The Magnolia Story(48)

I actually made that particular mental shift right after I had my Carriage Square revelation. It happened instantly—just like that—right after I made the decision to enjoy my kids instead of obsessing over making everything perfect. I looked down at those fingerprints—I was still on the couch—and suddenly they looked completely different.

Then I got to thinking about the bigger picture: If I’m going to sit around and say I am “just surviving” every day, well, guess what? When a big wave comes along suddenly, I won’t be surviving—I’ll be drowning!

I mean, that’s life. Life is never predictable. Life is never really manageable. If your mind-set is always, “I’m just surviving,” it seems to me that would wind up being your mind-set for the rest of your life. You’d just get stuck in it.

So I finally flipped the switch in my mind. I said, “I have to choose to thrive, even in the pain. Even when it’s tough.” And it was tough. While I was coming to this conclusion, we were right in the middle of our whole financial mess. We’d managed to escape just under the wire through that God-given $100,000 check, but we were still in trouble.

The miracle of that breakthrough moment for me is that I didn’t really let our situation get to me. I didn’t wallow in it. I didn’t allow it to dictate my happiness. I was scared, sure. But for now at least, we had our house; we had our kids; we had our health; and we were living this beautiful life together. And I told myself, “I want to make all that count in this season, because otherwise it’s just going to be a waste.”

I didn’t want to look back at this experience and regret how I handled it. I wanted to say, win or lose, that we believed in love, that we had faith, and in essence we fought the good fight. I didn’t want to be found a quitter or a doubter. None of these things would have been helpful to Chip anyway. So even though I didn’t feel it some days, and even though I shed my fair share of tears, I woke up every day and told myself, “We can do this. God has not brought us this far to let us down now.” And I would tell Chip, “You got this. Most guys would collapse under this pressure, but you were built for this!”

This paradigm shift seemed to work, and I know Chip appreciated it. As a parent, as a wife, as a business owner, I simply decided: “I’m not going to survive anymore. I’m going to thrive.”

It wasn’t some big life-altering change that was difficult to achieve, either. It was instantaneous. I just realized that I had a choice to make in every moment, on every day, with every decision.

I made that choice, when the next glass of milk was spilled, to choose a thriving response rather than the surviving one. And I made that choice when another gigantic bill landed in our mailbox that day after the last of our $100,000 miracle was spent. Was I going to just survive this? Or was I going to get with my husband and think this through so we could overcome it together and thrive?

I still had my moments when I’d make the wrong choice and get all fed up and start fussing at the kids or Chip or start beating myself up over some mistake I’d made. But the more I kept asking myself that question—the more I focused on thriving—the shorter those “just surviving” moments seemed to last.

There was something in that low point with our business that drew Jo and me closer together. My usual optimism seemed to slip. I wasn’t sure we were going to find our way out of this one. But she took on this really positive attitude about everything that helped me get through it.

I always said, “When things come against us we can either turn on each other, or we can come together and turn on it.”

We almost started to reverse roles in that season, where she was the one telling me that it was all going to be all right and that even if it wasn’t, then that would be all right too. We were together, and our kids were good, and that was all that mattered. We were thriving—that was the way she put it.

I wasn’t sure I believed her, to be honest. I was terrified we were about to lose everything. But the irony of it all is that just as we hit a low point where I thought we might slip into bankruptcy any day, the local newspaper caught wind of what we were doing with our development and decided to do a front-page story about us: “What a neat thing you’re doing over on that side of town. You guys want to be in the paper?”

I didn’t focus on our problems when I talked to that reporter. I just described all of the pros of this development and what a great project it was for that area of town and for Waco in general. I hoped the buzz would convince someone that one of the Magnolia Villas houses would be perfect for them. That would mean we could actually start building them and maybe start selling some.

The article came out, and a couple of days later, a lawyer in town called me up. He told me his mother was living out on some acreage outside of town, and she needed a home that was smaller and closer to everything and easier to manage. We talked for a few minutes about what we were planning, and I told him why I thought one of the villas might be perfect for her, and by the end of the conversation he said, “I want one.”

“You want one?”

“Yeah. How much is it?”

“Well, the model that sounds right for your mom is $176,000 and change.”

“Great. Okay, meet me at my office on Wednesday and bring the contract.”

“Okay, great,” I echoed.

Now, the way things usually work, somebody wants to read the contract and get a second opinion and then bargain with you on the price. Then, even after they sign an agreement to buy the place, there are usually contingencies, and they have to take whatever down payment they have and go out and secure a loan. It’s a long, slow process that sometimes ends with nothing happening. So I didn’t get my hopes up too much about that one. But I was encouraged, and I was even more encouraged when the front-page article resulted in dozens of calls just like that one. I felt like we were on our way.