Father, Where Are You Taking Me?
Dear Father, where are You taking me?
You started me out in a single-parent home with three younger brothers. Each of my brothers had a different dad. Where was mine?
I was three years old when you let me see him last. My brothers received gifts and money from their dads. I received nothing, not even child support.
I later discovered that my dad was a murderer.
He killed his wife on the steps of Your House.
I appreciate You getting my dad away from my mom.
Father, where are You taking me?
You allowed my life to be a struggle from the very beginning. As a child, other kids picked on me because of my eyes.
They called me “cross-eyed,” “Cyclops,” “Dead Eye,” and other names that established a permanent emotional scar.
Even today, some people think that I am looking at others when I am talking to them. But even with this cosmetic flaw, You blessed me with Melanie, one of the most beautiful, supportive wives in the world.
Father, where are You taking me?
You made me an outcast by terming me “gifted.”
You took me out of classes with my friends and placed me in ones where I did not fit in.
I did not have parents with professions.
My mom could not help me with my homework.
No one in my apartment complex could help me either.
In fact, my mom could not afford to send me on field trips or pay for school lunch, much less college.
However, You always appeared through someone or something…
Whether it was welfare, food stamps, free lunch, student loans, scholarships, or generous people.
Father, where are You taking me?
You taught me about drugs early in my life.
You let me see them, touch them, and hold them.
You also showed me the effect of drugs.
My friends that were dealers had money, cars, jewelry, etc.
And when I considered giving up and becoming a dealer, You introduced the real impact of drugs when it mattered the most.
And oh, how I remember watching my grandmother, one of the strongest women on this earth, cry for her son who would break into the house, steal things, and then run off into the night.
And when I thought that was the end of the lesson…
My best friend, whom I claimed as my older brother, lost his life at the hands of another so-called friend of ours because of the stuff.
But You always gave me the strength to avoid using or selling them.
Father, where are You taking me?
You placed me in positions where I was in the spotlight.
In elementary school, You allowed me to sing at the World’s Fair in New Orleans, win two school spelling bees, and attend special weekly regional brainstorming classes.
In high school, You made me student body vice president, the starting cornerback on the football team, and a student liaison for the Parent Teacher Association.
In college, you allowed me to attend a semester at North Carolina State University through the National Student Exchange Program, work a summer in Texas as an Inroads intern with Union Carbide Corporation, and attend conferences in Baltimore, Greensboro, and Anaheim.
Father, where are You taking me?
You placed dreams in my head at night of being a leader, but you never told me of what, where, and whom I was going to lead.
You place me in leadership positions often. However, You never tell me why.
According to my old boss, I earn more money than 80 percent of the population.
But You guided me to budget every penny to pay off debt and live for the future.
Father, where are You taking me?
You have given me high expectations for myself and for those close to me.
And everyone, except my grandmother, has let me down.
But I still love them all.
When my head is in the clouds, You knock me down to earth quickly.
When my back is against the ground, You raise me slowly.
But You are always there.
Father, where are You taking me?
I know there are others like me out there.
And I want to help show them the way.
But You continuously tell me that I am not ready yet.
Father, where are You taking me?
Father, please answer my prayers, so that I may live Your will to the utmost.
Amen.
From Welfare Cheese
Saving for a rainy day is tough when you live in a rainforest.
My life is a picture of success. I can say that I am living the American Dream. I am not rich by any means, at least not yet. But I have visited more than eleven international cities, including Paris, France. I have vacationed at lavish resorts. I have eaten at five-star restaurants. And I have flown first-class on both domestic and international flights.
Zoom in to see family. I have a beautiful wife and two healthy sons ages fifteen and twelve. We live in a four-bedroom, three-bathroom home with two kitchens in a quiet but diverse neighborhood—except for my neighbor, who plays loud music on his vehicle’s speakers. I am not complaining because I love loud music as well, just not at 11:00 p.m. on a work night.
Zoom out to see education and career. I have two degrees: a Bachelor of Science in Chemical Engineering from the University of South Carolina, and a Master of Business Administration with a focus in Finance from Georgia State University—both respected universities. I have spent the past twenty-one years working my way through the ranks to land a management position in a Fortune 500 company. I am paid a six-figure salary for my brain, and not my hands, unless you count the time on my computer sending and answering emails. I earn money to lead people in solving problems.
Pan out all the way to see growth. Through careful planning and investments, we have earned and saved enough money for my wife to cut her own path as the owner of A Little Slice of Heaven Bakery[1] in Decatur, Georgia, which employs five people. We live a life free of creditors, unless you count the occasional credit card debt that we pay off each month.
At times, more than I can count, my country has treated me like crap. Despite this, I love my country and will do anything to defend our way of life and every American citizen. I have faced prejudice, betrayal, and hatred, but I choose to live my life guided by Jesus’s words spoken while dying on the cross: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34). I learned those words as a young boy in Sunday School. It stuck, and kept me rational when my emotions ran high.
I have worked more than twenty-one years for one of the best employers. But my career has not always been great. From 2009 to 2019, I was rejected twenty-one times for internal job positions. Ironically, I was encouraged by management to apply for some of them. But I continued to improve my brand until I landed one of the best positions in the company.
My life is challenging, interesting, and fascinating to say the least. Where I am today is not where I began. Mentally, physically, emotionally, and financially, my life has come full circle from the cross-eyed little boy who grew up in the projects of Greenville, South Carolina to the successful family man living in Metro Atlanta.
