Chapter 12
FORGET ALL MY TOIL, AND ALL MY FATHER’S HOUSE
(A
snowy, leisurely Saturday morning in late February 1965 on Auburn University’s
campus. A time of deep reflection.)
“And
unto Joseph were born two sons before the years of famine came…And Joseph
called the name of the firstborn Manasseh: For God, said he, hath made me
forget all my toil, and all my father’s house.” (Genesis
41:50-51)
Let
me give you this Holy Scripture at the start for you to see exactly from
whence came this chapter’s title. In the Scripture above, I underlined 2 things
that Joseph said that God had made him forget. Down thru many years of my adult
life, these words from Joseph come to my mind regarding my own upbringing.
Auburn’s
mild climate in southern Alabama is noticeably milder than my boyhood
home near Vernon, much farther north in the same state. Snowfall at
Auburn is rare and small in quantity, but it does snow occasionally. Early on a
Saturday morning as I walk to the cafeteria, a lovely light snow is falling.
Likely it was 27 February (1965). After eating my fill for breakfast and then
serving the few girls who didn’t leave for the weekend and who took the trouble
to get up early on Saturday for breakfast, I walk to the Student Union Building
and sit down in a comfortable, padded “easy” chair in the lounge in front of
the TV. Often I study most of the day on Saturday in the university library and
in my warm room. This day, I just took off for the morning and relaxed.
I
was scheduled to “substitute” (work) the lunch hour also at the cafeteria,
eating lunch first before serving the girls. Thus from the time I get to the Student
Union Building till I leave for lunchtime work is only 3 hours or so.
In
my earthly parents’ house, our family always had 3 meals a day to eat, thank
God. But some times the food was sparse with little variety. During the long
summers, we typically had lots of fresh fruits from our trees and vines, and
plenty of fresh veggies that we grew. We canned some of them and put away
potatoes and such for the winter. Still, the supply got low at times in the
winter. Sometimes, cornbread, potatoes and peas were the continuous dinners
(lunch) and suppers thru out much of the winter. I should have been much
more thankful than I was, for having daily bread, tho the fare was sparse
and lacked variety.
At
breakfast, we had eggs if our chickens were “laying” at the time. At
times there was only a small mound of scrambled eggs for the entire family to
divide. At times, there was no breakfast meat and no eggs. Then we only had
biscuits and gravy with butter and syrup (or jelly). I naturally like milk.
Most of the time one or both of our milk cows were giving milk and we had milk
to drink at mealtime. Sometimes, both cows were “dry” at the same time and we
went without milk to drink. Also, when the pasture was green, many “bitter
weeds” grew in it. It made the milk most bitter when the cows ate those weeds.
I just couldn’t bear to drink the milk when it was quite bitter, tho I wanted
it. When we churned bitter milk into butter, it made the butter bitter. Usually
I could eat the bitter butter.
Daddy
could always drink the bitter milk. Also, he never complained when he took just
a tiny portion of eggs at breakfast when they were scarce. And he did hard
labor that required much strength. That stoic father never complained, tho he
must have been hungry at times. (At this time we did not buy the
above-mentioned foods at the grocery store because of our poverty. If the farm
didn’t “produce” enough of them, we simply did without.)
This
snowy morning at Auburn (just past my 19th birthday), I had eaten
breakfast to the full. When the cafeteria put out a choice of fried or
scrambled eggs for the girls, I often put a large helping of scrambled eggs on
top of 2 fried eggs on my plate, then at the eating table I chopped up that
mound with my fork turned sideways to mix them all together (4 to 5 eggs). I
also took plenty of meat, toast, grits, juice and milk (not bitter) with that
mountain of eggs. In about 3 weeks from this snowy day, I am to start working
full time in that cafeteria; eating 3 dietician-planned meals there each day
with no
limit on how much I am allowed to eat each meal. Thank God, I move into a new comfort zone, to put it mildly.
