most everything else moved to SD. My husband kept some shop tools and minimal furniture and cooking utensils to get by. We were ready to re-list the property with another realtor my hubby selected. He felt much better about her qualifications, and she was based in MN, and understood much more about marketing a high end property to a limited audience. I spruced up the WI home, and it really looked “showroom” perfect. I was confident that with the house emptied out and cleaned up, our new realtor would have us an offer and my husband could be in SD before the first of the year. My husband started driving to SD each weekend, and after his folks headed south for the winter, he moved into their Condo, much closer to his work. So on Friday, he would leave work and drive to SD. Sunday he’d leave SD, drive to WI to check on the place, spend the night and drive to work Monday. He’d stay in the condo Tuesday and Wednesday, then drive back to WI Thursday after work, and then back to SD Friday. He was putting a lot of miles on his old Pontiac Sunbird, and I was worried it would strand him some day. It had near 200,000 miles on it. October passed, and November, and we still had no offer on the house. I was worried about the reliability of my husband’s car, worried he would get stranded on the highway on a cold winter night. With the great deals the auto companies were offering, we purchased a 2004 Saturn Ion, 0% down, 0% interest for five years. My husband took my 1999 Saturn (also with about 200,000 miles on it, but in much better condition) and I got my new car. My husband talked me into getting a manual. But since it’s so flat here in SD, and I drive almost all interstate miles, it has worked out well.

Things seemed to be working out ok, and in January we finally got an offer on our house. It was at the very low end, and my husband did not want to even consider it. In fact, he told the realtor flat out “No”. She gave him a few days, then asked him about making a counter, but he was not willing to. I think at this point we felt that in another month, people would be thinking of moving in the spring, and we had a good chance of getting a better offer. The offer was low, it was contingent on them selling their property, and it just seemed like if we held out a little bit longer, we could get a better offer. A week later our realtor came back with another offer, and put more pressure on my husband to consider it. My husband told her that $XXXX was the lowest he would consider, and the realtor talked him into putting that into writing, and the buyers accepted.

It was a relief to have an offer, but it wasn’t something we were excited about. In fact, my hubby and I both hoped we would get a better offer before they removed the contingency. The buyers asked for 90 days, with a projected closing of April 15^th. That would make it 1 year and 1 day from when I left WI. But our realtor assured us that if things when smoothly, we could expect to get the closing moved up. She also assured us she would continue to actively market the property until the contingency was removed.

My husband was dealing with his new boss, a younger man who had no experience running a program like they had. His new boss proceeded to double the workload and never spent time talking to the existing staff about his plans (on a side note, this boss has since been replaced, I don’t think he lasted even a year). The new boss was bringing in his own people, and we were very concerned that if he knew my husband planned on quitting once our WI house sold, he would have fired him. My husband was making a lot of money, and we needed that income to make two mortgage payments. Once we sold the WI place, we could pretty much live on my income, but for now, losing his income would have meant serious financial difficulties. So my hubby kept quite about what was happening. People say women gossip, but men can be just as bad. My husband has always been somewhat quite about his personal life, and soon the rumor was that we had split up, I was in SD, he was living in MN and we were selling the WI place. It was all true, except that we did not intend our split up to be permanent. It’s amazing what conclusions people will come to if you let them use their imagination. My hubby never lied to anyone, he would just say “You can make up your own mind, I don’t want to talk about it”. As January turned to February, and my husband was working long hours, we felt pretty confident that his job would last until the end of the busy season in April, but who knew what might happen after that.

Things were getting very busy for me at work too. I living alone on the farm, talking care of the cats and horses (didn’t have a dog or chickens at the time). At work, we prepare our annual budget during Jan- March, and this is the busiest time for me. Even more so than dealing with the year end audit (our year end is June 30^th). This was my first budget, and I was changing so much, and dealing with the stress of living alone, but it seemed like our ordeal could possibly be over soon.

We didn’t hear anything more on the house offer, and I was thinking that if they didn’t sell their house soon, they would not be able to close in April. Our house was still on the market, but we didn’t hear of anyone else being interested. The in the middle of February, the realtor called me and said the appraiser would be coming out. I asked why they would have the property appraised if they had not removed the contingency for selling their property, and she told me that they really wanted the property, and were trying to get financing approved with renting their Condo instead of selling it. I think they buyers were also concerned that if they did not get that contingency removed, more people would be looking once the snow was gone. The appraisal came back fine, and the realtor called me up, all excited that their financing had been approved and she was removing the contingency and taking the house off the market.

