While reading my Bible this morning before work I came across the following question:
“A difficult situation for Joseph (being sold into slavery) had a surprisingly positive outcome. Have you ever had that happen in your life?”
While trying to come up with an answer to this question, I could not help but to think back to June of 1995, when less than a month after my family purchased our first home here in the States and moved into it, my parents’ jewelry store that they had been operating in Chicago’s south side got robbed. At gunpoint.
My mom had flown out to Korea for a visit about a week or two before the robbery took place and so on the night the robbery occurred, it was getting late and my dad was going through his usual procedures to close the store for the day. ”J & J Jewelry”–named after my brother & my first name initials–this was to be the very last day that the store would operate.
My dad explained to me that a large number of guys came into the store, were pretending to look around and then one of them (or perhaps more than just one of them, I don’t know) pulled out the his gun, threatened my dad, and well, they took pretty much all of the valuable merchandise and ran away. One thing about gold is that it’s small. And light. And expensive. And oh-so-very easy to steal in large quantities.
On the night the robber occurred, my dad came home and he told me he told me that he needed to talk to me. I still vividly remember talking to my dad outside on the deck of our newly purchased home. I had never seen a man so down and discouraged. I was 14 at the time. I was a little kid. And yet my dad told me what had occurred earlier that night.
When I look back at my life there are 2 events in my life that I believe changed the course of my life (note: I don’t consider coming to know Christ and “receiving Christ into my life” an “event” that occurred in my life. It was so much more of a process than an event.): One is when my family immigrated from Korea to Chicago on the 16th of August, 1991. The second is the robbery of my parents’ jewelry store.
After the robbery occurred, my parents were devastated, in various ways. They were devastated financially due to the loss of their merchandise. They were devastated because they had just purchased their home in Naperville. How were they going to pay for the mortgage on this new home? They were devastated emotionally and psychologically. They had worked hard to get to where they were with the store. They had made a ton of sacrifices. And now, it was all but gone.
So, coming back to the question I came across this morning–did this tragic robbery produce a surprisingly positive outcome?
Well, while I’m not sure I would say that the robbery produced a “surprisingly positive outcome” I can say that I learned and grew so much because of it. I witnessed in my parents the working out of their sheer will to survive and provide for their children. A few months after the robbery, they took over a shoe repair store. A shoe repair store. This right here: the best shoe repair store in the world. I’m not sure if people know this but let me tell you something: Repairing shoes is hard work. It’s dirty, dusty, you get no respect, and you can’t really make that much money doing it. No one ever dreams of growing up to operate their own shoe repair shop. My parents knew all that and they still decided to take over the shop because well, they needed to make ends meet and provide for their 2 children. And you know what? After all of these years (from 1995…) my parents are still struggling financially because of the actions of some heartless, immoral, gun-bearing thugs. And even though they’re still struggling, they’re still going strong. As I’m preparing for my marriage coming up in December and as I think more & more about having a family of my own, I can’t wait to provide for my children and to put into practice the lessons I learned & experienced watching my parents provide for me and my brother.
Another lesson I learned from observing my parents struggle through the outcome of this tragedy is perseverance. I know my parents thought about giving up many times. They had their share of days when they were 99% convinced that they just would not make ends meet operating their shoe repair store. And yet here we are in 2011 and their shoe repair store is still going strong and the business is doing well (relatively speaking). I don’t know how they’ve been surviving until now, but they have and I’m so proud of them for it.
Okay, it’s 7:12 AM and I need to leave the house soon to go pick up my fiancée and so we can commute to our offices. It looks like I’ll be thinking of my parents on the train this morning.
It still hasn’t quite hit me yet. To be honest, I’m guessing it’ll hit me once I get used to the daylight savings time and get some much needed rest after one unforgettable weekend.
