I knew the Grand Opening was going to be great. For the past six months I had been working seven days a week from 5:00 in the morning until the last contractor went home for the day or night (some times it was early the next morning). Because of the commitment of a great staff by the opening day our punch list of construction issues were down to just a page and half. Opening in December, three weeks before Christmas was tricky, but I had a great staff who could handle the task. This was the staff that was responsible that I had at the old store.  The excitement of opening a new store with a great staff and a community that was eagerly waiting for the newly designed store of the future (almost four times bigger than the old store) to showcase was an overwhelming physical task.

A few days before opening I pulled my back muscle and could not bend over. Pain was extremely great and all I could do was walk upright and hold a cup of coffee on my hand. After seeing the doctor and was told to stay on bed rest I decided just to tough out the pain. Nothing was going to stop me from being at the store and getting it ready.   Two days later and a day before opening I was 100 percent again.  Yes, toughing it out worked. I soon realized that obstacles that might stop others do not have to stop you. One way to make the day go better is to make yourself get up and start the day early. A good hot shower, and coffee has always been and will be my way of starting off the day.

Also following the Lord wholeheartedly as Caleb did will give you the strength the face your daily challenges.  I have always use Caleb from the book of Joshua as my guide for my physical strength and health. For I would tell others that I have the same God as Caleb did and He will be with us today as He was in the time of Caleb.

As Caleb told Joshua in Joshua 14:6-12 Now the people of Judah approached Joshua at Gilgal, and Caleb son of Jephunneh the Kenizzite said to him, “You know what the Lord said to Moses the man of God at Kadesh Barnea about you and me.  I was forty years old when Moses the servant of the Lord sent me from Kadesh Barnea to explore the land. And I brought him back a report according to my convictions, but my fellow Israelites who went up with me made the hearts of the people melt in fear. I, however, followed the Lord my God wholeheartedly.  So on that day Moses swore to me, ‘The land on which your feet have walked will be your inheritance and that of your children forever, because you have followed the Lord my God wholeheartedly.’^[ “Now then, just as the Lord promised, he has kept me alive for forty-five years since the time he said this to Moses, while Israel moved about in the wilderness. So here I am today, eighty-five years old!  I am still as strong today as the day Moses sent me out; I’m just as vigorous to go out to battle now as I was then.  Now give me this hill country that the Lord promised me that day. You yourself heard then that the Anakites were there and their cities were large and fortified, but the Lord helping me, I will drive them out just as he said.”

So even to this day I look first to the Lord for healing. Yes, sometimes I need some rest and my personal belief might not be shared by many, however after sixty-seven years on this earth I have witness God’s blessing of health on my life. My prayer to God is to have the physical strength like John Wesley who was still preaching at age eighty-eight, just a few days before he died. He met death signing hymns and quoting the Bible. His last words were “The best of all is, God is with us.” For me it is to say like Paul “to live is Christ and to die is Gain”. However, to live I must have a purpose and that purpose is to reflect Christ in my life.

With the new store opening our store was blessed to be included in the Grand Opening ads. This help us stay competitive with the other stores in the area. Our sales dropped the first two weeks of the opening of the new store, however by the third week we saw a rebound in our sales. A lot of our customers went to the new store, but after two weeks they were coming back, most hated to fight the traffic to get to the new store. After a few more weeks our sales were greater than the new store. Not only had we kept a large portion of our customers we also picked up a new customer base from existing stores from the special that were ran in the Grand Opening ads. The extra hard work we had put into the making of our store sparkle during the Grand Opening of the new store had paid huge dividends.

I was amazing how great the surveys taken during the opening of the new store had reflected a positive review on our store. These surveys were taken at both stores and the customers praise the new store on all the extras it provided: a seafood department, a floral department, a complete nonfood department, a seat down deli restaurant and a pharmacy. However, two areas the new store could not match us on were customer service and the freshness of our perishable departments. And this was the reason why most of our customers returned. A few months later the President of the company came out to visit both of the stores and was very impressed with the results we had in retaining our customers.