Ok, time to rejoice right? I tell you, I had such a bad feeling about this, and it persisted right up to the end. My hubby also felt something was not right, and he pestered our realtor to MAKE SURE before she took that property off the market. We were just getting into the best time of the year to be selling land like ours, and did not want to miss it again due to bad realtor decisions.

She reassured us that things were fine, the buyer’s realtor was also with the same realty company, or franchise, or whatever you want to call it. My husband was done being nice to realtors, and said point blank “I don’t trust WI realtors, you MAKE SURE this is a good thing to do”

Sure, we were paranoid. After all we had been through, who could really blame us? We were both worried about our jobs, we had debt way over what we ever wanted, and we had been living apart for longer than either of us had ever expected.

There were so many times that I would be taking care of the horses in the dark, by myself, and thing “what I we gotten ourselves into?” When we made the decision to move almost a year earlier, I never imagined I would be living alone on a farm with no neighbors within 1 mile. Dealing with frozen water pipes on my own, dealing with breaking windows because I locked myself out of the house when it was -10 out. I was lucky that we didn’t have any seriously bad weather to deal with. I learned how to drive the skid steer, but my husband was always able to move hay when he came home on the weekends. We put out three bales, and then a new one each weekend, so even if something came up, we could go two weeks between putting out hay if needed. It worked out, and the weather finally started to warm up. I was so tired of living alone, I was tired of living in a house that I wanted badly to start fixing up.

But I also knew that if we had not bought this place and moved the animals out here, my husband would not have been able to manage the WI place without me. His job gets crazy during Jan – April. My job was not near as stressful, or demanding. He also needed to be away for several days at a time. If we had not moved everything, I would have quit my job and moved back to WI. We had gotten ourselves in a situation were we could not turn back. But we also knew that what we were working toward was what we wanted, and not being able to call it quits when things got rough may not have been a bad thing. If I had moved back, we would not have taken the house off the market, and then when it did sell, I’d be back to looking for a job just like the one I had quit to move back to WI, because living alone was hard.

My job was doing ok, but I had not quite worked through my “distrust” of my current boss. We met weekly, and though I discussed my situation in part, I never talked about how worried I was about it all going south. And I was very worried. I pestered our realtor on an almost daily basis as to what was happening. By mid February, they removed the contingency, and I wanted to nail down a closing date. The realtor got back to me, said the buyers were out of the country on vacation, and when they got back in March, we would set a closing. Our realtor felt confident we could move the date forward, which was good for me, as I had a Board Meeting on April 15^th, and could not miss that. Since she kept telling me it was going to be moved forward, I didn’t tell her that I would not be available on the 15^th.

We had to get the well and septic inspected, and ran into trouble with that. The logistics of dealing with anything like that when you live several hundred miles away is not fun. The water test came back fine, but the person who submitted it read it wrong and we spent several days trying to figure out why our well water was not safe to drink. Then we found out that just testing the water was not enough, they needed to test the system too. We had contacted the company who pumped our septic, and they said “yea, we know what you need, don’t worry about it” well, they didn’t know what we needed, so now we were behind another two weeks on getting the testing done, and we had to really scramble to find a contractor who didn’t want to wait three weeks before getting out to the place. People in that part of WI just don’t seem to have any sense of urgency.

I still wanted that closing date set, as we were now into March, but our realtor said we could not set a date until all the tests had come back favorable. I kept saying I still felt like something bad was going to happen, and she kept assuring me that everything was fine. All the tests came back fine, the financing had been approved, the appraisal and survey was done and ok – there was NOTHING left to go wrong (pending someone dying) at this point in time. I tried to be reassured, but I was turning into a real basket case, and it was affecting my work.

