Lord We Give You Thanks
Thanksgiving Day was last Thursday and perhaps this column should have been written for publication last Wednesday. Maybe we need a reminder to let our thanksgiving continue on a year around basis. One day out of 365 is not a high enough quantity to keep us aware that every good thing that happens to us is a gift from Almighty God.
Perhaps I have told this story before, but I had an experience with God about 50 years ago where I did not have a job and I was asking God to tell me how I was going to live. It seemed as if he asked me what I needed and I told him that I had everything that I needed at the time but I wanted to know how I was going to live. The message that came into my heart and mind that I believe came from God was that I was going to continue to live without any needs. I was going to live with all of my needs supplied. Since that day many things have happened in my life but every need has always been supplied.
About a week after this experience, a friend that did not know I was looking for a job called and told me that he had a job open and I was the only one he was considering for the job. I went to work for him less than a week later. The job was back in North Georgia and the house we owned here was leased out for a year. The day I reached an agreement to go to work for my friend the renter told me he was going to have to move out of our house. He moved out and we moved back into our own home within a couple of weeks. We had bought a home at the old job location and it sold to the first party that looked at it. The sale was closed just before the movers arrived to get our furniture. Talk about needs being met on a timely basis! I gave thanks to God for working out all of this.
At one time I was vice president of a carpet yarn dyeing company that used a process called knitdeknit space dyeing. The yarn was knitted on a hosiery knitting machine into a continuous sock. This sock was then printed with multiple colors and when it was unraveled back to a cone the yarn colors had spaces of several colors dyed in a random spacing. This worked out okay in carpet that was tufted with low loops but some of our competitors used a different system that did not have a kink and when shag or other cut pile carpet was tufted, their product tufts stood straight while ours looked like a poodle dog. A lot of things had been tried to remove the kink but nothing had been successful. I was driving home from work one evening thinking about the problem and my thought was that we would have to steam the yarn while it was under tension and straight. From out of nowhere, and I believe that the thought came from God, my mind said that when the yarn was on the cone it was straight and under tension. Why not steam the cone. The next morning when I arrived at work, I took a small cone of the yarn and put it on the end of a broom stick and held it inside of our production steamer. When I brought it out there was no kink in the yarn. We purchased two used cabinet steamers and began to steam all of the cones before they were packed. Steaming the cones became the industry standard method for removing the kink from yarns dyed with this technique. This was something else to thank God for giving to me.
My son and I opened a printing business that we operated for twelve years. I still worked as a consultant in the carpet industry during that time so I did not lose my connections with the industry. During this period, the computers advanced to the point that it substantially reduced the need for printing and we reached the point where it was necessary to close the business. I did not have another job possibility that I could see in the future because of my age and when it was down to the last couple of weeks in liquidation of the business, I received a telephone call from a friend who had gone to Saudi Arabia to work. He told me that he needed a dyer, to come to Saudi Arabia and run their dyeing department. I told him that I was a dyer and asked if he would be interested in having me come over there.
The next morning he called back with his Arab boss on the phone and they asked me to come over there for a month for evaluation. In less than three weeks I was working in Saudi Arabia. I worked in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, for the company for above three years and was responsible for the dyeing department, product development, international marketing and planning the market exhibitions for shows around the world. I was the assistant to my friend who was the general manager and filled in for him when he was away from the plant for vacations, etc. When I returned to the United States, I worked for the same company in sales for their products over here. Later I worked in Dubai and then in India and my final overseas work was in Cairo, Egypt. I believe that God supplied all of these opportunities to me.
There was other work that I did during the period between going to Saudi Arabia and my retirement but the surprise to me is that I was able to retire at all. I never made provisions for retirement. Doing foreign consulting, there was very little in the way of living expenses overseas since the companies supplied everything but food and clothing. We were able to pay off all of our debts including our home and our cars. We accumulated some savings. It finally came down to the time when no more consulting was available and my age prevented me from working at any other jobs in the carpet industry. I started to draw my Social Security and then my wife started to draw her Social Security and she also had a retirement account with the school system. The three incomes are not nearly the amount we had when both of us were working full time but it is enough to supply all of our needs.
On a regular basis we contribute to our church and we make a regular contribution to both Provident Ministries and to St. Jude Children’s Hospital. We make smaller contributions to a number of other charities and our mail every day is full of solicitation to give to even more. We give as much as we can and God continues to supply all of our needs just like He promised.