Our President was a former store manager and zone manager that pushed for store manager involvement in the community. He saw this in our store. He also saw the need to replace our store. The lease was almost up for the stores in our store’s shopping center, so the timing was right for the planning of the new replacement store for both us and the drug store beside us.  I became involved in the planning of this store and would be the new Unit Manager.  A year later I was very busy for several months, working between two stores, closing one down and getting the other ready for a Grand Opening.  So, God did provide a greater opportunity for me and the employees at this store. Looking back on the past is a great reminder that waiting on God to work things out is always the best path.

My study of the Psalms has given me a great insight to David’s personnel life. His use of the Psalms to portray his feeling without revealing the events in his life is a trait that I wish I could master. For reading the Psalms has made me look closer at David’s life as portrayed in the Old Testament.  David had many disappointments in his life both career and personal.  The dreams of my youth of serving the Lord on the mission field were given up early in my studies at Temple. These dreams turned working with the youth ministry in the church, but these dreams also had to be given up. Attending church without your spouse makes it hard to serve in the ministry of the local church. I realized that not matter how hard one works to keep a marriage together, it will fail if a couple cannot find common grounds. Sometimes it best to part ways.

This decision also led me to a different path in my walk with Christ. My walk was no longer a church orientated walk but a personnel walk.   At that time in my career we closed the books and prepared the sales and hour usage reports on Saturday night. Therefore Sunday mornings became a regular work day for me so I could make sure everything was correct before these reports would be send in to the Central Office.  I would also work Saturday night to make sure all of next week’s plans were in place.   My assistant managers loved this schedule since it would give them every other weekend off.  This was rare for a store manager to do, since most took Sunday and Wednesday  as their off days.  I guess this is where I developed the saying of “Never put off today what could have been completed tomorrow.”   So I developed the trait of staying late to make sure the daily task would be a day ahead of schedule.

I also kept up my daily studies in the Bible and continue to go to church as much as I could. However, I started looking at my career as my ministry.  I could use my career as a guide to others on how to be a believer in the workplace. My personal beliefs in Christ were not something I hid but would shared with both employees and customers. I tried to be an example for others to share their faith in the workplace.  I realized that God’s Word is our mirror to make us as Christ-like to the world.

Have you ever believed you worked hard for an opportunity and then not even really be considered for the position? Well this was one of the lessons that the Lord had to teach me in my early career (many times over I am afraid to say). However, during these times that we must stay in God’s Word and look at these times as growth and not disappointments for we can not see the future God is preparing for us.

Yes, my second store assignment was a great store. The store manager before me was promoted to a much larger store. The store had a strong staff that took good care of the customers and keep store conditions good. However, because of the high sale volume for the given square footage of the store the evening conditions of the store were not always great for the late evening shoppers. Sales were still strong however I believed we could make them even stronger. I started working every evening from 3:00 to 7:00 and stayed on the sale floors with two employees to improve our store condition during the evening traffic flow. It was amazing how after a few months our evening sales greatly improved.

After two years we had the store sales as well as profits hit all time highs. Our sales and profit per square footage were the best in the division. This led to the Central Office to make the decision to build a new store in the area. This one would be twice the size of our store and would be a Combo store which include a Pharmacy and a non-food department as well as a sit in deli. This was the store of my dreams, like the one I had been in a few years earlier as an assistant manager. However, the Central Office considered that the sale growth came from the population growth in the community and not our actions at the store level. My dream store went to someone else to manage.

A word of advice to young believers, never let disappointments trap you into giving up or believing that God has forgotten about you. There will be times of disappointments in your careers, and when these events happen it was probably become a greater disappointments each time they happen.  This was the greatest disappointment I had faced in my life up to this time.  I lost most of my key personnel to the new store and had to rebuild a new staff. My store was expected to see at least a forty percent drop in sales to the new store which also meant a loss in profits. But we stayed positive. God has a way of making believers stronger when they learn to wait on Him, instead of making thing happening on their own strength. God was planning a brighter future for me.

