Chapter 3- A Light At The End of The Tunnel -

September 26, 2009 | Posted by Mister P

- A LIGHT AT THE END OF THE TUNNEL -

                For John, work seemed to drag today. Shutting down his computer, he grabbed his coat and briefcase and strode out of the office. In the lobby he bumped into Sarah. He and Sarah had been hired at the firm at around the same time, but they had been classmates in college before then and knew each other well.

                “Hey John,” Sarah said in a chirpy tone.               

                He had no choice but to reply, “Hi Sarah.”

                “Well, you sound gloomy! What’s up?” she asked.

                The last thing John wanted to do was talk about the situation, but he felt trapped. “It’s the house, Sarah. It’s just not working out.”

                Her face became grim, “Oh no, that’s too bad. I’m so sorry,” she said, concerned.

                “Yeah, and everything’s just dragging me down. It feels rather hopeless. Lisa’s been distant lately and this sure isn’t helping any.”

                “I can certainly understand that. You know, Arthur and I were in a similar situation when we built our house last year.”

                “You were?” John had been to their new home and remembered when they had built it. “I never heard you had any problems with it.”

                “Well, it was pretty bad. We had already begun building when the company Arthur worked for made some cuts, and Arthur got laid off. Suddenly the house was over our budget. He found a job soon after, but he took quite a cut in pay. We realized we weren’t going to be able to afford the house. We had no idea what to do!”

                John nodded. “I think I know how you felt,” he said sadly.

                Sarah continued, “We knew we had to tell the builder and we didn’t know how he’d react. We figured we’d have to cancel the whole job until we could save enough to finish. Our contracting company was ABC Construction. We met with Rob, the owner, and explained the situation.

“It was just awful. I couldn’t stop crying. Arthur and I felt terrible. But you know what? Rob wasn’t even worried and didn’t judge us at all. He said something like, ‘Problems arise but you just have to keep them under control.’ He asked us if there was a way to continue the house and finish it, would we do it?

“Of course we said YES! But we had no idea how we could do that. Then he explained a method that he uses in his own company, called the Master Method. We worked together with Rob and made a lot of changes. In the end, the house was finished and it turned out better than we could have hoped! We learned a lot and since then, things have been going great!”

                John was stunned. “Wow, I had no idea.”

                “Everything went so smoothly after that, I guess we had no reason to tell anyone how bad it looked for a while. And at the time, it was very hard to talk about. But if you’re going through the same thing, you need to know there’s hope. There are always options.”

                A glimmer of hope flickered in John. “So what is the Master Method?”

                Sarah smiled and dug around in her purse for a moment, then handed him a business card.

                “Call Rob yourself and ask him. Tell him I told you to call about the ‘Master Method.’”

                “You always carry these around with you?”

                “Sure. Never know when you might need to help an old friend,” she said with a wink. “Let me know how it goes. Have a good evening, John.”

                “You too Sarah, thanks.”

                John slid the card into his coat pocket. On the ride home he thought about what Sarah had told him. Could Rob help them too? All they wanted was to build a home!

                He was home in time to eat with Lisa for once. They didn’t talk much over dinner but he wasn’t feeling as disheartened anymore, either. He wondered if she had talked with her mother today and told her about the house. He could imagine what that conversation must have been like. But he didn’t care, it didn’t matter. He was beginning to feel hopeful and wasn’t going to ruin it by getting into an argument with Lisa.

Please tell me What You Think!

Mister P

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