WHO TO HARP WITH…AT

For the last year or so my husband and I have been receiving numerous letters from various sources about the Homeowners Relief Program (HARP). My curiosity was aroused so I called our mortgage lender to find out what those offers were all about. I was promptly told they would refinance our loan to reduce our interest rate. During a half hour conversation I was delighted to hear all the wonderful things my lender would do so I would get to pay them less money.

That’s not what actually happened.

After paying a non-refundable fee of $350.00, spending a lot of my time over the next several weeks filling out a mountain of paperwork, standing by my FAX machine for several hours feeding in my last two years tax filings, and suffering through two separate appraisals because the first one took flight into the void, and seeing the unaccountably unattractive pictures of my home taken by the second appraiser that made the hair on my head stand on end, our lender did not make good on what was initially told to me. There was a lot of talk about Fannie May and Freddie Mack, but our lender wasn’t really offering a HARP loan. No, they ultimately wanted my husband and me to fork over thousands of dollars towards our loan with them so the mortgage would be 80% of the current market value.

Maybe it was my anger at the waste of my time, energy, and the non-refundable fee that caused me to rummage through the letters that were still being mailed to us. I dialed the telephone number on the top letter to find out if we could get our interest rate reduced…really.

As it happened, we could, and did.

The person (www.MyHomeLoansStore.com) I called made it all happen with less fuss and time than I’d spent with our original lender. He used the formulas listed and used by the government that showed the value of our home several thousands of dollars over that horrid appraisal we’d gotten. Admittedly I was surprised at how the value of our home had plummeted, but that is the point of HARP. The homeowners who have always paid their mortgage payments on time and have good credit are able to get some relief from the conditions of the home market—not just those who didn’t pay on time.

The acronym: HARP. Where does the “A” come from? Shouldn’t it be HORP? Maybe, but there are some lenders that I’d like to harp about and others who might be playing some soothing music to a homeowner’s ears.

SPIRITUAL LAWS…I’M SOOOO CONFUSED

If you have read any of the books about the Spiritual Laws, such as The Secret, you might sometimes get into spiraling mind games with yourself by having the following thoughts:

My thoughts create my life. I’m responsible for my thoughts. If I am unhappy about my life, it’s because of my own thoughts; therefore, it’s entirely my own fault.

No. That premise is wrong since it is incomplete. It assumes we live in a vacuum, ignoring the fact that our lives are filled with other people who also have thoughts and take actions. We are responsible for how we react to them, which means we need to process our thoughts about life in a way that is not reactionary. We must learn to be mature. Sometimes that means disengaging from those who cannot or will not look at their own thoughts and actions other than in a completely selfish way.

Here’s another:

I want my plans to turn out in the way I planned them. They don’t. I’m a control freak, and I shouldn’t have been trying to get things to go the way I wanted them in the first place.

Again, no. When plans are affected by other people, then that fact must be taken into consideration, too. Face it: some people dissemble and others lie. And one person’s truth is not always another’s truth. One of life’s most important lessons is to know who and when to trust and to not be naïve.

Remember: The Law of Detachment does not interfere with the Laws of Intention and Desire. The intention of going forward in some desired direction and having goals is not wrong. A person being prepared will be able to use the opportunities that appear, thus no solutions are forced. A person’s attention grows stronger, and it’s her or his intention that will organize its fulfillment. The Spiritual Laws work in ways that remove the tension and stress.

EVER LASTING LOVE

I, too, love to read books about vampires who are gorgeous and good. “Come on,” I ask, “who could ignore the charms of a passionate and sexy love story that ends with life…love eternal?” But then, I end up thinking about the latest, and then all of those countless fantasies I’ve read, and inevitably start teasing at the story line to pick out the parts that are immature. I question why a one hundred year plus vampire would be interested in an eighteen year old girl. I’m no where near one hundred years old and the thought of spending all of my time with an eighteen year old boy—no matter how gorgeous—would be tedious at best. And really, isn’t there something that smacks of pedophilia,as much as predatory, in the thought of being with a person who hasn’t had much experience of life? By the time I work through that creepy thought, I ask myself if love “should” last forever. I conclude: Love, by all means. But as a married—glued together—couple forever? Well, now that seems like pure emotional stagnation. Still, I’ll continue to sink my teeth into and gobble down those vampire “candy” books. They are just too tasty for me not to enjoy them.