The year was, I think, 1981, and I was living in Mineral Wells, Tx.
I had arrived there a few months earlier with my two small children, ages 4 and 3, filling in a sales job with Motorola corporation selling two way radios to oil companies. I had traveled there and taken the job after a bitter divorce from an abusive husband. I also considered the move to be an escape from a boss who, though married, had insisted he was in love with me and continually looked for ways he could try to take me to his bed. I was a brand new Christian and didn't want his bed. Sexual harrassment laws in Texas in 1981 were practically nonexistent, so I ran to Mineral Wells.
I also had a small business on the side - a direct sales business - which I hoped to build someday into a business large enough and secure enough to provide for a legacy and the long term financial security of myself and my children, but I needed to talk to a lot of people to do it.
The job with Motorola looked promising in the beginning: They promised a salary plus generous commissions, a new company car and reimbursement for gas and mileage. This was helpful, since my own car, an old Ford Fury, had recently gasped it's final breath and gone down for the count. I was a good sales person and full of hope.
The job with Motorola started to show signs of trouble, though, when the "powers that be" first gave me the company car. It turned out that my "boss' boss" had his eye on that particular car and they gave it to me instead. He was not pleased, and told me so.
It didn't stop there, though. My own boss took me out for training into the oil fields, where I learned the sales job, and within just a few weeks he started inviting me to go to his lake cabin with him. I sweetly told him that would be fine as long as we took his wife and my kids! He didn't take that too well,either. I also didn't participate in the cursing, swearing and foul language the other sales reps used, and so seemed to stand a bit away from those reps. Both bosses called me in one day and told me that they didn't know how, but they WOULD find a way to get rid of me.
Only thing was, they couldn't. Not honestly, anyway. I was selling, and making them money. I was more than 400% over quota - good by any definition. My only offense was that I was good looking - some might say "hot". And a Christian. So they collaborated.
I considered the harrassment and collaboration against me to be an incentive to build my own small business at night, on my own time, so as to hopefully make enough money to carry me through when I eventually hoped to leave them. I didn't have time to do that, though. One day the bosses called me in, told me that they were firing me and said the reason was because I wasn't producing anything. I was shocked, as I had turned in thousands of dollars in business. I asked them how that could be - and then I saw my contracts on the boss' desk - my signature taken off and boss's signature overlaying where mine was. Forged.
They followed me home from Fort Worth to Mineral Wells that night and then took the company car. I was shocked as I had never been fired from anything before, but felt that God was on my side and He would carry me through. I started job hunting.
Mineral Wells had been home to an Air Force Base earlier in it's history. The base closed down some years before I moved there, and business had gone downhill with it. There was a gas and oil crisis going on at that time, too, so the surrounding oil fields were shutting down, creating a general depression in the area.
I walked door to door to the businesses in town, to see who would need a good sales rep, or a waitress, or even a MacDonalds burger flipper. Nobody was hiring. Nobody. I finally convinced a local Ford dealership to hire me, giving me the use of Ford vehicles to drive, but nobody was buying cars, either. Customers weren't even walking onto the lot or calling, and the reps - all of us working on commission only - were left standing around an empty lot and an empty showroom, for day after day. Phone calling, advertising, nothing was bringing the customers in.
No commissions means no money. Two days before my food was going to run out, I called my ex-husband in Virginia and asked him to take the kids for a while because I couldn't feed them. My little sideline business wasn't making enough money yet to support us or even pay the bills. My ex flew out within two days and I hugged both kids and told them I would come get them as soon as I could.
And then I walked back into that big, empty house. Alone. Too soon after my divorce to acquire anything, I had no living room furniture, no TV, just the kid's beds and a mattress on the floor for myself. I had bought a window air conditioner on credit when I moved in to provide some relief from the 100 degree (Plus!) summers.
