(About a 9 min read… and yes… you read that correctly!)
I was 15… working to support my family at a local grocery store… we lived in the projects… or more softly said “low income housing”… by the way we lived, it was pretty clear that we didn’t have much money… I wish I could say my dad was an honorable and hard working man… and maybe he was at some point in his life… but this season he was simply a mooch… a user of people… and a grand manipulator…
One particular day, we were both sitting in the living room… which was very unusual for me… I would frequently remove myself from the room if I heard my dad coming from the other room… my dad was tall… had a big gruff beard… and weighed around 350-400lbs… he wasn’t the fit kind of overweight… this was the kind that caused him to heavily lean backwards to compensate his enormously protruding mid section…
I was playing guitar… I had just begun and was practicing my new found love… I enjoyed playing in the living room… it had chairs and I could open the windows and enjoy fresh air in a not so fresh smelling home…
My dad walked in and sat is his large recliner… you could almost hear the chair let out a painful yelp as he dropped down heavily into it… we usually never talked… we didn’t have much in common… throughout my life, I can only remember him telling me approximately 5 stories about himself… four of which were war stories… and the last was how he worked in a studio as a janitor when James Brown was recording his hit song “Papa’s Got A Brand New Bag”… to this day, I only believe the first four…
As I was sitting there in my own hyper-focused world… my dad turns to me and says “I’m thinking about starting a bidness…” now, my dad was born and raised in Kentucky and carried the backwoods slack-jawed accent very well… mixed with the fact that he was missing most of his teeth… only added the authenticity of his dialect…
I turned to him and said “oh yeah? What kind of business?”… I was simply making small talk… my dad had hare brained ideas like this all the time… he’d talk about it over and over again… with new ideas and no vision… every time… I had learned to just humor him…
He looked at me very intently and said “I’m going to build lawn furniture…”… my 15 year old mouth was much faster than my brain and I said “uhhh… how do you plan on doing that?!”…
He replied “I’ll buy some tools, wood, and… a fax machine! All the businesses out there have fax machines!”… I responded “why do you need a fax machine? If you don’t have any clients yet“… I was frustratedto no end… as far as I knew I was the only one working to help our family survive. I thought to myself… “Where are you gonna get the money for all these tools and your precious fax machine!?”
I sat patiently as my dad explained His whole unrealistic business plan… I responded “why would anybody want to buy flamingos for their front yard in New Hampshire?!“… Then I said “you don’t even know how to use power tools… Let alone have money for wood or materials to build that!… “
I could see his face drop in disappointment and his cherry disposition Suddenly became very angry… so I gathered my things and went to my room…
Now, unlike my dad… I always had favor and an innate ability to make money off of creative ideas… a couple of months later I had an idea… I also had a desire… I wanted a new guitar something that wasn’t as rudimentary as the one I had at the time. So I decided pictures of popular cartoon characters with sharpie markers and Scotch guard on my jeans and I wore them to school.
Within two weeks, I had 50 pairs of jeans on my desktop at home with multiple orders commission at about $25 per pair of jeans… after about a month of commissioning cartoons on jeans I had accumulated a couple thousand dollars that I had in cash in an envelope in my top drawer of my desk.
As I was fulfilling, another order of blue jeans, my dad came into my room and said “hey Mike! What you been up to!”… My dad never asked me what I’ve been up to unless he had some kind of ulterior motive behind it… He walked in with all smiles and deep in my heart I felt a pit of discomfort… it’s like I was hiding, and the warden‘s dog found me in a tree…
I replied and said “I’m just drawing some cartoons for friends at school”… He seemed very interested and wanted to know everything about it… In my naivety, I explained it… For a moment, I actually felt valued by him…
Eventually, after about 30 minutes, I divulged the truth that I had saved up $2000 and I had it in cash … you should’ve seen his face… it was like he had just stumbled on a gold mine… he said “let me see it!” And in all of my innocence and deep desire to please my dad… I opened the drawer and gave him the envelope… I had only intended him to look, however… in that moment I had realized too late his intentions…
He took the envelope and held it up to his nose and lightly grazed over the top of all the bills and breathed in heavily and then exhaled with a sigh of relief… it was like he was intoxicated by the smell of money… he then replied “ This is going to really help me start my bidness”… and he walked out of the room with my money in hand…
Now at this point in my life, I had grown accustomed to losing things… whether it was broken by my dad or stolen… I was already pretty keen to loss…
So I finished my commissions that were on my table however, when I was done once again, my dad came into my room … but this time he said “how much money did you make?”… I lied and said “not much only $100…”… he scoffed and smirked at my stand down and said “I counted 50 pairs of jeans that means you have $1250… Where is it?” Fear began to grip my heart and I was afraid of him… so I apologized and gave him the rest of the money…
About a week later, I came home from school to find a large opened box in the middle of the living room… and amidst all of the strewn Styrofoam peanuts… There was a brand new top of the line fax machine… my dad came out with a big smile on his face, which slowly turned into a sneer… I asked my dad “what’s this for Dad“… To it he replied “it’s none of your bidness“ as he walked back into his room and shut the door…
As I’ve been traveling back through time… The Lord has been revealing to me roots and broken pieces that continue to tie me down even to this day…
Every one of us has an opportunity to trust God… Also everyone of us have things in our lives that we haven’t given him permission to uproot so we can heal…
I have a healing journey… Mine is unseen for the moment, but displayed by my actions through time… when I decided to follow Jesus, I did not only give him my yes for that moment… But I made him a commitment to him… That I would do my best to give him my yes in every moment moving forward.
I believe healing starts with your heart… Everybody experiences, hardships, troubles, and frustrations in life that can either set them back or drive them forward… However, the first thing that gets hurt is the heart.
Are you wanting to receive healing for your body?… Then maybe in your time with the Lord you should ask him to reveal the roots and be willing to let him pull them so you can heal… Because out of the heart flow your issues of life.
Thank you for reading this all the way through. For more stories like these you can visit amburnministries.com/Blog
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