Keep Your Eyes on the Prize

Since I woke up early this morning and don't have to be at work until 11:00am, I decided to spend the time getting caught up on James's blog.  He's been reflecting on suffering and faith lately, and included a video of Bruce Springsteen singing, "Keep Your Eyes on the Prize."  While I'm belting out "Hold on, hold on!" along with Bruce, the phone rings.  It's the roofer calling back.  We were rejected by their new credit company for financing, so I'd asked for other options.  Both James and I spent much of last night fretting about why we were rejected—there's nothing on our credit report that looks bad to us, certainly not what the rejection letter stated as their reasons for turning us down—and about how we are now going to manage the payments.  Plus the car failed its inspection yesterday and would cost more to repair than its worth, so we're back to one vehicle, a 1995 pickup with 150,000+ miles on it.  As James said, "It's kind of funny to think that our 'good' car is that old truck!"  Financial straits always throw James into a fit of anxiety and me into a pit of depression.  A great combo!

So there I am, singing, "Hold on, hold on!" and the phone rings and it's the roofer.  He says, "Don't sweat it—those applications are usually read by a computer and credit reports are pretty meaningless, really.  So we'll just work out another way to pay this off over the next year.  It's really not a problem for us."  Yay!  One financial strait navigated. And we've lived with one car for many years, both in Tucson and for the first couple of years here, so the old truck will be enough—as long as it keeps running—"Hold on, hold on"!