by Natasha L. Kohlhoff Polak

Created on: August 04, 2010   Last Updated: August 11, 2010

Mindy's hand shook as she scanned the words again that were written on the paper before her.  "This is a notice of foreclosure."  After all the hard work she put into this house, and the struggles she went through to afford mortgage payments while her son finished college.  It didn't matter she was a single mother.  It didn't matter that the job she had had for so many years abandoned her, just like her husband did years before.  She had thought it was bad enough when her department was downsized, but this...THIS topped it all.

Anxiety kicked in, making her mouth dry and her stomach queasy.  What was she going to do?  Mindy closed her eyes, praying in vain for a quick second she could gain clarity to her thoughts. 

The house had been her symbol of determination.  Her way of rising up above her pain and confusion after Jared decided to call it quits.  But she had proven she didn't need him!  And her loving son helped her keep things in perspective.  It made sense at the time to make sure she funded the young man's college education, and never once did she doubt Jacob's thankfulness.  He had promised to make payments to the student loan, which she wasn't worried about, since he WAS working now.  But with whatever he made, she couldn't ask him to pay her way out of this mess, especially since he recently got his first apartment, and was seriously dating a girl who might be "the one".  She couldn't blame him for having his own life entirely - she remembered when her own life was that way.

"Why couldn't I stop this?" she lamented bitterly, staring again at the cold, legal mumbo-jumbo before her.  It did not seem fair at all.

She thought back to when she first had problems with paying her mortgage.  She had appealed to the mortgage company, and they had promised to help.  They said she might qualify for this, that, and the other, so she had followed all their suggestions.  Despite this, it all began to unravel.  First, they said she had too little debt to qualify for assistance.  Then, she got a part-time job, and they said her income was too little for them to justify her making regular payments at a reduced rate.  When she got her tax refund for the year, she had hoped she could sock some of that money away, using the rest to help postpone going into default with her mortgage.  Instead, her car began rattling more than usual, and she

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