Managing a grocery store from a Christian point of view was very rewarding. It opened the doors to countless opportunities. One of the true gifts that a believer can give to the world is that of service. As a store manager I realized that customer service was one of the best ways to build a business. My second store as a manager was a blessing from the Lord.  I was in a great community and had a wonderful staff of employees. It was in this store that I became a role model for my employees. I love being on the sale floor taking care of customers and getting to know them by name.

Meeting the needs of others became one of the greatest activities I did as a store manager. One such activity was support Girl Scout Troop 147. Of course, they would set up and sale their cookies every year at the store, but our store was able to offer them more. For three years our store would help them set up small sidewalk carnivals during different times of the year for their fund-raising activities.  These activities helped pay for their trip to Washington DC, Boston and New York. These events were wonderful because it helped the Girl Scout Troop, but it also generated excitement for the store. They were very creative in the way they ran these carnivals.   As I looked the other day on the wall in my office at home, I could not help but reflect on how special the several plaques  from the Girl Scout Troop 147 that where given to me was such a rewarding time in my life.

After many years our paths have taken us in different directions. I realize that we can not hold on to the past. And yet sometimes the past comes back into our present. When this happens, I hope that what I am remembered the most for, is my reflection of Christ living in me. Yes, we fail in our daily walk in this world and sometimes the pull of earthly things will make us committed to a path that is not pleasing to God.  However, we are given I John 1:6-10 to describes the way a believer’s path in this world should be: “If we say that we have fellowship with him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth: But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin. If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.”

During my early career in management one of the hobbies I took up was playing with the new wave of the future called personal computing. The first computer I started out with was a small Timex system. I later moved over to the Commodore 64. It was on the Commodore 64 that I taught myself basic program and decided to see if I could use it at work. One of the first programs I created was a routine I could run to help me calculate the stores Operational Ratios (OR) which was the formula that determined how many hours we could use in a given department based on our sales. Our sales by department, hours by department and the OR report (which at that time had to be done on a calculator) were called in every Saturday night to our zone office. This program made the process so much easier. I could now complete my OR report in a minute instead of the usual fifteen minutes. And I knew the report was accurate, where as when I ran it on the calculator, we had to rerun it to verify the totals.

Later I used the IBM2 with Lotus to prepare budgets and run different scenarios to go over with my department heads to help plan promotional sale events. This was a very different approach than most other store managers a that time took. To most store managers in the early eighties’ computers belonged at the headquarter offices and not at the store level.

As I look back now almost forty years later, I see how this love for computers set the stage for my 3^rd career. When I started teaching twenty-eight years ago one of the assignments I was asked to take was that of the schools SYSOP (System operator).  This job assignment would be the one that transformed my 2nd career for the last twenty-eights years.

One of the characteristics of Christ I use to preach on is found in Luke 2:52: “And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God, and man. The importance of this verse is that Jesus kept on growing.  Growth is something that we must continue to work on even when we get old. Hopefully the old skill sets I have learned over the last fifty-one years will lead to growth in other areas of my new life. So as God has always help prepared me for my past careers, I pray that He has done as He opens doors of opportunity on my next career of retirement.

An early Commodore 64 computer system.

One of the first challenges I had as a new store manager was the development of others to follow a new path of growth and development.  This was a store were sales were dropping and was losing money.  So, I can in with the goal of correcting both trends.  My plan worked, but it was not easy.  Change is not easy, especially when you must get others to follow you, but they do not buy into your plan.  The six months at this store give me some of the greatest learning experiences in management that I could have received in such a short time.  The greatest tool I learned during this time was how to develop and surround yourself with a great staff and let them manage their project.  Ownership of change made growth more rewarding.

