My sister was thinking about coming down here to Atlanta but finances are holding her back. She and I grew up in a household where that is what we learned; Money & budget. “We don’t have money like some people.” and “We’re on a budget so we can’t do that.”. Those are a couple of the most common statements that I heard from my mother. Our stepfather wasn’t around very often, especially after I was about seven or eight, but when he was around we heard that from him also.
As large of a part that money played in the part of my life when I was younger, I grew up thinking that it was the ruling authority. I thought that those that had it were able to do things and those that didn’t have it weren’t able to do things. Television didn’t help that matter much. The TV went on at six AM in the morning and went off at midnight. My family spoke very little to each other, and the TV was constantly bombarding me with that theme of the importance of money.
That was twenty years ago. Wow, it’s hard to believe that it was that long. But by the time I was fifteen years old my mother and step-father were not really together anymore. Were they officially separated by then; I can’t remember, but they definitely weren’t together. A lot of things have happened since then. And not just one thing has primed me for how I think now. I can see that something was working in my life very early on to train me, to correct me, to prepare me for the work that I have today. Although there are probably dozens of things that have influenced who I am, here are a few of the ones that stick out in my memory the most.
I ran into David Turner when I worked at ACORN. ACORN was the first job that I had where I was nearly “free as a bird”. For the most part I came and went as I pleased. But I worked hard and faced a lot of my fears to do the job that was assigned to me. That wasn’t as much of a primer as the teaching that David gave to me. He had evidently read and studied many things as they related to working for yourself and becoming the kind of man that could lead others.
Those teachings aren’t usually good teachings, but there are some good things that can be learned in them. And the teaching that he used to pass onto me was one that led me away from the grip that “the job” had on me. He taught me about the concept of firing your boss. That was a complete paradigm shift. Up until that point I was still going on what my mother and the TV had taught me. I believed that “the boss” or “the job” held all of the cards. You did what they said or you didn’t have a job. ‘They’ had the power.
It wasn’t just a one liner that was able to teach me that though. It was the words from a man that God had taught through experience. David didn’t do badly at what he did for the price that people hired him. He was the Co-Owner of Marie Turner Cleaning Services. If he had switched out his buffing pad more often he would have cleaned the floors better. That however would have required him to charge more, and his clients were pinching pennies. He seemed to have good intentions and was no stranger to hard work. ‘Yes’ he had fired his boss and his bills were getting paid. Even though he didn’t say that God taught him what he knew, I can see now that he did many of the things in his life because of his faith in God’s provision. He occasionally, but not often, did bring that up.
After a couple of almost unmentionable attempts at having my own business as an office consultant or a resume writer, I became a drug dealer. As amusing as this might sound I treated it like a small business. And I ‘really’ did consider it a small business! The few people that bought drugs from me (I was quite small time) were considered “clients”. I didn’t really believe in God at the time so I had nothing to hold me back from doing it. I say not “really” because I can vaguely recall crying, praying, and yelling at what might be God before I made the decision. In part of my “prayer” I said something like “Why am I in this situation if there is a God! If you really exist then I wouldn’t have to make this decision! I wouldn’t have to do this!” then I really yelled something which I can’t quite remember right now. I think it had something to do with striking me dead or having a lightening bolt come out of the sky, or something silly like that. I was serious and crying at the time though, I felt I was at the end of my rope. … I believe that was the last time that I pseudo-prayed for several years. Inside the next week or so I bought my first quarter pound of weed and started bagging it up to sell.
My belief that I needed “a job” to take care of me actually contributed to my becoming a drug dealer. I thought I had tried every option to get a job before I made that decision. “The bills needed to be paid” or so I thought. I had sent out numerous resumes. I had poured over want ads and called dozens of potentials. But everywhere I turned was an end. “Sorry sir we aren’t hiring anymore.”, “Sorry sir we’ve already hired for that position. We’ll keep your resume on file.”, etc. etc. So I become a drug dealer.