Now, to diverge a bit. My company is into the “strategic planning” thing pretty seriously, and was just finishing their “5 year plan” and working on developing a new plan for the future. 6 years ago, they had hired a company to come and ask questions and analyze the strengths and weaknesses of the corporate culture, and it was not a pretty sight. So my boss had made lots of changes, and had this idea that THIS TIME, the results would paint a much nicer picture. During February and March, while I was super busy putting together the budget, and dealing with my increasing preoccupation with selling our WI property, the testing company came back out and lots of paperwork was filled out, and they asked a lot of questions, and presented the results.

They still weren’t very pretty, and I can’t help but feel in some ways, my boss was looking at someone to point a finger at, and it ended up being me. While the other managers had been rated “average” by their staff, I got rated very high in the “non confrontational/easy to work with” categories. The specialist said this was not a good thing, and showed that I probably had not taken control of the department and let my staff push me around.

Ok, remember what I wrote earlier, about how my predecessor had a low opinion of the staff, and how my boss thought they were unfriendly? Now he was looking at me like I had let them take control. My boss knew I was somewhat unstable, but I had never really told him about my personal issues. I’d come to be much more comfortable around him, and even though I’d learned he wasn’t the “Jekle and Hyde” personality I had feared, I was not comfortable being completely open about the difficulties I was having outside of work. He felt I had not been performing up to his expectations on the job, and now this specialist was giving him information “proving” I wasn’t quite working out.

I liked my job, and I felt I was doing a good job, and I KNOW I was not codling my staff, so I started looking into the results of the testing, and was able to prove to my boss that the tests themselves were structured in such a way that they probably would not ever give a good indication of management style for our organization. The problem is what I call the “Minnesota Nice” phenomena. Yea, I know, this is SD. . . the tests asked lots of questions, but the answers were all the same – You had to rate things on a scale of 1 – 4, one being Never, Rarely, Often and with 4 - Always. Now, this is where the MN Nice comes in,

Nothing is every really, really bad, but nothing is ever perfect too, so almost everyone gets rated a 2 or 3. But the test was scored so that if you didn’t get several 1’s or 4’s you would be scored in the lower percentile as to “preferred” management style. I proved to my boss that if someone was rated “average (2 or 3) consistently, they would score in the bottom 25^th percent on the scale.

And my staff had rated me high in non confrontationalizm, because they said they never felt I was confrontational, and that I always listened to their views. I’m not a pushover, but compared to what they had only the year before, I seemed like the perfect boss. They went from someone who treated their ideas as insubordination, and never let them have any say in their jobs. He went as far as to design their work area without their input. Of course, he knew what was best for them. I wasn’t a push over by any means, but I was the first person who would listen to them, and gave them some authority over their own jobs in 10 years.

For the first time my boss and I started actually talking about more than my work. And we finally started getting to know each other. He started realizing the amount of stress my personal life was putting on me. The organization I work for is Christian based, and they’ve always gone out of their way to work with employees going through hard times, and I’d always sort of felt that I was held to a different standard than others. I can laugh now, because I realize that my boss’ management style is almost exactly the same as mine.

But at this time, late March 2004, we were only just starting to understand each other. I was still somewhat uncomfortable discussing personal issues with him, but I was so worried about something going wrong with the WI sale, that is was coming through.

Everybody was telling me it would be fine, then at the end of March, without any more notice than an email, our realtor left for a European vacation. So, with three weeks to go, we were handed off to her assistant. Still no closing date and I told the assistant I wanted that settled now. She finally got back to me, and said the Closing Company was working on things, and it would be April 15^th. All this time, they had continued to tell me it would be move up, and now it was set for a date I could not attend. Some my say “no big deal” but I’m the financier in the family, and my husband has always counted on me to make sure the financial stuff was in order. This would be like him suddenly telling me I had to take the car to the mechanic and make sure the mechanic didn’t do something wrong.

Ok, take a DEEP BREATH. The closing company was still waiting on some information from the buyers’ finance company. We still did not have a pre-closing statement. I told the assistant we’d better get everything taken over FAST so that I could look things over for my husband before closing. We were suppose to be closing on selling our WI home, I had my first BOD meeting to present the budget, we’d been going through all this assessment stuff at work, training season was ending where my husband worked, and we expected he could be laid off any day, I had just signed the deal to spend $100,000 for a new accounting package at work, and it was time for my annual review.

Can you say “stressed out to the max?” In some way it’s amazing I didn’t end up in a padded room some where.

