09.24.2009
Well I have to admit that I have lost my focus the last year or so. I have been going through one of the longest and most challenging times of my entire life. Like most people that have wandered this earth 38 years I have experienced many up and downs, I saw my parents get divorced when I was 8 and saw my dad who was a alcoholic put my mom and I through some very stressful times and situations. I saw that same dad wreck his entire life and drink away his health until his liver finally gave up when I was only 18, and him only 43. At a time when most young men need their dads I had lost mine and to make matters worse the very last time I ever talked to him I hung up the phone on him. Thank God that I did have a strong grandfather who had slowly morphed into my father figure over the course of my early teenage years and to whom I had grown very close to, unfortunately we lost him about 5 years ago. My son was born with a very rare condition and was stripped from his mother and I within minutes of him being born, I still to this day feel a little anguish when I think about spending the night in the hospital at my wife's bedside and all the other mother's had their babies next to them all the while our baby boy was isolated from us with needles and all sorts of other things sticking out from his extremities. Luckily through the grace of God he was operated on and it was very successful, no long term effects and to this day almost 9 years later he is a perfectly healthy happy well adjusted young man. We had major up and down's with our business just like anyone else has had who owns their own small business. There was times when I thought for sure we were going to lose it. Like everyone else we have had our fair share of struggles and pains, from the outside looking in many believe we live a blessed life, and we do, but it has not come without effort, struggle, pain and our strong faith in God.
The only reason I bring up some of the past struggles is because even though we have walked through all that it seems like this last year and half has been worse and more ongoing. I realize that compared to other people who are dealing with severe sickness, or any number of other heart wrenching things that life can throw at you, that maybe some would read what I am about to write and feel like they would readily trade their problems for mine, and I understand that completely and I also understand that even though I am experiencing a drawn out stressful season in my life that I also realize that I am still very blessed, because my family has their health and we are together and we all love each other.
The time leading up right before the birth of my daughter just 21 months ago when we had decided to have another child was fairly good. Our business was strong and healthy, we had been in our new to us house about 3 years and for some reason we had a longing to have another child. I had always wanted a little girl, even when I was younger. For whatever reason I knew that God would bless us with a little girl. Things seemed easier this time around because we had health insurance and we were much more established than when we had our first child. When we got the news it was going to be a girl I remember repeatedly thanking God and being so confident in myself and my faith. Way back in the dark recesses of my mind every once in a while I would let the thought of our son's surgery as a newborn creep in, I would always resist those thoughts, and I knew she was going to be healthy. I was right she was born a healthy perfect little baby girl. The epidoral did not go well with my wife, they had done some sort of damage to her spine and it ended up putting us back into the hospital Christmas eve morning to get a blood patch on her spine. She was in a lot of pain after the birth and could barely walk and had debilitating headaches. The patch seemed to work miracles and I was ready to get on with our life with the new baby and get things back to normal. Not so fast.
Baby Brianna had the dreaded colic. For whatever reason I was under the impression the second one would be easy and we would breeze through the infant months. Wrong. I had forgotten how challenging it was to raise and take care of a infant(it's amazing our short memories, as our son was already in first grade) and on top of that she had colic which would often result in me wanting to put my fist through a wall or get in my car and drive as far away as I possibly could, I had never heard such loud screeches coming from such a small creature. She would usually start the day out fine and then by late afternoon all the way until very late at night she would basically cry,scream and screech for hours at a time. One thing the Lord has never blessed me with was patience, and on top of that I like a relatively quiet household, I work in a loud fast paced environment and when I get home I like most men just want peace. Never in my life could I love someone so completely and utterly like I do Brianna and then literally 10 seconds later be so angry and flustered by her wild mood swings and even louder high pitched screeching. You never knew how she would act, literally within a few short moments she could be the sweetest happiest baby in the whole world and the very next moment be screaming at the top of her lungs and be inconsolable, we tried rocking her, swinging her, holding her, etc.. etc.. when they have colic almost nothing but patience and time will settle them down. We tried all the old wives tales and I would ask questions at the doctors office and scour the Internet looking for things to calm her down but nothing really worked. Every once in awhile you would think maybe you hit on something but in all honesty nothing but time and age helped her.