I had decided on one principle which I would not compromise: I would not go on welfare. It was against everything I believed in. America is the land of opportunity, where if you work, you eat. America is where, if you have a dream, and you work hard and you focus on it and don't quit, you can make that dream come true. Welfare, to me, was a crutch, and dangerously generational. I would not give the example of a welfare crutch to my children.
As a Christian, I had learned another principle: God "inhabits" the praise of His people. In the Bible, His living Word, He says that we are to praise Him in all things and thank Him for all things. It says that praise and thanksgiving releases His power in our lives and gives us victory over our situations. I knew that a Jesus that could rise from the dead in His own body by His own will could get me through this. He died for me. He rose from the dead for me. So I continually praised Him and thanked him for my situation. Often, the prayer went something like this, "Lord, I don't know where or how or why this is happening, but I praise and thank you for it right now!"
I went on as best as I could. My money ran out. My food ran out. I walked to the local churches to see if I could get any help from them. The Southern Baptist church curtly told me that they only helped church members and if I wanted any help I would have to become a member. I didn't.
I still continued, as best as I could, to try to build my little fledgling business, but it became harder without gas or ability to get to see people in outlying areas. Mineral wells wasn't very big - only a few thousand people. Anywhere you had to go was farther than walking distance.
One church recommended me to the local Salvation Army, which consisted of a house with one person living there. The Salvation Army there didn't have any food, but did lend me a bicycle so I could get around when the Ford Dealership started to go out. (I think they cut their entire sales staff down to just the owner). Someone else lent me a big 5 gallon water bottle after the water was shut off so I could load it into the kid's little red wagon, haul it to the corner gas station, fill it with water, and take it home. I had water - just no food.
Somewhere during that time, a very old friend showed up for a very brief time. In the early 1970's we had been close; so close, in fact, that three times he had asked me to marry him, and, being that time a very wild immature young lady, three times I had said yes, and then dumped him for other people. Still, somehow he had always been graceful and kind, and we had somehow ended things on a friendly basis. Back in the 1970's he had taught me to drive, to work on cars, and even how to have table manners. He graduated from college, went into the Navy, and I went into the Air Force (which had planted me in Texas. After I got out of the Air Force, I had married a Tech Sargeant who became an officer, and had my beloved two children - and then divorced when he beat me). When my old friend showed up in Mineral Wells, I put on my best face and did all I could not to let on the dire situation I was in. He put his hand in mine as naturally as if we had never been apart, and we talked. I invited him to come into business with me.
That's where the missing memory comes in. I don't remember what happened. Any of it. What happened? Did he say no, and I say that if he wasn't coming into my business we couldn't be friends? Did he say he'd get back to me on it? What happened? I don't remember. Any of it. It's like a big hole. I just remember that he left - faded out into a cloud as if he had never been there. Did he have any idea that he was leaving me to die? Well, not absolutely die - but almost die.
The days wore on with no food and no money. The people I had bought the air conditioner from came and took it back because I couldn't pay for it. The electricity was turned off. The phone was turned off. I had exhausted every option I knew of, and yet the one thing I knew to keep doing was praising and thanking God for the situation - and reading the Bible, His Word.
Finally, one night, having not eaten in longer than I could remember, I laid down on my mattress to sleep, and, I thought, to probably die. I felt I was very close to it. The last words I said were, "Lord, I don't know how or why, but I praise and thank you for this in Jesus Name". I had drifted into that twilight between sleep and awake when I heard an audible voice say to me, "Get up and start packing. Everything's going to be all right". I was alone in the house! Who was here? Immediately awake, I sat up and said, "What? Who's there?" The voice spoke again, "Get up and start packing. Everything's going to be all right." Amazed, I knew it had to be the voice of God. Suddenly I had energy, got up, and immediately started packing my things.
A few hours later, I heard a knock at the door. I opened it, and a fellow I had only met once in a business meeting was standing at my door, with his pick up truck backed up to it behind him. He had a strange expression on his face as he said, "You know, I don't understand this, but my wife Leslie and I think we just heard God tell us to come here and move you in with us."
