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(From my Book: Art & Synchronicity as Daytime Dreams)

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In July 1996, we received a notice on our door giving us three days to move out. If we complied, we would receive $1,000. I called the number on the notice and spoke with the realtor representing the home for Fannie Mae. To my surprise, he asked if we would be interested in buying it. I said yes, and he arranged the sale for $124,500. The process took five long months. During that time, we lived in the house rent-free while we waited patiently. Fannie Mae—according to their policies and procedures—refurbished parts of the home that were considered shabby and in need of repair. We finally closed and took ownership on April 4, 1997.

 

Our new mortgage payment was almost exactly the same as our rent—$925 a month—but now we owned the home. At the time, I was working on a large painting. The stress of possibly losing the house, combined with everything else happening in our lives at the time, made it impossible for me to finish. It’s a 62”x 46”acrylic on canvas called A Numbers Game or I Hope So. One of the last things I painted before the chaos was a stenciled number on the arm of a figure—an Auschwitz prisoner number (3636404) taken from Pat Conroy’s novel Beach Music, where the protagonist’s wife commits suicide with her father’s tattooed number on her arm 3636404.

 

The five-month delay was caused by the mortgage lender the realtor had found for us. Because we had almost no credit history and very little money in the bank, the lender had to work extensively, a numbers game to structure the loan. Five months after the property had gone to auction, we finally became owners. Strangely, when it was all done, we had exactly $36.36 left in our checking account—and the financing closed on April 4. The number 363404 became prophetic. 

 

Through every shadowed hour of our eight-month struggle, a silent signpost hung upon the wall—a divine billboard already proclaiming our victory. It whispered an exact number, the precise closing day, and thundered through the silence: “Why do you question so fiercely what your Father in heaven can do for you?” Imagine dwelling moment by trembling moment beneath that weight for nearly three-quarters of a year—a tempest of doubt and delay—while at the very heart of our home, an unfinished canvas blazed like a burning bush, its painted prophecy crying out: “Learn to trust in Me.” One day your faith will be forged in fiercer fires, called upon for trials more desperate still.