Is it wrong to pray for a plane crash?

Since I was a kid growing up on Keesler AFB in Biloxi, MS, I have been enamored with the A-10 Thunderbolt. I used to watch those guys fly over my school and neighborhood and imagine what it would be like to fly in one. Since then I have had the chance to see them up close and, thanks to my dad, "fly" in a training simulator. Since it is a single seat aircraft and I am not an Air Force pilot, the chances of me actually flying in one are pretty slim.

But, I digress. I really do not want one of those magnificent birds to crash, I just want one of the pilots to "accidentally" drop a five hundred pound concrete "bomb" onto my house in Tucson. Yes, that would be the house on Bellatrix, the one in which I do not currently reside. I do have renters in it and I wish them no harm, but it would be very convenient if one of the practice 500 pound bombs was to land on the house (while unoccupied) and demolish it.

As convenient as that would be, I know it won't happen. And since I have blogged about it, if it does happen I will be investigated for fraud. So I just want to make it clear that, other than praying for it to happen, I am not making any other arrangements for it to happen.

Besides, I have a much better plan. I draw some inspiration for this plan from the experience that my buddy, Sean, had with the place he was renting while he lived in Tucson. About a month before his lease was up, he found a foreclosure notice posted on the garage of his house. He contacted his landlord and found out that she was indeed in foreclosure. So this means that all the time that she was collecting rent from Sean she was not making any payments on the property to her mortgage company.

And now I unveil my "$20,000 in 6 Months" plan. If I were to stop making payments on the mortgage for my Bellatrix house I figure I would have about six months before I would need my renters out of the house so the bank could take possession of the house. In that six months I would not pay my mortgage payments which would save my X dollars per month. And as we all know, a penny saved is a penny earned. But unfortunately X does not equal a penny or I would not have these problems.

So now for the next 6 months I save X dollars per month but I still collect my rent payment of Y dollars per month. So now I am making/saving X+Y dollars per month as long as I can keep the bank from forcing me (my renters) out of the house. And since I will be defaulting on one real estate loan, I might as well take full advantage and stop making payments on my dream crushed five acres in Benson which will save me another Z dollars per month. That would also allow me to do a little stick-it-you to Flagstar bank. Have I mentioned that I hate, yes HATE, Flagstar bank. May maggots consume its flesh while it is still alive! Did I say that out loud?

And where will we stand in 6 months if I can convince Lesley to follow me on yet another adventure? We will have roughly an extra $20,000 in our pocket, be debt free, and able to decide where we want to live instead of moving back into a place out of necessity. Sounds pretty good to me. I know my credit will take a hit, but who cares? I have excellent credit right now what did it do for me? Absolutely nothing. Besides, I figure, in this economic climate, that soon there will be so many foreclosed aliens that the banking industry/American government will have no other option than to grant credit amnesty to the countless masses and wipe the slate clean. Why not take full advantage of our government's idiotic decisions?

One last note on honesty. This little tid bit was given to me by my coworker, Bill. Is foreclosure dishonest? When I signed my mortgage with the bank on the Bellatrix house, the deal was that I would pay them back the amount borrowed plus interest. If I failed to do so, they would take possession of my house. They agreed that repayment was option A and taking my house in lieu of repayment was option B. Now that I do not want my house (and neither does anyone else for the amount of money that I owe on it) why can't I just give them back my house? This is not dishonest because they agreed to it as a part of the mortgage agreement. I would merely be exercising option B.

Please feel free to let me know what you think of my plan in the comments section. Also, if you have any ideas on how to improve this plan, I am all ears.

Limbo - "State of Uncertainty" or "How Low Can You Go?"

Are we staying in Benson? Are we moving back to Tucson? Are we moving back into the Bellatrix house? Are we going to rent somewhere else in Tucson while our renters stay in the Bellatrix house? Are we going to keep renting in Mescal? How many licks does it take to get to the Tootsie Roll center of a Tootsie Pop?

All these questions keep swirling around in my head and I don't know which way is up sometimes. It is very hard to keep up morale when there is no end in sight and no prize on the horizon. I had such a tangible goal for so long that now that it is gone I don't know what to look forward to anymore.

I don't know what I'm working towards in the short term. As always, the long term goal is to become like and live with my Heavenly Father and to achieve this with Lesley, my children, and all those that I love and hold dear. That is always clear and perhaps even more clear than just a few months ago. But what gets muddy is what is between here and there. My attention span is too short not to fill that gap with what's right around the corner: General Conference, Thanksgiving, Adrianna's birth, Christmas, etc...

I am aware that now is the time that I need to put my faith in Jesus Christ and allow Him to guide me to my next path, but I struggle with that. I feel the urge to complain and wonder what else could go wrong. I just need to remember that "The ^aSon of Man hath ^bdescended below them all. Art thou greater than he?" D&C 122:8. That though right there will straighten out even the biggest whiner and help put one's troubles into perspective.

Pain is part of all our lives, but suffering is optional.

So, all of you know that my dream that I have been working towards for the past two years has been flushed down the commode. Lesley and I have been trying to figure out our next move and why we are supposed to have this experience. There have been some very angry, spiteful, and rather un-Christlike thoughts running through my head as I have thought about our current situation and the factors involved.
Then I was sitting in the reading room and found a book that Lesley has been reading. I thought I would thumb through it to see what it was about. It just so happened that I opened to a page that had the title of this post in it. I read about how I cannot control the trials that God gives me in this life, but I can control my reaction to them. It was definitely one of those inspired reading moments, just like the kind that you often have when you flip open the scriptures to a random page and the exact answer to your prayers or pondering is revealed on the page. Can you say Liahona?
I had been pondering that answer to my pleas to my father as to why I am to pass through this valley and then went to an all hands meeting at work where this motivational speaker, Keith Harrell, spoke about attitudes relating to our jobs and experiences at work.

He was quite entertaining and again it seemed like I was getting another "message". So, even though I'm not the quickest I do finally catch on, and I have decided to change my attitude. I have decided not to talk or think negatively about our current situation. And I will not allow this current pain to cause me to suffer. I will look for the good and use this as a learning and building experience to get prepared for the joy that I will know for havinbg known this pain.

Flowers in the Desert

I heard this song on the radio today on my drive home from work. I have heard it many times before but today I actually caught the lyrics and maybe it's because of the news we received this weekend that the words meant something to me.

Here are the lyrics:

I've never seen you look like this without a reason,
Another promise fallen through, another season passes by you.
I never took the smile away from anybody's face,
And that's a desperate way to look for someone who is still a child.

CHORUS:
And in a big country, dreams stay with you,
Like a lover's voice, fires the mountainside..
Stay alive..

(I thought that pain and truth were things that really mattered
But you can't stay here with every single hope you had shattered)

I'm not expecting to grow flowers in the desert,
But I can live and breathe and see the sun in wintertime..

CHORUS

So take that look out of here, it doesn't fit you.
Because it's happened doesn't mean you've been discarded.
Pull up your head off the floor, come up screaming.
Cry out for everything you ever might have wanted.
I thought that pain and truth were things that really mattered
But you can't stay here with every single hope you had shattered.

I'm not expecting to grow flowers in the desert,
But I can live and breathe and see the sun in wintertime..

CHORUS

The grow flowers in the desert part caught my attention and then when I looked up the lyrics at home I saw how fitting they are for us right now. As Lesley pointed out, we have learned some things in the last year and this will all work out for our good. We will always be able to talk about our year spent in a tent a travel trailer. We even commemorated our year anniversary of moving out to the land by spending the night in a yurt at Lyman Lake State Park. More on that in the next post.