Reading
an article in a health magazine a few years after this, the writer stated: “I
never tell my stomach I am poor.” He went on to relate that he would buy fresh
grapes, avocados and such because they are healthy, tho a little expensive. I
thought about the many times I could not
but help but tell my stomach I was poor, because I was
poor and that poverty did prevent me from eating enough to
constitute a healthy diet. I am most thankful that my poverty-induced
sparse eating ended at this point in February 1965 and did not come back into
my life again until about 1976.
(New
subject) As I grew up in my father’s house, Daddy worked us boys most every
Saturday. But in the winter or on a rainy Saturday, we might be in the house or
working in and out of the house on Saturday. I liked to watch TV Saturday
morning cartoons and other shows geared to kids. But Mrs. Ryan didn’t care for
them and often didn’t have her TV tuned to them. If they were playing on her TV
and I tried to watch them, Daddy might call me to work at any time. He seldom
gave us the consideration of discussing such with us boys.
For
example, “OK, we have to work most of this day, but I’ll let you choose one 30
minute show to watch on TV today. And the rest of the time, you work hard in
exchange for that favor. OK?” If he would have just done something like that, I
could have thoroughly relaxed and enjoyed the 30 minutes he gave me. But
he didn’t do such. And if I tried to watch TV, I was subject to him abruptly
calling me out to work any time, and often addressing me harshly when he did
so.
“For
God, said he, hath made me forget all my toil, and all my father’s
house.” Reader Friend, how hard could Jacob have made youthful Joseph to work?
I ponder such when I read the above Scripture. I know his brethren treated
Joseph badly. But apparently he also did hard work under his father as he grew
up (and that is certainly appropriate). To our natural mind we could easily
think it most rude of anyone to be happy about forgetting “all of
my father’s house” after leaving it. But Joseph is a type of Christ and he said it.
Thus I don’t feel unduly sacrilegious about feeling that way and telling you of
those feelings.
I
mention all that to say; that on this snowy Saturday morning, I sort of just
kicked back in a most relaxed manner and subconsciously made this a memorial
day for me to start forgetting all my
toil, and all my father’s house. Put it
ALL behind me and press on to the things that are before me, hopefully things
that are much better in many aspects! It sure felt good to have that
part of my life in the past, never to have to return to it. (In the near
future, the roofing job and Marine Corps training I will endure during the next
few years will definitely be rigorous “toil”. But that is a different matter.)
This one thing I do, forgetting those things which are
behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before.
(It behooves each of us to do just as
Paul did in the above Scripture!)
It
felt good to know I could choose to relax undisturbed this whole
Saturday morning, childlike (like a 10 year-old), watching Woody Woodpecker and
Roadrunner cartoons on TV. In a humorous sense, I sort of feel like I retired
in life when Daddy unceremoniously released me from his dominion back in early
June last year. It was the end of much rigorous toil
for me and also the end of other related misery, like my feet being in constant
pain a few months from those shoes that were too small for me, because Daddy
did not take me to the shoe store to try them on. He just guessed the size when
he bought them. He guessed wrong, to my much discomfort.
Parents,
the only reason The Holy Spirit is now telling me to relate these horrors to
you is for you to seriously consider that it is not necessary at all for you to
inflict such pain upon your children. Listen to your Lord speaking thus to you
right now!
Also,
the Southern rural Christians of my parents’ generation (born between 1910 and
1920) were (in general) most upright in the clean, moral
Christian lives they lived, much more so than today’s (2016) Christians who
live on that same sod. But their ignorance of some matters (that resulted in
torturous misery for me) was akin to Dark Age superstition.
When
one of us kids caught a cold or had a stomachache or such, the common remedy
for most all such ailments was a big tablespoonful of warm castor oil taken
internally. When I got old enough to read “For external use only” clearly
written on the castor oil bottle label, it made sense to me that I usually
couldn’t hold down that large dose of warm castor oil, but rather vomited it
right back up as soon as I swallowed it.
When
I was about 5 or 6 years old, in the wintertime it wasn’t rare for one of us
kids to awake in the morning with cold symptoms from sleeping in that cold,
drafty house. At the breakfast table, if Daddy or Mother saw that any one of us
4 children needed “doctoring”, one of them would take the glass bottle of
castor oil from its place in the cabinet and place it in the upper compartment
of our wood stove (along with that large spoon) to heat both of them
(for best effect, so they believed).
