Chapter 1 from Recessionproof. An Improbable Live.

“Improbable”

Ref.: www.thesauris.com

Main Entry:

Improbable

Part of Speech:

Adjective

Synonyms:

doubtful, farfetched, inconceivable, questionable, slim, unbelievable, unconvincing, unlikely

Both my wife and I were raised in theMidwestand learned our work ethics at a young age. During the late 70’s and early 80’s, I never felt any sort of financial stress, even though it was a period of heavy financial turmoil. I lived in my Grandmother and Grandfather’s home with my Grandmother’s brother (Uncle Joe), my mother and my aunt. With my grandparents not having a son of their own, when I came along, I was immediately made the apple of grandparent’s eye. I loved it all. My Grandmother cooked 4 course meals on a daily basis. Dinner was always ready and waiting for me when I came home. Roast Beef, Fried Chicken, Black-eyed Peas, Lima Beans (that good stuff with the gravy), Corn Bread and always a cake or pies or cobblers..Absolute heaven! Our family was considered rich because each adult in the house worked. My grandmother retired from the USPS after 35 years. My Grandfather was an army veteran and did janitorial work for that same length of time. My mother worked for Bi-State transportation, as a city bus driver for more than a decade. My aunt worked for a decade with Ozark Airline, who was bought out by TWA, under Carl Icon at the time, who were then bought out by American Airlines. Through all of this, my Aunt is still working for the airlines. Most of my cousins are long tenured employees, with companies that they have been with for decades. It is similar on my wife’s side as her closest aunt is a retired naval officer and both her mother and father retired from Anheiser Busch, after several decades of service.

I remember summer breaks and how my friends and I would make new adventures on a daily basis. Even as a young black man, I could relate to Mark Twains description of life along theMississippi. MusickPark, the swimming pool, the circle, the monkey tree and Bandy’s Market were major landmarks in the tapestry of our summers and we worked them all, thoroughly. We knew our neighborhood as the “Woods” because the street names were all a derivative of some sort of wood. I lived onMidwood street. Most of my Friends lived on Sagewood or Woodhurst streets. The streets lived up to their names as each was lined with tall mature oaks and cottonwood trees. In mid-summers, towards the falls, the cottonwoods would burst open and the light cotton would blow in the wind like a scene from a fairytale. It was perfect. The city we lived in was considered a blue collar working community where most of the residents worked in the defense industry (McDonnell Douglas) or for the airport.

One summer in particular, a construction crew began work re-pouring our cement sidewalks on my street. I remember waking up to the sounds of the jack hammer pummeling the old sidewalk and all of the workmen building the frames for each solid section of the sidewalk. I remember the cement trucks and the blockage of our favorite street corner. I remember Mr. Johnson trying to fence the corner of his yard off to keep us from riding our bikes through his lawn, where we’d had a sidewalk previously. But what stood out most about this particular summer was Mr. Tom Newell, the young construction worker that remained after all of the heavy equipment and the bulk of his team had departed the area. Mr. Newell, now that I think of it, couldn’t have been any more than 24 or 25 years old at the time. One day, my friend Robert and I were riding our bikes through Mr. Johnson’s yard and we were stopped by Mr. Newell. “This guy has been complaining about you kids to my boss” he said and we thought we were going to have to make a run for it. What happened next was one of those experiences that shape who a kid becomes as he becomes a young man. Mr. Newell asked my friends and I if we wanted to work for him. He’d pay us $25.00 per day, to remove the lumber frames from the sections of the sidewalk. He showed us his pick-axe, the jack-hammer and the long stakes, that we thought of as big nails. He showed us how to run the stakes between the wood frames and the newly laid concrete, remove the frames, leaving a fresh new sidewalk for the neighborhood to use. Each day, Mr. Newell expected us to be there and ready to work at 7:30 a.m. and he came back at noon and then again at 1:30 p.m. After we got paid and “Off of Work”. We’d run up to Bandy’s market and buy a sack load of candy for about a dollar. After the four day job was complete, I remember waking up that Saturday morning, going out to the corner and wishing we could do another section of concrete sidewalks. This experience taught me the satisfaction of having and effectively completing a job and I never forgot it. It taught me how my parents felt when they got paid for doing a job. My parents were proud of me because I’d taken a step into the adult world and earned my own money for doing fun things over the summer. I know now looking back that the pride I felt was linked to my work ethic and that pride formed my values on working. Mr. Newell, while probably going off to visit a friend or go home and sleep, imparted a lesson of great importance to who I am today. The satisfaction of compensation for my work, learning how to do the work and a pride in doing the work were the obvious points. The points that were less obvious didn’t really begin to dawn on me until a decade and a half later.

