The Gamble Family (.Net)

Be on fire.
Be unstoppable.
Be a force of nature.
Be better than everybody else at what you do.

I shall take this opportunity to borrow from the bible and shout “Tetelestai!”

This past week, we paid off the mortgage on our home. My wife and I seem to be among the fortunate few that are actually able to live in a home for nearly 20 years and pay for it - completely. In a time when the mortgage industry is in shambles, this does indeed seem rare that a mortgage gets satisfied. Couples seem to get lured into the new “creative financing” arrangements available and find themselves in ballooning debt with no hope of financial survival other than to default on a loan and surrender their American Dream.

I find this situation tragic. I blame the mortgage industry for coming up with financial arrangements that allow people to purchase a home without the real financial ability of making the payments once those mortgages begin to balloon. I also blame the people that are being suckered into these arrangements. Why would anyone in their right mind take on a $1,000 monthly payment, knowing that in five years that their payments will balloon to over $1,700? I hear over and over of people having purchased a home that they could barely afford with the $1,000 monthly payment, much less the expected increase to $1,700. Have people become so financially ignorant that they can’t do the simple arithmetic and realize that they are destined for financial failure?

My wife and I have been fortunate in our 33+ years together that we have never accumulated debt that we could not handle. If we didn’t have the money to buy something (except for the house and automobiles), we simply did without that particular item. This is not to say that we did not purchase “nice things” along the way, but we were always careful to never over-extend our budget unecessarily.

Call us “Old School” if you must, but at the end of each day, we hold each other’s hands and gaze into each other’s eyes as we sit quietly in OUR house.

This past Friday night, I watched ABC’s 20/20 special on Randy Pausch and his battle with Pancreatic Cancer. While watching the show, I could not help but be moved by Randy’s seemingly positive attitude during his darkest hour. Following the program, I downloaded and watched his now world famous “Last Lecture”, which he presented at Carnegie Mellon University in Sept. 2007.

While watching the lecture, I couldn’t help but be amazed at how much Dr. Pausch has accomplished during his “short” (47 year) time on this earth. Dr. Pausch has touched (translated positively impacted) literally thousands of lives. He is a brilliant Computer Scientist, a motivator, a mobilizer, and a positive role model of such magnitude that it actually makes me ashamed of how little I have done in my 51 years of life.

As I reflected on my accomplishments, other than my immediate family, I can’t name anyone that I know for certain that I have affected or inspired. This embarrasses me greatly. But, more worse than not having any professional achievements to note is that fact that I fear that my life, my actions, and my attitude have not spoken loudly regarding my relationship with God Almighty.

Have I wasted my entire life? Has it all been for naught? When I stand before Holy God, will He be ashamed of me because of my complacency towards the lost, my laziness towards helping feed the hungry, or my coldness towards those in need? I can’t honestly name one person that perhaps is better off for having known me. This very thought shatters my heart.

So, what now? How do I reverse 51 years of non-service? How do I right this embarrassing wrong? The obvious answer is, “One day at a time.” Each day of my life should be spent in humble worship to God, in respecting those around me, in looking for ways to encourage those that are carrying heavy burdens, in lending a help hand to those that need one, in taking an extra minute to listen more carefully to what those around me are really saying, and in looking for ways to make the most of every precious moment that I am blessed to have.

Today truly is the first day of the rest of my life.

I was finally able to escape Delta Hell in Cincinatti at 4 PM Saturday, which means that I was 23 hours late leaving.

Let me recap my experiences over the past two days:

I have one final parting thought: Delta, you really suck.

“You can checkout any time you like, But you can never leave!”
— Don Felder, Don Henley and Glenn Frey

I was sitting in Delta Hell in Cincinnati at 2:30 PM (which, by the way, means that my much anticipated 12:45 flight was delayed), when all of a sudden, I felt a tap on my shoulder. I looked up and saw three people that “allegedly” took off on the 9:05 flight to Nashville earlier this morning. “What the hell?”, I thought. As it turns out, they boarded the plane, got de-iced, taxied to out to an area near the end of the runway, got de-iced again, then started down the runway. Just as the front wheel left the ground, a “red light” came on in the cockpit, which forced the pilots to make a split-second decision to abandon their takeoff. They spent a total of THREE HOURS on a plane and did not go anywhere!!!

Yet another equipment failure for Delta, the folks that are “Ready when you are”.

As for my situation, I have learned that the reason for our delay is that the plane that was supposed to arrive from Raleigh left the gate, taxied out, and had to return to the gate due to equipment failure. My delays in December 2006 were also the result of equipment failures.

As further evidence to the overall sad state of affairs within the Delta empire, while I was waiting in the Delta Hell terminal, I heard (via announcements over the airport PA system) of at least five flights being delayed or cancelled due to “the crew has not yet arrived” and of two flights being delayed or cancelled due to “equipment failures”.

Is it just me, or isn’t there a pattern here that screams to be corrected?