Upon
seeing that, the sick child felt like a death sentence had been passed upon him
or her. Such terrible dread of that dose came upon the intended “victim” that
he or she could not enjoy another bite of breakfast. When we finished eating,
if I was the victim, one parent would hold my head or arms or such while the
other put that hot spoon of “vomit inducer” into my mouth. Both the smell and
taste of castor oil were putrid. Heating it increased its “putridness”. Gagging
on it, I would swallow. As soon as that hot poison reached my stomach, usually
I vomited it right back up, along with
the breakfast food I had just eaten as morning nourishment for my growing body.
Both parents would be dismayed at the failed results and debate if they should
or shouldn’t pour another dose of that poison down my gullet.
“For
God, said he, hath made me forget all my toil, and all my father’s
house.” Upon leaving my father’s house, truly, truly
there was much I wanted to forget. During the cold winter, we kids would huddle
close to the hot wood burning heater in the middle of the living room trying to
stay warm. We would occasionally bump the heater, burning an elbow or such. My
parents believed writing ink was good for treating skin burns. (This was before
ballpoint pens had been invented and most households kept a bottle of ink for
fountain pens.) So I would get a good dose of writing ink painfully rubbed into
my burned skin. Some parents (not my parents thankfully) believed that the burned
spot on the arm or hand should be held close to the heat (the hot surface of
the stove) for the heat from the stove to draw the heat out of the burned
flesh. (We now well know that ice or cold water should be applied to abate the
burn.) In 1950, some rural parents did the opposite. There were far too many
such true-life horror stories!!
I am
most blessed to have experienced old-fashioned (human and animal power only)
farm life when I was small, doing hard physical farm labor, enjoying God’s nature
doing wholesome things like hunting, fishing, swimming and playing in nature.
The physical poverty I endured has yielded much spiritual richness in my life.
I thank God for it all. God made me a happy boy. I enjoyed life during my
childhood. I thank God for making me plenty happy thru out a childhood of much
adversity.
However, upon reaching 70 years of
age, my most prominent thoughts of my upbringing are that it was a gloomy time for me that
I desire to forget. I have almost no inclination to reminisce on it. It
entailed plenty of physical pain and suffering (much of it unnecessary,
easily preventable by better parenting). And Dad’s much silence toward me
is also a big factor in my boyhood becoming a gloomy memory.
Christian
parents, listen to The Holy Spirit now speaking to you concerning what you have
just read. No matter how difficult life might be for your family, you can
constantly speak to your offspring of victory in Jesus, sing of victory in
Jesus, and confess to your children that Almighty God loves them dearly and
will take good care of them no matter what comes into their lives. You can
speak to them of the Joy of the Lord and sing with them of such. You can ask
your little children to sing to you the songs they know about Jesus. And you can
greatly rejoice in their presence that they are doing such a blessed thing with
their God-given voice. You can do many more similar things that will fill their
hearts with God’s Joy and thus expel gloom that naturally tries to rule in
hearts that are experiencing hard times. Broadcasting such joy of the Lord from
your heart requires no money,
material things or assets, or such. I so dearly wish my Daddy (and
Mother) had done such with us children.
Parent:
ask God to fill you with His Wisdom that is necessary to bring up your
offspring in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. And the Lord will not have
to impart much wisdom to you at all, for you to know better than to pour poison
into a small child’s sensitive stomach when the label on the bottle clearly
states “For external use only”. Just a tiny bit of God’s Wisdom will give you
sense enough to take a growing child to the shoe store with you to try on the
shoes to ensure they are large enough for the child’s growing feet.
These
2 examples (above) are ever so simple matters.
Thus there is no excuse for a parent bringing the unnecessary torments into a
child’s life that I experienced in these 2 matters (and other similar matters).
Enough said, I hope. Now listen closely to God’s Holy Spirit instructing you on
needed corrections as you rear your children!
1h. Forgetting the toils of my
father’s house.