Years after those paradigm shifting experiences I’ve had other things that contributed further to the faith that I have now. I’ve met people that said they were “taken care of”, that “somebody up there” was taking care of them. I heard people say things like “When you take care of the universe, the universe takes care of you.” Usually when I heard these things I would simply analyze their lives and I would come to the conclusion that it wasn’t a “someone up there” that was taking care of them but that it was; a retirement account, social security, disability, food stamps, a recent inheritance, “a financial contributor”, an antique that they just sold, etc. etc.
But in the cases of the last three kinds of help, I heard enough of these stories that I started to consider the “timing” of this help that some people would receive. And I would also wonder why some people would receive help just in time and others wouldn’t. Here is where the evidence began that I sensed I should not ignore. It wasn’t enough evidence for me to say that there was absolutely a central governing power, but there was enough for me to raise my eyebrow and wonder. So I wondered. Not all of the time, but occasionally. And when these things happened I would pay more attention to them. I knew, that if there was a power that governed everything, then that was worth my attention.
It’s hard to say when something that I would call faith actually started to form. But I’ll put 2001 as a marker for the moment. It wasn’t a faith in God per se. And most definitely not a “faith in Jesus”. Someone saying Jesus still made me nauseous then; and I’m not kidding, my stomach churned on a couple of occasions I can remember. But the faith I had was a faith that said there was something more. And so I continued looking beyond the Buddhism and the world of ghosts and spirits (in varying degrees) that I had looked into before. I started to believe that if there was a “cause and effect” in regard to life’s matters, then why was that? Could that happen by chance? And though the question didn’t form quite this well in my mind then, it was roughly the inception of what would become the question “Is there something that created these rules of cause and effect?
I continued to see people that said they were taken care of, and I continued to see people that said the universe was taking care of them. All of these people were still many times the minority in my life. I had gotten myself into, so I thought, a job at a nonprofit organization by that point. I had worked very hard at it and it was slowly becoming something that was doing well in comparison to anything else I had done financially in my life. I worked fifty to sixty hours a week but I was there eighty to ninety hours a week because I also studied and played at work. My work was my life. If I got tired of working I would do something else to take a break for an hour or so, and then I would get back to work.
My mind was still on money being the master, it was the power. In my mind I thought it gave me the power to “do good” and that it also gave me the power to make choices. I spent some of my free time at work looking over my bank account, creating new bank accounts, figuring out what would be the best place to put my extra cash, thinking of how I could save more, learning about the stock market, considering property investments, learning about IRAs, seeing how much I should put in my investments, and even trying to hide money so others would not know how much I had; even if I pretended to show them. Now I know that faith simply means something that I rely on. What you think has power in your life is whatever you have faith in. Money is what I relied on. And that is what I trusted.
To make a longer story a little shorter, the more I paid attention to the faith that other people had the more it interested me. And when God gave me faith late in 2002 (I think) I started to see even more. There are people out there that have everything that they need to live; they have food, clothing, and often enough even more than that. The thing that they all have in common is that they believe in a God or a power that is going to provide for them; and they give themselves over to that power. If it happened once I could call it a fluke or coincidence. But when it happens over and over again? When it looks like someone is going to run out of provision and they don’t; just in the nick of time repeatedly. Then it gives cause to pause.
A couple of years ago I became one of those people. I believe that God is going to provide for me; even if I don’t do what He wants (I’ve asked for and accepted the grace of God). Insects and animals are even taken care of. But I want very much to go whatever direction that He wants me to go. I see how I have been taken care of, just in the nick of time on at least three occasions since I was given the faith to be ‘able’ to make that choice. Now that I know there is a creator that is taking care of me, I am grateful. The name Jesus doesn’t make me nauseous anymore. His teaching, his life, his death, and his coming back from the dead are all very important to me now. And I know that it’s God, not money or a job that takes care of me. There is a little something inside me that tells me when to work for free and when to work for pay. Funny thing is it isn’t connected to whether my bank account reads twenty dollars is left or not. However I am always provided for.
