The Fog has Set In.

My worth is not in what I have. My worth is not in what I don't have.

I'm having to remind myself a lot of that these days. Sometimes I feel like I am caught in a movie. Watching the world unfold in slow motion. News clips play in my head...droning in the background of my everyday thoughts. The market is crashing. Homes are foreclosed on. Thousands of people losing jobs. It's as if I am just waiting my turn to become one of those statistics.

In actuality, I am.

I've blogged before about our housing situation. And for the most part, I think I have remained relatively calm and have tried to have a good perspective on the whole thing. I remind myself that we took the higher road. We didn't cheat the system. We didn't take out home equity loans and buy toys we couldn't afford. We are just a victim of circumstance. The details don't matter. What's happened has happened. And lately, I've been okay with it.

But yesterday, we got 4 letters in the mail. Count them 4. I opened 2. And I didn't even read them throughout because it made me physically sick to my stomach. It was basically a notice of our home being in default. I folded up the letter quickly and stuffed it back in the envelope...as if tucking it away would make the problem go away. Then I put a happy face on and took my kids out to ice cream. When all I kept hearing in my head is what I failure I was. It was as if those words ripped apart my soul.

We worked so hard for what we had. I remember when we first bought our house in Las Vegas...we had a goal posted on our wall of what we needed to save to buy our first house. We ate every meal at home. We took every meal to work. We worked so hard. And we did it!!! When used that money and the profit from that house to buy our house in California...and now it is gone.

My worth is not in what I have. My worth is not in what I don't have.

So I turn off the news. I don't look at the newspaper. I don't want to be reminded of all the houses being foreclosed on. Because they are reporting about my life...and sometimes, that is too much to take in. That is how I feel on days like yesterday. And days like today.

Some days I feel as though God himself is trying to pierce through the noise of the crowd to get me to hear him. Sometimes all it takes is a whisper to remind me that stuff doesn't matter. And I feel okay. I feel good. But sometimes he needs to come through the clouds, wipe out the noise of the world by the sheer size of who he is, stand in front of me and yell in his booming, God voice, "STUFF DOESN'T MATTER". And when I hear that... When I allow my soul to digest that, I know that it doesn't matter. None of it does.

So why do I care? Why do I care about what people think of me? Why do I care about my credit rating? About living in a home that is so small, we do most of our "living" outside of it's walls. Why do I care? Cause I'm human and messed up and think that things matter. They don't. People do.

And I KNOW that there are a lot of people who have so much less than me. And are surely so much more grateful. They probably aren't up writing blogs with tears in their eyes feeling sorry for themselves. I want so much to be one of these people today and everyday. But the fog has set in on my heart...and tonight I am just waiting for it to clear.

My worth is not in what I have. My worth is not in what I don't have.