Not long after my wife and I married, we bought an empty lot of land and prepared to have a house built on it. The contractor who did most of the work for us was an enormous man. He was very tall, and he had played football for a big college—in fact, I thought of him as being as big as an ox, as the saying goes.
As the project progressed, the contractor made what I thought were some significant mistakes—mistakes that were costing me a lot of money. I grew more and more disgusted with him. After a while, I came to expect him to make mistakes, and sure enough, each week he didn’t fail to make one or two.
By now we were far over budget. I figured out that my construction loan would be used up before the house was finished, and I began to worry.