On
this relaxed, snowy Saturday morning in late February 1965, Clem had already
hired me to work full time at the cafeteria when the spring term soon starts. Receiving
the promise of that job basically and practically ended my job-hunting to
date, (now past 70 years of age). That act of God’s Abundant Grace
in my life has been most bless-ed.
I
will continue to joyfully work in that girls’ cafeteria till I graduated from
Auburn. During the breaks between university quarters at Auburn, I will
continue working for Mr. Mars. In January 1965 (last month), I had been
accepted into Navy ROTC. On my graduation day at Auburn, in a separate ceremony
that morning I will also be commissioned a 2nd Lieutenant in the U.S.
Marine Corps and go right on to full-time active duty with the Marines.
A
few years later, the Marines will send me to a base in Japan where God will
then call me to serve Him for the remainder of my life in that nation of many
idols. On this snowy Saturday morn in late February 1965, I am over 1 month
past my 19th birthday. I wonder how few souls have never had
to hunt for a job after that age. What a miracle! What a most wonderful
thing the Lord did for my life! Thank Thee, Lord Jesus!
1i. In February 1965,
immediately after reaching 19 years of age, no longer having to hunt for a job
for the rest of my earthly life (to date, 2016).
Friend, surrender your life fully to
your Creator God and daily call upon him to perfect it. There is no need for anyone who knows Almighty God to
flounder around aimlessly tossed about on the Sea of Life. Almighty God (Whose
Way is Perfect) desires to perfect my way, your way, the way and path of each
and every human soul on this earth. May He help each of us to fully yield our
own being to our Creator for Him to perfect each of us as we journey to
Eternity!
Serving meals in the cafeteria was my 4th employment (not
counting the few miserable days I worked in the Tiger Cub café a few weeks
ago). My first 3 jobs that originated at home in Vernon came to me because of my Godly
earthly father. I am quite sure there was no similar input from Dad
regarding any of the jobs my 3 siblings obtained after high school. It was a tremendous
help to me to gain each of those jobs, and Daddy had to put forth practically
no effort doing his part to obtain them for me. It is amazing how wonderful
things turn out!
Then at Auburn, Tommy coming to my room and asking me to substitute for
him gave me this fine job in the girls’ cafeteria. I wasn’t out searching for that
job. Four times now, My Most Gracious Lord has freely laid a good job in my lap
with practically no effort on my part.
Truly, Lord Jesus, it is amazing how wonderful Thou art to
us all. Thank Thee, Lord, for bringing unto me the jobs that I needed to earn
wages. I give Thee the Glory for doing so. Thank Thee for saving me from the
frustration of job hunting.
“For God, said he, hath made me forget all
my toil, and all my father’s house.” Growing up, I set my boyish
heart on various things I wanted to do when I got big. I wanted to be a
policeman, an FBI agent, a lawyer, and then military jet pilot. Childhood
dreams change often. However, there was one certain desire always absent from my
growing heart. I was never desirous to live out my life in the place
I was born and grew up.
I perceive that there are several reasons for that, the foremost being
that God was creating within me a heart that would readily obey Him when (a few
years later) He will speak to me words almost exactly like He spoke to Abram. “Get thee out of thy country, and from thy
kindred, and from thy father’s house, unto a land that I will show thee.” (Genesis 12:1) In similar manner, the Lord called me
to serve Him in Japan (on the opposite side of the globe from my father’s
house). I am most thankful that Almighty God had (beforehand) created within me
a heart willing and ready to go and to live in this foreign
nation.
But another factor definitely made me want to get away from my “home
place” upon reaching adulthood, that being my family’s poverty. Poverty is
frequently embarrassing. In the Vernon area, all the souls around me observed
my family’s poverty as I grew up. Poverty often made for miserable and
embarrassing circumstances that made me feel ashamed around everyone that
observed my poverty. So, I felt relieved to leave Vernon just before turning 19
years of age, to be out of the presence of all who had observed much
poverty-induced embarrassment to me as I grew up. I wanted to distance myself
from that childhood setting, putting it behind me in any and every way
possible. Even tho all my fellow college students and the professors around
me at Auburn could readily discern that I was an uncouth, redneck farm boy, they
didn’t know the many embarrassing details of it, for which I was
thankful!