While I was dealing with that on the homefront things started to unravel on the business front. It was subtle at first. Equipment breakdowns is what it started out to be, I have always been very mechanical and I am actually a ASE Certified Auto Technician but God called me away from that to my own business, we own a few restaurants and a commissary. Whenever things would break I would normally call out people who were trained to work on restaurant equipment, or the hvac systems etc.. Things started breaking at such a frequency that I was almost forced to start repairing things on my own. Which I don't mind at all, I like the challenge, but it is also a little scary when you are dealing with gas ovens and electrical work and you hadn't had any formal training, but I bit the bullet rolled up my sleeves and started learning everything I could and fixing everything that I could. Then in June of last year our building at our main restaurant/commissary was struck by lightning. I was there operating the phones and it was the loudest most shocking thing I had been a part of. It literally shook our huge brick building. Immediately I noticed our computers were down, they were fried. I am very computer hardware savvy and I build all my own computers, so I hurried next door to our commissary to pull out our backup computer. I needed something from the store to get everything at least somewhat operational so even though we are busy and it's a Friday night and our computers aren't working I tell my manager I will be back in a few minutes and I go to hop in my car and its dead. It even fried the computer in my car. From that point on things went downward. The lightning did damage to things we didn't realize were damaged until several months later, like our entire HVAC system. My HVAC guy came out the day after and rigged up something on the A/C to make it work not realizing the heater electronics were severely damaged. When I went to turn the heat on several months later, nothing. To make matters worse the parts were no longer available and even if they were they really didn't know what was damaged and what wasn't plus most of the wiring was also severely damaged. During that same summer and fall I felt like I had a black cloud following me around. Just about everything that could happen or break did. The list would be to long to go into here, but normally as a company we spend roughly 5k-8k a year in repairs to our restaurants. In 2008 we had over 30k in repairs alone. The insurance pro-rated the hvac system and our computer systems. We only got a small portion of what it actually costs to replace those systems and on top of that we had several other repairs pop up on top of the lightning strike. I would also like to mention that during all this we had bought a brand new travel trailer for our small little property lot by the lake, the trailer was probably less than 1 month old when it too go struck by lightning and it fried the entire circuit/breaker board. Yes folks, 2 lightning strikes in one year. I was hoping there wasn't going to be a third.
Also during 2008 AIG/New Hampshire our insurance company decided to read our policy differently then they had the previous 8 years we were in business with them. They decided after doing our annual audit that we owed almost $7k more for our insurance policy on the previous year that was already paid in full and that we owe another $7k for the current year. And if we didn't pay the previous 7k they would take every legal action available to them. We fought them tooth and nail and even tried to get the Missouri Dept of Insurance to help us. They agreed that AIG was reading the policy different than in the previous years but that it was within their legal right to charge us. I stated that I had known it was going to go up another 7k I would have no renewed. They said that's the breaks, and even suggested that I am lucky they don't go back 3 years and bill me for that too. So in 2008 after having 30k in repairs I was also having 7k stolen from me by the exact same insurance company that took all of our tax money as a bailout.
I came to a point in October of 08 where I didn't even want to own my own business anymore. I was ready to walk away after fighting with equipment break downs and the insurance company and going home to a colicky baby. At one point we were severely in the red as a company and I had no idea how we were going to pay for all this destruction and mayhem. I had worked for this company since I was 16 years old and gave up so many holidays and weekends even when I didn't own it. I met my wife there, and I raised my son inside it. When we were approached about buying our first store in 2000 it seemed like just a dream something that other people get to do, we had always wanted to own one but it never seemed possible, I was a simple auto tech and my wife was working there making a decent wage but neither of us had the money to buy a company. We had been married almost 10 years and still hadn't bought our first house yet, we were still renting. Our goal was to buy a home. The owner said if I quit working as a auto tech and help him run another location for a year(this was back in 1998) that he would help us buy the store that my wife and I had worked at the last 10 years. I prayed and prayed and up until that point in my life it was the hardest thing I ever had to do, I loved being a auto tech and cars had been my life since a very young age, but the thought of owning my own business and one that I had devoted my teenage and early adulthood life to seemed to good to be true. In 2003 we were offered to take over the whole company and actually get the busiest store in the company along with the commissary. We were on cloud nine and we knew without a doubt God's hand was in it. Fast forward to 2008 in October and I was ready to walk away. Worn down. I had no fight left in me. I tried to joke around that I was like Jack Bauer from 24 because I would run around and put out fires everywhere, fix this or that, wire this, etc.. But as the year wore on the joking stopped and the ink kept getting redder.