As a kid, I saw what life was like around me, and I did what I needed to do to fit in. Trust me when I say I did not always have the best mindset, so I did not always make the best decisions. If you had the opportunity to bet on where my life was headed, you would most likely lose your money.
I can remember hanging out with friends—Charles, Dooney, Shawn, and a handful of others. Shawn and I were the same age while Charles and Dooney were a year or two older. The other boys’ ages ranged from nine to fourteen.
We did the things all kids did back then. We walked around and took our chances, finding new ways to have a good time. We would walk to the Boys & Girls Club from time to time, following the train tracks there and back. This was nowhere near where we lived. Thinking back, I’d say it was a good two miles away.
One day, Shawn said, “Hey, I hear they keep a lot of sodas and snacks and stuff inside these caboose cars.” We were no strangers to hunger or adventure, so we decided to see for ourselves. We went in one of the caboose cars, and, sure enough, there were sodas and snacks in there. We all took a couple items, and had a ball on the way home.
We got away with it the first time, and maybe got away with it the second time too. The third time we went, we should have known better. That day, Shawn suggested that we visit cabooses at the local train yard. This was different than in the past. We typically raided cabooses located on a single or double track on a single train. Charles and some of the older boys refused and continued the walk home. I followed Shawn. And man, were we two greedy, stupid boys. There were a few trains to choose from, and no one appeared to be around. Therefore, we explored our first caboose and hit the jackpot, or so we thought. As we exited with that day’s take, a security guard was waiting for us.
He snatched us up, put us in the back of a car, and threatened to take us to jail. Instead, he took us home so he could tell our parents what happened. I was a kid with no ID and there were no cell phones then, so when he asked me for my home address, I lied because the fear of my mom’s wrath far outweighed the time I would have spent in jail.
I directed him to a house I had never seen before, and he left us in the backseat as he prepared to knock on the door. As soon as he knocked the first time we opened the doors, took off running, dashed into the apartment complex, and hid. We thought we had gotten away, but the security guard did not give up that easily. One by one, he asked neighborhood kids if they had seen us or if they knew us. He described us pretty well, and, wouldn’t you know it, Shawn’s younger brother told him that he knew us! Shawn got in trouble, which meant, eventually, that I got in trouble too.
In some ways, that story is no big deal. I wasn’t being malicious. I didn’t hurt anyone. That was a normal day in my life at the time. I knew better than to steal from that train, but some days, there wasn’t a lot to eat. My mother did the best she could, which sometimes meant grilled cheese sandwiches with the welfare cheese (a rectangular block of American cheese packaged in a box labeled “USDA” that you had to slice yourself) that would not melt. We also had delicious government peanut butter which didn’t spread without tearing the bread. Being hungry and seeing an opportunity for food and fun, I decided my moral compass could point in the other direction.
If I continued with that mindset, my life may have turned out very differently. I grew up in poverty, surrounded by marijuana and alcohol. There was bias, desperation, and violence. I had more than my fair share of chances to simply accept things as they were and allow my life to be dictated by my surroundings.
The truth is, I saw and did a lot of things in my childhood that I am not proud of. Eventually, I realized that my circumstances need not be my limitation. One day I made up my mind that while this was my life right now, I would create a completely different future. I would not live in the projects, where friends turned on you just because you were the odd man out that day. I would not be hungry because we ran out of money by the end of the month. I would not wear hand-me-down clothes or be a burden to anyone. There came a moment when I realized my future was up to me, but only if I made vastly different choices in the present.
This book is called Welfare Cheese to Fine Caviar because I really did eat welfare cheese, and now I really do have the choice to enjoy fine caviar at an extravagant restaurant—although I have never actually eaten it and probably never will since a few of my friends got sick when consuming the fish roe during one of our annual weeklong vacations abroad. The path in between was not a steady nor a perfect climb. In fact, it has not been a straight line to the top. There have been many turns, pauses, and setbacks. Through focus, patience, determination, and faith, I made it to this point.
I deeply believe that where you start in life does not have to be where you end up. If you want to do better and you decide to do better, and you go after that with everything that you possibly have, you can make it. Visualize yourself there, and treat everybody well on the way because you can’t always recognize the angels that God will send to assist you. Much of my success comes off the shoulders of others. Some of them didn’t even know they were helping me. In fact, some had the intent of hurting me. But they had a message for me, and I received it.
State your intentions and go for it. Although everyone and everything is not for you, what is for you will surely come, but only if you hold fast to the vision and remain unwavering in your pursuit. There is no such thing as an overnight success. I did not get out of the projects overnight. I did not finish college overnight. I did not build a career, family, or net worth overnight. Even if it took ten or fifteen years, I decided I was not giving up. I would stick to it and continue to drive until I died. I would either succeed or die trying, as the rapper 50 Cent would say.
Today, I am alive and the challenges are different. Advancing from the poor to the middle class was a huge undertaking. Now my sights are on the upper class, and I am on the path to being totally financially independent.
Even though I’ve come a long way from welfare, my success story is not yet done. This book is the road map of my life thus far. It is filled with stories that will inspire you, lessons that will help you, and actions you could take on your path. If you’re still breathing, if you’re still living, then your story isn’t done either. Be ready to sharpen your focus, extend your patience, restate your determination, and deepen your faith. You may be able to shorten your journey by learning from my mistakes and delayed actions.
First, change your mind. Then, change your life. And your life will change for the better. Who knows? I may be reading your book, investing in the stock of your corporation, or watching you lead this world to a better future.
This world needs you!
They just don’t know it yet.
[1] www.alshbakery.com