And Almighty God was so gracious to me regarding me distancing myself
from my roots. In just a few years after leaving my childhood home, my Lord
sent me to the opposite side of this globe to live the rest of my life. I am
most thankful to my Creator for blessing me so much by distancing me (from my
roots) just about as far as is possible on this planet Earth.
1j. Distancing myself from all
the acquaintances of my childhood who observed my embarrassing poverty thru out
my upbringing.
Let me close this chapter with a sidelight (an important one). Thru out
all my boyhood, sitting thru at least 5 weekly church services (and extra
services many weeks) with my childish flesh always bored to some degree with
spiritual things, often a natural thought would play around in my mind. ‘When I
grow up and leave home, I won’t have to go to church if I don’t want to.’ But
upon arriving at Auburn, as soon as Sunday rolled around, I head to First
Baptist Church on my own will, and continue to do so each Sunday. Why?
Because I was trained up to attend church weekly. “Train up a child in the way he should go:
and when he is old, he will not depart from it.” (Proverbs 22:6)
I soon begin attending Baptist Student Union activities, which (along
with working at the dining hall) becomes a wonderful social life for me at
Auburn. Most first term college freshmen make complete arrangements for living
quarters weeks in advance. Often parents bring the kid on a trip here for that
purpose, and then again bring the kid student at the start of the first term.
Parents help lug kid’s luggage into kid’s room, followed by a tearful Farewell
before the parents depart. Kid doesn’t have to sleep in kid’s car the first
night upon arriving.
I drove to Auburn just before the start of the 2-day registration
period with only scant knowledge as to where to search for a room. It would
have been simple to request a dorm room in advance by mail. They were readily
available. But I would definitely have a roommate and much devilment going on
around me most all the time in the dorm. I was determined to stay away from all
that mess.
But while driving here, I was plenty apprehensive about easily
finding lodging and having enough money to eat during this term. This
apprehension was plenty unsettling. Thank God I immediately found a nice private
room in a quiet location and soon found the most ideal place in town to work
for my meals. Therefore, now as I look out the large windows at the lovely snow
covered campus this Saturday in February, I have much peace due to my
ideal rooming and ideal eating situations that include a wonderful social life
also. Truly it was a day for deep reflection and to thank
Almighty God for an abundance of mercy and grace bestowed upon unworthy me.
So I depart the Student Union Building for the pleasant walk back to
the dining hall to feed the girls their lunch, that is, if any food remains for
them after I eat half a truckload of it.
“Feeding these lovely young ladies sure beats feeding the hogs on the
farm, doesn’t it, college boy?”
‘It sure does! Now, one would think I’m the hog by the amount of
food I eat in their dining hall.’
A summary of my 1st major change in life, June 1964-February 1965:
1a. Daddy releases me from his strict dominion, early June 1964.
(Chapter 10)
1b. I enter employment and start working for wages. (Ch. 10)
1c. I get my drivers’ license and soon buy my 1st motor vehicle. (Ch.
10)
1d. I move out of my boyhood home, my earthly father’s house. (Ch.
11)
1e. On arriving at Auburn, for the first time on a regular basis, I
now have an indoor shower for a good bath, an indoor restroom for great
convenience, and my own private room with central heat, bed, desk, chair and
closet all for my own personal use and comfort (after a childhood of sharing a
crowded “bedroom” with 2 or 3 other family members). (Ch. 11)
1f. I enroll in a university. (Ch. 11)
1g. Starting to work in a co-ed cafeteria at Auburn, thus eating 3
wholesome meals a day (as much as I want to eat) and having the delightful job
of serving meals to lovely, sweet Southern belles. (Nothing toilsome about this
work) (Ch. 11)
1h. Forgetting the toils of my father’s house. (Ch. 12)
1i. In February 1965, immediately after reaching 19 years of age, no
longer having to hunt for a job for the rest of my earthly life (to date,
2016). (Ch. 12)
1j. Distancing myself from all my childhood acquaintances who observed
my embarrassing poverty thru out my upbringing. (Ch. 12)
“I’m
happy for you, college boy Richard!”
‘Thank
you! And to God be the Glory!’