Amazed, I immediately thanked the fellow, whose name was JT, and together we packed my things into his pick up truck and moved me to to his house on top of a hill.
Day after day during the time I stayed with them, I rode the donated bicycle down that hill to go job hunting. Day after day I rode that one speed bicycle farther and farther back up that hill until I could ride all the way up without walking.
One day I heard about a drafting job. I had some drafting experience, so rode the bicycle down the hill to head to the business and fill out an application. During the ride, a thunderstorm blew in and washed yellow mud all over the road, so I arrived at the business soaking wet and covered in yellow mud. The receptionist told me that the job had already been filled, but I was welcome to fill out a job application. I sat down to fill out the application and, while writing, saw two men walk into the office. One of them, who I assumed was the manager, asked for the head of the business. I figured they were either with the National "Write Your Congressman" or the National Chamber of Commerce, and decided to approach them to find out when they came out. I figured that if they were with the Chamber, I didn't want the job because it required too much travel for a mom with kids, but if it was the "Write Your Congressman" that I would tell them I was a really good salesman and wanted a job so I could get my kids back. When they walked out, I asked the one I assumed to be the manager, "Who do you work for?" He replied, "The National 'Write Your Congressman'. Why do you ask?" I said, "I want to work for you". He looked me up and down, soaking wet, covered with mud and with a rubber band around one ankle to keep my pants out of the bicycle gears and said, "Why?" I told him my story, and that I had been a member of "Write Your Congressman" in Wichita Falls. I told him I felt I would make them a good salesman and that I felt God had directed me to him. He smiled broadly and said, "Great! I'm a Christian too! My name is Arch Bonnema". He gave me his card, I called him, we scheduled an interview, and he hired me. Someone else showed up with a rental car for me and I went to work in Fort Worth, TX. This started one of my most treasured friendships. Arch, and his wife, Sherry, became friends and mentors who impacted my life in every area, but especially in the area of my spiritual life. They "adopted" me for a while after I finally made enough money to get my children back and Sherry was matron of honor at my second wedding. Arch and Sherry have, before and since, impacted more lives of other people than I can count and the very thought of what they did for me blesses me every time I think of them.
It is now 2007 and my husband and I live in Idaho. My children are grown and married. But what about the old friend I last saw in Mineral Wells? I know we parted friends, but still have a huge hole in my memory. The reason I bring this up is that particular old friend moved to Idaho a year or so ago. I found out only a few weeks ago. He has now been married for a long time and has daughters of his own. I'm glad, as I had often prayed for him that he would find a good mate and have a great marriage and good family. I always thought well of him. The company he was working for, though, went out of business, he is out of a job, and he and his wife have a little sideline business that they are hoping to build into a big business.
When I found out (through a business website that we both subscribe to) that he had moved to a portion of Idaho that my husband and I travel often to, I realized that there was a good chance that we could cross paths. I did not want that situation to become awkward, so immediately shot him an email to say hello and alert him that we were here and could cross paths. This led to a series of emails that indicated that his family and ours have a great deal in common - especially in the areas of faith and values - and they would like to be friends. They have invited us to their house.
And they want to invite us to participate in their little sideline business with them.
And there, again, is the hole in my memory. Part of me wonders if he had any idea that, when I invited him into my business so long ago and he didn't participate, that he was leaving me to almost die. Part of me wonders if and how things might be different if he had signed on: I would not have heard God speak. I would never have met Arch and Sherry Bonnema and been so incredibly blessed by their presence in my life. I would never had been in the other businesses I have been in. I would never have met my own sweet husband, whom I love dearly. And even though I want us to be friends - I have missed his friendship - I don't know if we can comfortably participate in his business.
One thing I do know. I can say, "Lord, I don't know where, how or why, but I praise and thank you for this in Jesus Name". God doesn't lie, and he doesn't make mistakes. He will lead us correctly and perfectly in this thing too.