I had my review, and to be honest, it was the WORST review I have ever had in my life. That is not to say it was bad, it just wasn’t great. I’m use to doing way more than expected, and I had not performed up to my boss’ expectations. He wasn’t unhappy about it; he just thought I could be less distracted by my personal life. And I got reprimanded for some comments I had made during our “assessment and training” episodes. You know the ones, those ‘team building” exercises? The ones where they tell you that you can brainstorm, no ideas are “stupid” and you aren’t suppose to get in trouble for speaking your mind as long as you are respectful?

Ok, I’ll admit, what I said was stupid, and I knew at the time I’d probably get called on it. But they kept saying “feel free to speak your mind” and what I said was the truth. We were in small groups, just upper management, and discussing risks to the organization. And the specialist, (I really didn’t like the guy, and found out afterwards that many people felt the same way) brought up the topic of sex abuse and the clergy.

Time out – I have personal experience with sex abuse, I’m not going to go into it, and it was a loooonnnggg time ago. And when the issue case had come to light about something that had also happened a long time ago, I had told my boss in confidence that I did not think I could discuss this issue sanely. And when this #)&%Y%$$ specialist brought it up, I should have just got up and walked out, but I thought I could handle it.

And everyone was going on and on about how awful it was, and how it could hurt the organization and on and on. And I said “I don’t think it would be that bad, I lived in a larger metro area, and have actually heard people say “so another member of the clergy got caught porking a young boy – so what”.

Yea, stupid thing to say when a member of the clergy sitting next to you. But is was true, I have heard people say just that. It’s a reflection of the degrading of our society that we get use to hearing bad things, and we get numb to it, and as soon as some other scandal pops up, no one really remembers the old one. And this was something that had happened a long time ago.

Besides this was suppose to be a “safe” discussion, we were told to speak our minds without fear of reprisal. I was so sick of the specialist deciding he “knew” what my problems were, and I was sick of the fear mongering that was going on. And I got written up on it.

Ok, my boss insisted I was not written up, but it was written on my review as an episode showing my lack of judgment. I call that being written up.

So, I was told I was not quite living up to expectations, I had recently been told I let my staff push me around, and now I was told I had poor judgment. But the boss admitted I was under a lot of stress, and that he hoped once the WI house was sold, things would settle down, and he was willing to give me a chance to turn things around.

My review lasted about three hours, and at one point I was in tears, telling my boss how worried I was that I was going to lose everything. I had tried not to spill my guts like this, but I fell apart, and I think for the first time my boss realized the amount of stress I’d been dealing with. And he is a compassionate individual. He really does not have fangs or claws hidden away, but he had hired me to do a job, and he put that first.

What is funny, he meant the review to be motivational, and I took it as a severe reprimand.

At the review I admitted to my boss that even though everyone kept telling me that everything would be fine. That everything that could go wrong was already nailed down, and in less than two weeks we would sign the paperwork and it would be over, in my gut I KNEW something was going to go wrong. I tried so hard to tell myself it was just nerves, but I was scared right down to my very bones.

I told my boss this, while I was in tears “ this is my dream job, and the home I have here in SD is my dream come true, God brought me here and gave this all to me. Before I moved from WI, I told God that I was committed to following where he would lead, and I would not turn back. He gave me all this, and I’m so afraid He’s going to ask me to give it all up, and I don’t know if I can do that.”

Sure, it’s one thing to say “I’ll do your will” but when the door to that fiery furnace is right in front of you, and you are asked to make that final step into the fire, trusting in God, are you really ready to do it? In this country, we are seldom ever asked to risk anything for our beliefs.

During our separation, I read though the New Testament again. And during this time, I read a verse that said “and unto some He appoints to be martyrs” Now, for the life of me, I have not been able to find it again, but I was SURE that is what I read. And I realized God was not really asking very much of me.

And I also realized, God never said He would give us a happy life, or a “good” life, or anything like that. He only promises to Be There for us. And for some, that might even mean giving up our lives, or the lives of those we love, or other things that are dear to us. When bad things happen in this world, it does not mean God is not here, it’s just life. What is a span of a hundred years in the face of spending eternity in God’s presence after all? Cherish those happy moments as the gift they are.