Spinning Out of Control

Author's Note: We learn more from hard times than we do from the times we are doing fantastic.  I've gone through some tough stuff and I think it's time I write it down. 

A large man with balding hair sits at a large mahogany desk giving orders and counting his many large stacks of money while his wife and daughter sit home eating a beautiful, delicious meal in silence.  A family of six sits hungry in their home , holding hands and praying for a miracle.  Then there's my family, sitting around the table eating a nice meal in a quaint ranch house.  All is not as well as it may seem.  The man sitting at the head of the table looks stressed out and ready to give up, the woman looks frustrated and fed up and the girl sitting at the end looks like she is going to cry.  Surely my family is not the worst, we have a home and food to eat whenever we like and wonderful friends and family, but money always leaves us wanting more and more; that's how our family nearly lost hope.

Hope is like a delicate flower, you have to keep it watered and in the warm sunlight or else it will not flourish.  My hope nearly died completely.  For the past three years or so my dad had been working on and off doing petty little construction jobs here and there.  It's not that my dad was not trying, he was trying as hard as he could and giving all that he had.  He would go to interview after interview, fill out application after application.  My mom was working, but it didn't pay enough.  My parents had bills to pay and deadlines to meet.  Our house felt full of friction, rub it the wrong way and you would get shocked.   My dad has this saying that he says quite often, it's his philosophy, "There will always be somebody better off than us and there will always be somebody worse off than us."  I had  to agree with him, there were people who didn't even get to eat or have a warm home to live in.  There are also people who have houses that are far too big for them.  I couldn't help, but envy my friends who lived in fancy subdivisions with more room than they needed and their parents weren't stressed out constantly.  I would find myself lashing out at innocent people.  My parents would fight and I would shut myself in my room trying to tune it out, but I could still hear it all and the tears still rolled down my cheek..  My hope, once a warm fire, was dimming away until it just got up and disappeared.  This was a low time for my family.

That depressing time seemed to drag on forever.  My dad went to more hopeless interviews and sent in more hopeless applications.  My hope was completely gone and I had given up; he wanted to give up, but he pushed on and kept trying. I'm positive there were morning he just didn't want to get out of bed, but he did.  One day in June of this year, just around after school got out, I was sitting in my room reading a book. It was another ordinary day, but my dad just waltzed into my room and let me know that he would be going to U.M.I. (Universal Metrics Inc.) to apply for a job. I just shrugged it off, knowing it was another dead end. I went about my day like normal, and my dad was gone for most of the afternoon.  Later that evening my dad returned home and said he had good news.  My heart skipped a little beat.  He announced that his interviewer found his application to be very impressive and he would be getting a call in the next week or so to inform him as to whether he got the job or not.  Right then and there I shot up a quick prayer; my hope flickered a little. I was happy for once.  The rest of the week couldn't go by fast enough.  I jumped every time my dad's phone rang, but it wasn't until 5 days later that the awaited call finally came.  My dad stepped outside and he was out there talking for quite a while.  I took this is a good sign.  He stepped inside and announced that he had got the job.  That hope that disappeared so long ago was now a roaring fire and I felt like flying.  Finally the friction could subside and my parents could finally have a few normal conversations, that don't end in a yelling match.  That day will always be one of the best days of summer.

That summer was fun, my dad smiled more and my mom didn't scowl as much.  Sure, my family still has money problems, but don't we all?  This experience, though it wasn't a good one, taught me to never give up hope.  Miracles can happen no matter how small.  I thought of a quote that might apply to this and I could have used about three years ago, "They say money makes the world go round, but love keeps it from spinning out of control."