Growing up inSt. LouisMO, when one considered their future, their family and stability, those things all depended on having a good job. The proof of this fact was actually my family. Lisa’s parents were the same, although they managed to create their capital resource pool with two parents. There were different job levels to choose from and each successive level meant a better, more stable life. $30,000.00 per year, weekends off, 1 week of paid vacation and paid sick leave basically meant that a person had made it! At $50,000.00 per year, a person was considered upper middle class….or what we called rich! Five days on, two days off and enough money to afford a car, eat out a few times per week, keep your fade tight (the weekly haircut), buy new clothes and shoes, go to the movies and just live was the goal. This construct also determined who you married. Married couples that had combined incomes of over $100k per year were considered mega-rich! So in short, what I’m saying is that based upon my upbringing, I could only see as high as that $100-$125k. Better and better jobs (or even multiple jobs) were how I pictured achieving a good life and that would have worked…..but something improbable happened. By my twentieth year, I was attending community college and working four part-time jobs. One of the jobs that I worked was newspaper delivery. This job called for me to drive throughSt. Louis’ most affluent areas and I saw things that shook my understanding of what a truly good life could actually be. The homes in this area started at $4-500,000.00 and doing the math on payments and other associated bills all but destroyed my picture of what wealth actually was. I remember looking at the costs of these homes and wondering how ANY person or couple could ever amass what had to be an enormous monthly payment and sustain it. Realtors inSt. Louiswouldn’t even show a person the inside of one of these homes if you didn’t fit their idea of the type of person capable of that level of income. This was my upbringing and my experience. This view was based on my “Conditioning”. This conditioning was not only from what I saw in my own household, but in all of the households that I had contact with. My delivery route took me intoWestCounty, which was where the rich class of people lived. I looked around and I had to ask myself “What jobs did these people have that would allow them to live in this way?” This was the question. There was no curiosity on “What Businesses” these people might own or how were other forms of income flowing into their households. All I saw was the job possibility (one dimension).

In looking back on it all, I have to thank God for the curiosity and vision that drove me to reach for what seemed impossible anyway and dream of where life could actually take me. I “knew” I’d live inWestCounty(no questions about it). I’d laid out my plans and was prepared to make a move, when another improbable thing happened. I was working for a PBM firm in 1993 when the firm expanded toPhoenixArizona. I was given an opportunity to go west and aid the company in building itsPhoenixcustomer service operation. I know that my desire to move toPhoenixwas nothing but God, because up to that point I never even thought of leavingSt. Louis. In fact, I said I never would. At the end of 1993, my anointing to live my life in St. Louis, Missouri left me and against everything I’d felt for 23 years of my life, I picked up and moved out of Missouri. I left the tall green shade trees and green grass ofMidwood Street, my friends, my family and everything familiar to go into the desert.

I can’t really describe the feeling that caused me to leaveSt. Louis. In doing so however, I found that the culture inPhoenixand the west coast states is so vastly different fromSt. Louisthat it’s crazy! The differences between a new money city and an old money city were simply unbelievable. It was here inPhoenix, that my life made significant changes. Limitations disappeared and I learned that the only thing that could truly limit my life was me! I learned that it was not God’s will that I live in the world with a glass ceiling or any other restrictions!

