Tom Selleck gives all his career success to Jesus Christ. So, I thought I would write my career story and share it. This way, when a youngster comes up to me and asks for career advice I can give him the web address to this blog.
I’ve been pulling box after box from my attic to reduce the stuff my wife and I collected these past decades. I don’t want either me, if going to a smaller place; or my sons, if I’ve gone from this earth, to have to go through Johnnie’s and my pack-rat stuff. It does take time; lots of it. My story is not to be taken as the pathway for everyone to take to have success in their careers, especially financial success; albeit, there are specific Biblical principles of success.
Principles or rules to achieve success in business include: honesty, integrity, loyalty, making business a priority (which includes time not on business to keep healthy: eating right, exercise.), unselfishness (You are getting paid to have the company make money so help your teammates to do their best as well), productive and not lazy, etc. I can’t think of a better human example than Jesus Christ.
Anyway, getting back to topic: my testimony of following God’s will in my career path. In the middle of my Freshman year in college at ORU my human father died from a brain tumor. My Mom became the single authority over me from then until I was able to provide for myself. I have been rereading many letters from my Mom while I was in college, both at Oral Roberts University and SUNY at Stony brook, New York. In every letter my Mom wrote about her best friend and Savior, Jesus. Often in those letters she mentioned praying for me to know God’s will for my life: my career, future wife, etc.. Here I would like to focus on my career.
While in high school I enjoyed both science and math. In the 1960’s I held those astronauts and rocket scientists in awe. The Apollo Space program was preparing to put a man on the moon. I ruled out becoming a jet pilot like those first 7 astronauts due to my nearsightedness requiring me to wear glasses starting around 10Th grade. So, the next best career, I imagined, was to be a “rocket scientist”. My career story begins with poetic prophecy I wrote dated about that time.
While rereading letters I also came across a small piece of paper with a first-draft of a poem written in pencil, which I had written simply titled “God’s Will”.
,—-
| God’s Will
|
| Tell me the secret of knowing God’s will.
| If you are willing to do it, He will.
| The answer lies not in knowing and choosing,
| but in knowing and doing.
|
| “What!” you say,
| “God will ask an enormous task”.
| Well, who is God?
| Is He who He claims to be?
| Did you know He asked his Son to die for you
| before you even knew?
|
| Your value to God is more than you think
| and He has intelligence too you know.
| He won’t give you a job that’s either too big or too small
| and if you’re short He won’t give you a job for one who’s tall.
| So, put God to the test.
| Let Him give you His best.
| For He has already given His all.
|
| Now, let us begin to reveal God’s plan.
| It’s easy to follow being designed for man.
| His will is like a fine cake
| of which a famous cook can’t wait to bake.
|
| I have heard it said
| all the ingredients can be found in His Word
| and all but one can be seen within His Word.
| That one can’t be read,
| but instead it is said.
| That one is prayer.
| We have no right to say
| “Oh, I need not bother.”
| Why, even Jesus prayed with His Father.
|
| So take advantage of God’s promise “Try me and see.
| Is there anything too hard for me?”
|
| God has supplied the ingredients and oven.
| You are the cook so lets get moving.
| Grab hold of the cook book
| and find out what to do with all the things He has supplied for you.
| And don’t get impatient while your cake is baking.
| For often God’s perfect will requires time in the making.
| If you are diligent in preparing your cake
| and wait the proper time for it to bake,
| you won’t be surprised if your cake tastes good.
| “I’ve followed directions well”, you’ll say.
| “It should!”
`—-
Yes. As poetry this was simplistic, juvenile, inartistic. Definitely it was a good decision to not attempt a career in poetry!
I applied to Oral Roberts University (ORU) after high school. My declared major was physics. When I showed up in Tulsa however, I was told the physics major was dropped. ORU was a new school less than 4 years old and still in an obvious building process. I made a quick decision and declared Chemistry my major instead. I completed my freshman and sophomore years with that major. However, I was warned in my sophomore year that the Chemistry major would also get dropped since there was only one professor capable of teaching the subject. So I applied to a few other universities with a possible transfer in mind. The other schools would not accept much of my course credit due to ORU being new and unaccredited as well as having a few courses like Old and New Testament being far away from the general-ed of these other schools. I returned to ORU and changed my major to math. By this time I had dropped my idea of becoming a rocket scientist due to the relationship my Chemistry prof and I had built together. Since my own Dad had died my Chemistry prof became my life mentor in his place. I wanted to teach Chemistry, like him. So, in my senior year I took more chemistry classes at Tulsa University, which were required to go to graduate school.
