The Ideas Behind CR – VIII
Well the new adventure living in Arkansas wasn’t quite what I had expected. Having trouble finding work in the NW Arkansas area, my hopes of attending Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary was on the back burner. I now had a college student loan debt, no job, and my family was recovering from the divorce and deaths in the family. Shortly after we moved we got the news from the IRS, that my mom owed them nearly $6,000. This would be a financial burden to anyone, but especially someone that had always paid in extra, but even harder for someone that had just gone through a divorce supporting a family of three adults and had just lost both parents. We were shocked to learn what had happened. In the year 2005, right before my father had disappeared with his mistress, he had filed my parents tax return seperate and had changed the donation amounts and overall amount on my mom’s IRS return. He had gotten the check drafted to his account, and that is the check he and his mistress had left on. My mom had realized at the time he got the check, but it wasn’t suppose to be as much as he calculated and she thought of it as her loss. But now, she was being forced to repay the real amount he had gotten in the return, plus major penalties. It was one of the most humiliating thing my mother or I had ever gone through. Though we were able to prove our innocence, she was still legally responsible to repay the debt. Immediately we cashed in her retirement plans, and made monthly payments, and by the grace of God finally was able to repay it. About the same time we learned that my dad had done some similiar shady business with my brother’s Social Security disability. My brother lost his benefit’s, income, and epilepsy medication (for nearly a year). Because of the stress and the medication problems, my brother started having the worst grand mal seizures he had ever had in his life. One night he had one in his room, and an entertainment system and TV fell on him. When I heard the noise and came into the room, he was laying in a pool of blood completely still with and entertainment system on his head, a tv on his back. I feared the worst. Thankfully, I was able to get the system off him in time, and call 911. He had also contracted MRSA about the same time and he was in the hospital having surgeries mutliple times. I had never felt the lower in my whole life. My mother started having to pay for his medications $600 a month. We spent our first winter there temporarily without heating. I felt so helpess.
Thankfully God worked everything out and by the summer I got 2 jobs on the same day. I got a job at a Christian bookstore and an AT&T store. Within about 4 months, the Christian bookstore (private owned), but a sign on the window announcing the store closing. I had just turned down an assistant management job at AT&T (I enjoyed having both jobs). Thankfully I was offered the position again and took the assistant manager position. About January 2008, my mother was feeling led to move to Tennessee. We prayed about it, and asked the Lord to make His will plain. We visited a few times, and it seemed things were pointing in this direction. Again, not wanting to make a unsensible move, weeks before she was to accept a job position, I was praying about giving a three week notice at my job. I had budgeted to stay on three more weeks, and was applying for jobs in the Knoxville, TN area. I had hopes of making a smooth transition. That very morning after praying about it and going to work, the owner’s of the store walked in and told us that they had sold our stores, and that effective at the end of the day we were no longer employed. This hit me out of no where! I could go through a rehiring process, only to work three weeks, but felt the Lord had made His will plain. Within three weeks my family packed up our belongings, but our furniture in a storage facility in the Knoxville, TN area. We did not have a home, and were staying with some friends. This was a hard challenge for me, I am a giver not a reciever (by nature). But once again God brought me to my fears, and showed me that He is the author of perfect peace! Within weeks we found a home just south of Knoxville, where we now live. Shortly after a close family member back in Arkansas was killed and ejected in a car wreck. Though he was my mother’s cousin, he had been like a father figure to my brother and I during our life’s transitions.
Daily I have learned to rely on the grace of Christ to get me through the circumstances of life. That is what the trials are all about! However, I do believe we as the Body of Christ can help people develop spiritually, emotionally, physically, mentally, and in their life purpose/calling.
I have shared these trials along with my desire to learn, for two reasons. First of all, trials can serve as distractions and can hinder our spiritual development out of our despair of circumstances or numb us to personal pursuit. Secondly I share thes trials to show how some of the trials and personal struggles were uncessary. While some were unpreventable and part of God’s master development, the rest came out of lack of support and guidance (which I will share my hopes/ideas to help others avoid such pitfalls)!
After my theology classes, I come to the realization that I had the foundational training in continuing my quest of knowledge privately. But I was really wanting to experience it in community. You know that iron sharpening iron kind of thing. But I kept finding myself in that place seeing that the average Christian is either not capable of discussing Biblical truth (because of proper discipleship), or had no desire in their heart for Biblical understanding (groping along in life by the emotional highs and lows). Before my college years, I had a heart for discipleship, but as I had learned from my own quest for Truth, I was beginning to see how vital discipleship was. Many years before, I had the idea of “Carpenter’s Refuge” birthed out of my own experiences.