I prayed for peace, and God granted it to me for a short time. Somehow through the miracle of God we ended the year in the black. I knew in my heart that 2009 was going to be year of peace and prosperity. That peace and prosperity lasted about 2 or 3 months. The break down slowed down, but we got news from our accountant that even after the year we had we owed almost 4k in taxes, I was dumbfounded as we got almost 5k back the year before and we didn't put our even half the money. Then our new insurance carrier that we hired after we paid off AIG and fired them pulled the SAME EXACT thing. They decided to base their rates on Gross Sales instead of driver hours which is how they always based it before. They sent me a letter telling me we owe $4k for last year and they are tacking on another $4k this year. Our general insurance guy came out to do a walk around and then 2 weeks later we got a letter from them stating they want a additional $1200. So just like last year these insurance companies are trying to steal almost $9k from us. Unbelievable. After completely replacing the rest of our computer systems at both stores and paying for most of the new hvac system since the insurance company pro-rated it we are now currently roughly at $25k in repairs this year. We are also back in the red. Not to mention business has fallen off with the recession, but even with that we would be fine if all these events hadn't taken their toll on our bank account.
This whole time I was examining my self and crying out to God asking him why this keeps happening to us. Once again I am so ready to walk away from everything but I know that is not possible. During this time I lost focus on God. I always kept my faith in him and thought about him continually, but I kept my nose out of the Bible way to much, we switched church's due to a school situation, and my attendance is not what it once was. I lost my fire. I kept trying to fix and do everything myself and really blamed myself for everything. I just knew it was something I was doing that had lifted God's blessing from my life. For the first time in my life the last month or so I was starting to feel anger towards God and that scared me. I have never felt that emotion towards God. I know the Bible says He will never give you more than you can handle and I kept repeating that to myself, but I am literally worn down and tired of the fight. I slowly started reading the Bible again the last month or so and I started to see that maybe God is not asking me to do anything other than to be close to him again and light that fire again, and to have the faith to trust in him completely. I kept looking to myself for the answer all the while yelling out to God to just give me peace. I was watching Perry Stone the other night and his guest said something about how we let all the external things of our lives get in the way with our walk with God when all God wants is us. I felt convicted by the Holy Spirit right away. I was that person, I was letting all these things in my life take away from the fire inside me for which I had for Jesus. Then the next day I read in Matthew 6 Seek FIRST his kingdom and his righteousness and all these things will be given to you. Matthew 6 speaks about the stress of life and if we would just seek God first all the things of this life will be taken care of. I had built a wall of seperation between God and I. I was just complaining to Him, I wasn't seeking Him, I wasn't putting him first in my life.
I am still right in the thick of this fight as I write this, and I have no idea how God is going to deliver us from these current problems with the insurance companies and the red ink, but I know that my faith is that of at least a mustard seed and Jesus says if we have that kind of faith we can move mountains. We got a call about 2 weeks ago from our accountant and she found a few things in our taxes that was missed before, mainly due to me paying for some of the repairs out of a different account, and the $4k we owe is now turned around to them owing us $700. When I got the news I was very thankful but all the other anguish in my life kept me from being as truly thankful as I should have been. So that is one less thing weighing in on my mind. I thank God for that and I am looking forward from this point on. I ask that everyone who reads this please say a short prayer for us and our business. I thank you so much for that brothers and sisters in Christ and I will be sure to update everyone as we walk this crazy thing out! I give God all the glory and I can't wait to see what He is going to do next.
-bk
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