This Little Life Of Mine - Chapter 53 - A Major Challenge Thomas M Parsons

53. A Major Challenge

From 1966 to 2010, 44 years, to be exact, a major challenge plagued my life and the life of my wife and children. It was a challenge that involved a personal violation of a Scriptural mandate, and caused untold difficulties in our lives.

In 1966, when I was in seminary and a part-time employee at Union Bank and Trust in Grand Rapids, Michigan (I think I can give the name of the bank now; it was absorbed by another bank I won’t name, years ago), I and all the other employees were presented with a Union Bank Visa credit card. Credit cards were relatively new at the time, and the bank was anxious to promote this new service. What better way than to give your employees a card. Even the part-time guy who worked as a messenger in the mortgage department and was working his way through seminary to get a theological degree.

I found it quite convenient to use the card. The card did not come with instructions, and the monthly payment was comfortably low. I knew interest was being charged on th balance, but I figured the rate was low, and that it would not be a big deal.

Boy, was I wrong.

Sometime later, I figured out that the monthly payment often barely covered the interest charges, and that the balance had a tendency to rise very quickly, and fall excruciatingly slowly. Nevertheless, the convenience of purchasing things when I needed them and paying for them later had great appeal to me.

By the time I met and married Linda, I had already built up a small debt. I always figured once I got out of school and was earning a regular paycheck, I could pay the card off.

A few years later, while we were in Flint, MI, I somehow acquired a second credit card. Now I had two cards to purchase things we needed. I also had two monthly payments, and now was being charged interest by two banks.

The twenty-one years we spent in Oglesby, Illinois were challenging years financially. Our church was small, and our needs kept growing faster than the church could afford to pay us. They did the best they could. But that imaginary diaper in the basement kept increasing our monthly expenses. Inflation also worked at that. And taxes, which our friendly government insisted I had to pay or they wouldn’t be so friendly anymore.

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By the time our three daughters were all here, I had acquired a couple more charge cards. I never went out looking for new charge cards. Invitations arrived in the mail several times a month. I always figured I could combine them all into one so that I would only have one monthly payment to deal with. Sometimes I did consolidate accounts. Sometimes that didn’t work. Because of my avid interest in writing, I decided to seek to sell articles and stories to various publications, appreciating the fact that they generally paid writers for items they purchased. This proved to be successful. I did sell about fifty or so articles and stories during our twenty-one years in Oglesby. But it was not regular; it was random, and I never sold 100% of what I submitted. And the pay was usually in the range of $35 - $50 per piece purchased. I might sell two or three a year. That brought in less than $200 per year, which was a small help to a growing budget.

Linda and I decided to give our three children the benefit of a Christian school education. A new Christian school had opened at a sister Baptist church in LaSalle, Illinois, just across the Illinois River from Oglesby. By the late 1980s, we had three children in LaSalle-Peru Christian School. A great benefit to our daughters and to our family. Also a great expense. Paying off credit cards was on the back burner. Keeping up with family expenses was a high priority. Credit cards often became the only means of paying some of the expenses.

The school offered me a part-time teaching position, teaching Bible classes in return for part of our tuition. For a few years, teaching the Bible became a means of helping with the expenses of our children’s education. Now, you can’t beat that. Doing what I loved doing and getting chunks knocked off our tuition payments was a great cause of rejoicing for us.

But good things sometimes come to end. The school hired a full-time Bible teacher, and my services were no longer needed.

I wrote a letter to the Illinois Valley Community College, located about a mile from our home in Oglesby. IVCC served much of northern LaSalle county and had a large and beautiful campus, and a good number of students. I introduced myself as a local pastor with experience in teaching, and that I would be interested in teaching English and/or speech classes on a part-time basis. As I put the letter in the mail, I really did not expect anything to result from it. After all, why would a community college operating on state funding want to hire a Baptist pastor part-time? It did not seem very likely. Boy, was I wrong. Again.