Paul in 2 Timothy chapter four writes these words to Timothy: “For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; and they shall turn away their ears from the truth and shall be turned unto fables.   But watch thou in all things, endure afflictions, do the work of an evangelist, make full proof of thy ministry.”  I learned early at my new assignment that I had to make changes.  Like Timothy I was warned about the issues I would be facing from my zone manager.  Sometimes it is impossible to change those around you.  I learned quickly that making a stand was difficult, but in the end results would come.  I use to quote 1 Corinthians 15:10 all the time “But by the grace of God I am what I am: and his grace which was bestowed upon me was not in vain; but I labored more abundantly than they all: yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me.”   I might not have had much talent, but I labor more than anyone around me.

And yet there was a better way.  Inspiring others to follow your leadership and to own the labor and results of their hard work.  This was when I embraced the 20/80 rule.  In retail the 20/80 rule refers the concepts that twenty percent of the people usually does eighty percent of the work.  Placing key people in key roles and rewarding them made my job as a store manager so much more rewarding.  At this store I started a new direction in my management style.  Yes, I still set the example of giving the best service and product to the customer that was possible, but at the same time developing and giving others an environment to growth and become leaders themselves over their departments was now my focus.  Six months later this new direction leads me to become the manager of the store of my dreams.

New study guide for my next career.

Have you ever jumped at an opportunity because you believe it was a wave of the future just to see another opportunity come along soon after going in a different direction?  That was me in my early career with Kroger.  Completing the training program in just eight weeks, one of the fastest times in which this program was ever completed, I believed I was on the fast track to becoming a store manager. Wrong.  I was told by one of my first managers that “it was a dog eat dog world in management”.  Everyone seem to be looking out for number one and that was usually themselves.  It seemed like when the store had problems, I got the blame and it was usually my fault.  The more I strive to improve school conditions and sales the more others were getting the credit for these improvements.  So, I was told I was great at getting things done, but not in managing people.  I realized that I had now entered the university of Hard Knocks, learning how to be a middle level manager.  Pleasing both the people below you and the people above you and getting the desires results of the upper management.

God has a way of helping square pegs fitting in a round hole.  An opportunity came open for volunteers to open five new stores using a new management philosophy.  This format had as a management team a store manger with each of the department heads acting as department heads and assistant managers.  Most assistant mangers at that time did not want this position since to them it was a step down instead of up, but I saw this as an opportunity for me to shine so I volunteer.  I took the position as the produce manager.  Great results in the first year.  However, no talk of promotion and was asked to take on more responsible and take on a failing deli department.  I did and soon I received the nickname of Kenmore.  The more work you gave him the more he did.  In six months, I turned this department around, but still no talk of promotion.  Discourage I was about to turn in my resignation to the store manager until the zone manager talked with me.  I was told I had a problem with my management skills, I had great results but there was just something about the way I manage that (which no one could pinpoint) that needed to be improved.

So, I was given one more challenge.  Grocery and Nonfood had sale issues and poor inventory results, so improve these and I will be considered for a promotion.  Well six months later the results came back, and they were better than ever, sales were up and great inventory results, however the promise of a promotion to store manager still looked far distance.  Two and a half years so it came time to quit.  But God opened a door.  Sometimes you are ready to move forward but God still must shape the future.  I was a square peg but working in an environment of round holes.  So, God had to create a square hole environment for me fit into.  My first position as a store manager was a position that few people wanted because it was a small store and required a working store manager.  With no assistant manager it required a lot of opening the store in the morning and closing the store up in the evenings.  A lot of twelve hours or more a day, and sometime working seven days a week.  But I loved having the opportunity of having my own store.  So, God prepared a squared hole for this squared peg.

Starting a new job soon Shark tooth hunting with love ones.

I had an old saying once: “There was a man who sought after truth, but when he found it, he turned and walked away.”  That is what happens when someone seeks advice and finds out that the path that they are traveling on is easier than the path they were advised to take.  God’s Word is our source for truth, but how many of us turn and walk away from this truth.  Paul writes these words in I Corinthians 13:11-13:  “When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me.  For now, we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.  And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.  Growing in the grace of God is a slow process in most believers.  I Corinthians chapter thirteen was Paul’s discourse on a better way of walking in God’s way than the way of the gifts he had describes in chapter twelve. Chapter twelve is called the gift chapter in which Paul describes the different gifts that believers are given form God.  However he ends chapter twelves with these words: “But eagerly desire the greater gift. And now I will show you the most excellent way.  Gifts are great, but using them in a way that cause growth in us and others is the most excellent way.

