Hopeless??

I'd like to think I've been quite positive throughout this whole flood fight. I always believed things would turn out for the best, and I still do in some respects, but I also have my doubts.

I was going to blog about our first visit back to the house yesterday, but all day I've been thinking about one thing: what have we done to deserve this?

It's never good to feel sorry for yourself; there's always a lesson you can learn from each trial you encounter in your life. Feeling sorry for yourself doesn't get you anywhere. I would like to move on, but I'm having a difficult time getting past this initial frustration.

After getting married, Perry and I made a great financial decision by purchasing a cute little house in Minot. We loved that house...we put a lot of hard work into it over the course of three years. Sure, it wasn't on the greatest street in Minot, but we had nice neighbors and we loved being in our house or in our back yard.

When we sold the house, we made quite a bit of money off of it because of our hard work. We used that money to purchase our home on Fairway. It wasn't easy for us; financially it would stretch us thin, but we knew we could do it. We had to make it happen for Natalie; it's a house that's perfect for her needs. So a year and a half ago, we took on a new mortgage.

Since then, we've worked hard to fix up the new house and we were just getting back to the point where saving money was becoming easier. We pay our bills on time, our credit scores are fantastic, the mortgage is not more than we can handle. We're raising a family together in a modest, but beautiful neighborhood.

So now here we are, a year and a half later with a house that is worth nothing. FEMA tells us the most we can get to fix our home is $30,000; we're looking at $10,000 alone to gut the house and sanitize it. We're expected to take on another loan (SBA loan) to do the rest of the work. Of course, there are many charitable organizations raising money out there, but remember that there are 3100+ other homeowners out there in the same position we are in. So when we fix our house, we'll have our initial mortgage, plus the second loan which will likely exceed the first. Our house will be worth half of what we put into it. We're expected to do this why? Because the Army Corps of Engineers says there was no way to prevent this from happening? Really???? Really????? No WAY to keep this from happening???

What did we do to deserve this? I'm not talking about just my family...what did we ALL do to deserve this? If a tornado were to hit my home tonight, insurance would pay for a new one. I realize that tornadoes are much more dangerous, but from a financial standpoint, I feel like our lives have been destroyed. Our federal government sends billions and billions of dollars in aid to other countries, but somehow can't find enough to help hard-working people its own back yard. We aren't looking for handouts, we're looking for a hand up to pull us out of this mess.

We have to be strong, and I stay positive as much as possible, but the reality is that our house, along with many others, has become part of the Mouse River.

Fear not, I will be more positive about the situation in the future, but I had to get this off of my chest. My heart is breaking for all those in the same situation that we are facing.