It has only been in the last 5-6 years that the reality of God’s Kingdom and its economics have taken hold of my thoughts and my attitude towards living a less than ordinary life. If I knew in 1993, what I know now, I’d ownPhoenix! I know now that it was the Holy Spirit that guided me up to that point of revelation. So what do I mean when I say “Improbable”? It’s a life that is lived independent of the influences of our physical world, but the influences of the spirit realm! It took the financial meltdown of 2008 to truly put how blessed I am into perspective! Imagine it! A life lived free of concern over inflation, recession, political influences, conflicts and other worldly factors. Imagine a peace, free of things meant to cause us to fear and be distracted from the truth of the Kingdom.

The “American” dream, as it is laid out for us, is already an improbable one. But let’s complicate the matter even further! Let’s talk about those that EXCEED the dream! A one income family with a salary exceeding $75-$85,000.00 annually is not likely in and of itself. But let’s talk individuals that make 100’s of thousands per year. Let’s talk about those that own “Multiple” pieces of real estate and live in homes worth in excess of $1 million, in a down market! Is this an improbability? Yes! Is it an impossibility? Absolutely….NOT!

A life less ordinary has been the description of my most recent years of life. We had been a one-income family for that past 10 years. I have had my pick of jobs and those jobs have not paid less than $58,000.00 annually. In addition to income generated in corporateAmerica, we have resources from other sources that have doubled or even tripled my corporate salary, promptly ending the mystery of how people inWestCountylived the way they live. During this time, our children have attended above average schools, we have lived in homes “Vastly” above average and though things have gotten tight at times, we have wanted for nothing. My wife has been able to stay home and raise our children. We have never missed a meal, been homeless, carless or without a steady flow of income. We have been blessed and as a result of this blessing, have lived a less than ordinary life. We left theUnited Statesand visitedEurope. I swam in theMediterranean Sea! What my life has been is so vastly different than what I thought it actually could be, that I wonder who I was back then and how I ever lived my life with such a restrictive mindset. These wonders that I’ve seen are not written as boastful rhetoric. These things are written to illustrate one thing: God, and only God, Is in Control! There is a system built to enforce what I’ll call classism, but Revelation of God’s will for our lives arrests this system and renders it powerless over our lives. It is us and only us, that can truly limit our ability to live the fullness of what God intends for our lives.

There is a God and he has a Kingdom. The Kingdom touches the earth realm! Once you become aware of this fact and begin to look at the scriptures as a blueprint to how to build this Kingdom in the earth, your lives become more than what you might ever imagine! In other words, as you become progressively more aware of his presence, of his will for your life and of his POWER, your increasing faith makes an ordinary life impossible! You don’t believe me? Take a look at the examples in the scriptures!

• Moses parted a Sea!
• Elijah called down fire from the Heavens!
• Peter walked on the water, with Jesus!
• Daniel descended into a lion’s pit and God tamed the lions!

Those are biblical examples, but what I’m trying to say is that God is still in the miracle business! Our lives are the proof that God is still parting seas and taming lions! How my wife and I live by in a lot of folk’s opinion, is crazy, reckless and irresponsible. Other barometers would simply not compute….No Rent, No Mortgage, starting businesses and still buying investment real estate….It made no sense by the world’s standard. But it has been our life and is as real as surely as I sit here, typing on my computer!

The less obvious lessons I learned from my summer with Mr. Newell were the concepts of leadership, delegation, the value of time and entrepreneurship. These seeds didn’t blossom for decades. My tenure with ESI led me into management and training. My next job with McKessonHBOC led me from management and training to technology. From there I became an IT professional, specializing in databases. There I learned contracting and ultimately, business ownership. To this day, I do not have a college degree.

This book will lay out what we have witnessed in God and will hopefully demonstrate how to apply his word to contemporary issues in your lives, here in this realm. It is our testimony on how God, through the Holy Spirit, has rendered our lives RECESSIONPROOF! Our God still parts seas! He STILL sends down Holy Fire! And yes, his faithful STILL walk on the water with him!

We will see you soon as your lives become progressively less and less probable!

RECESSIONPROOF Black is available at Amazon.com:

http://www.amazon.com/Recessionproof-Black-Word-Sting-Recession/dp/1449526861