Psalm 131 is a very short psalm but speaks volumes that can ease the mind of a believer.   “My heart is not proud, O LORD, my eyes are not haughty; I do not concern myself with great matters or things too wonderful for me.  ”  The beauty of God’s Word is how the truth found in each verse can touch the heart of those who are not proud, who have quieted themselves so that the Spirit of God can renew that individual relationship between them and God.

How often did I try to put myself or others on a pedestal only to see how easy it was to fall off that pedestal? How often did I seem to have all the answers and then realize that the path I had charted was taking me in the wrong direction? How often do I let my thought become express words without going through the filtering system that I had developed during my experiences on this earth? Yet the opening verse of this Psalm gave me the advice that I needed to avoid all these issues. The definition of pride as found in the dictionary is: a high or inordinate opinion of one’s own dignity, importance, merit, or superiority, whether as cherished in the mind or as displayed in bearing, conduct, etc. Synonyms for being proud include: pride, conceit, self-esteem, egotism, and vanity can imply an elevated idea of the way we appear to others. The advantages, achievements, as well as the position that I had attained in this life, often lead me to develop characteristics that creates an environment in which self-admiration took over in our life. I recall one of my favorites saying in the days of my youth as “when you are good you are good, but when you are great you are like me!”.  However, age can sometimes have a way of adjusting our attitudes, and where pride exist a fall is close behind.

Later than sooner I arrived at the place in my life after the fall from pride, that I realized that there are matters that I could not handle and things that are now greater than my abilities to comprehend and explain. It is during these time that I could either return to the folly of starting over and doing things my way again, or finally waiting on God to make things happen.  This was my first learning experience in management.  I realize that I could give advice all day to most people, but in the end, they would still follow the path that they were traveling.  However, it not what I said, but what I did that influence the employees around me.  In my early career in management I learned that you lead by example.  Yes, not all will follow your example, but for those who do it leads to great results in both yours and their lives.

An old walking stick found on the beach in Gulf Shores.

As I look back on last fifty-one years of my life, I realize that the one thread through out these years has been work.  My life has been defined by my jobs.  For the last forty-three years my jobs were always career focus.  When work becomes more than a job that causes you to show up for a daily task to a position where you have input on the your daily activities, then it becomes a career.  This change can be a great path changer.

As I look back on the last forty-three years I realize that that was only a little over a third of Moses’s life span.  As I mediate upon Moses’ life of one hundred and twenty years and the trials that he went through as I read the words that he wrote in Psalm 90 I realize that like him my life paths have changed.  Verse twelve states “Teach us to number our days aright, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.” is a key to our daily living.   Moses’s first forty years were spent in the courts of Pharaoh learning the wisdom of Egypt and how to be a royal administrator. His second forty years were spent in the wilderness tending sheep. The last forty years he became the prophet who lead Israel to the Promise Land. Moses had different careers in his life, His first career was a career where he wanted full control of his life to make things happen his way, which did not work out.  His second career was a shepherd.  However, it was probably during his second forty years of life in the quietness of the wilderness as a shepherd that he learned that God is God. This is a lesson that most people learn late in life. His third career was God calling him to lead His nation to the Promise Land.

One of the greatest features that an elderly Christian shows the world is the gracefulness of growing old in the Lord. They should have learned the secret of living and that is to quietly look to the Lord to meet their daily needs.  So, as my path keeps changing to a different career may I stay on the main path of always walking in the ways of God.  Charles Swindoll reflected upon this truth of gaining a heart of wisdom in his book Wisdom for the Way. He wrote “Aging isn’t a choice. But our response to it is. In so many ways we ourselves determine how we shall grow old.” May I continue to grow in the love and the grace of Jesus my Lord.