Both my Mom and I prayed during this whole time. I went to graduate school close to home at SUNY at Stony Brook on Long Island. To have a career of teaching at the college level I knew I needed a PH.D. My first two years in graduate school were heading in that direction but that PH.D. was beyond my ability. I left SUNY at Stony Brook out a side door named: Master’s degree. While completing the Master’s degree my mentor at ORU set me up with an Instructor teaching position at ORU. My intention was to attempt a PH.D. again while teaching.
While teaching that first year at ORU I met the girl who became my wife and soul mate. I enjoyed teaching at the instructor level and even mastered my stage fright due to lecturing to over 100 students in class. I developed my teaching skills. I studied to make sure I knew what I was teaching but after marriage I no longer had the drive to continue PH.D. studies while working full time. My cake was baking. I only taught 9 months out of the year and so during summers I had other part-time jobs. I was hired by Dowell, an oil and gas well servicing company, based on both my Chemistry M.S. and Math B.S. degrees. I worked in the cement research group and was assigned to a chemist who designed an experimental apparatus to test cement as it set up. We had an electrical engineer who helped and taught me how data could be read by a computer and used in software. I had a Basic language software book to read and study. I was to write software to display something on the monitor, write data to disk and output data to a printer. This was fun – even more fun than teaching. I wanted to transition my career to software if the pay was at least what I was paid at ORU. Obviously I began praying seriously. Is stepping away from a Christian teaching job where I could mentor students like my own mentor did for me, to do software for another company part of God’s will for me? When it came time at the end of the summer for me to present a 15 minute summary of my work to my boss and his boss I prepared and practiced. The teaching skills I developed came in handy and I did a good job.
I knew the lowest paid full time employee at Dowell made more than my income as ORU instructor. There were 2 reasons I knew I must bow my knee: I would make more money, as well as leaving a Christian occupation. My mind went to the analogy of tossing a football back and forth to my Father, my God in heaven. I would get a letter saying something like “the bosses really thought your presentation was done very well. Would you be interested in a full-time position?” I asked my Father in prayer and since I didn’t get a “no” I decided He could simply have Dowell never offer me a position. This letter was as if God passed the football to me. I filled out the application (threw the football back to God.) The cake is baking. Months later an Interview was set up. (football back to me). After the interview I didn’t hear for several weeks about the interview (I threw it back to God.) God threw it back to me with a full-time position at Dowell.
After 5 years at Dowell the price of oil plummeted due to Saudi Arabia opening the spigots. The price of oil was so low much of the research at improving oil and gas well servicing wasn’t profitable any more. As a result I was one of a third of Dowell’s workforce let go. I became unemployed with a wife and three young sons to support. I knew my Mom, as well as others, were praying for us. I never felt God abandoned me in my career and never felt guilty about leaving ORU by making a selfish choice in my career. Actually, I was at peace living on severance pay for those first 3 months after being let go. I kept a notebook of my job search and it had grown to over 200 contacts after those three months. I applied to FlightSafety in December. I also set up an interview in early January with The Southern Baptist International Missions. With my severance pay about to run out in that first week of January I decided to fast along with praying. By this time I was convinced my heavenly Father could certainly close doors; with over 200 contacts not one job offer. In the second day of my fasting I received an acceptance letter from FlightSafety to report on the following Monday. After canceling my Southern Baptist Missions interview I reported to work at FlightSafety. God said this cake can come out now.
On my first day of work at FlightSafety I met another Christian who introduced me to Christian Reconstruction. Authors like Dr. Gary DeMar and Dr. Gary North wrote about cultural and political topics using Scripture mostly ignored by evangelicals. Topics like: 1) Government welfare being theft of personal property, a breaking of one of God’s commandments, and 2) An interpretation of “Render to Caesar’s what is his” meaning for me, a US citizen, render to my government my vote. I began to rethink and reshape a more inclusive Biblical worldview.
My work at FlightSafety involved working with huge number sets (tables) to simulate aircraft engines in software. Flying simulators, the expensive toy, was also really fun. I plugged in both because I wanted and liked to do it. I enjoyed learning how I could help my company, FlightSafety. The company had a loyalty to their employees by encouraging them to move into open positions in different areas and I tried out a software support position for, what I called my Sabbatical of 3 years. While in this general software support position I realized my own software work was much less but I worked many more hours due to having people depend on me for the support I was tasked to provide. Not liking to say no to the one or two because I needed to work on something for that 6 or 7 took its toll on me. I requested and went back to working in my original engine software area. However, my generic simulation software knowledge of 3 years prompted me to take a leap on developing my engine software within my own personal process. That turned out well. I credit my Father for his help especially when I would get stuck. Then I would look up to my poster on my cubical wall: “Holy Holy Holy is the Lord God Almighty Who was and is and is to come.” I recall getting my last engine software project 95% done not only without the simulator, but even without using the accepted development tools FlightSafety provided. At 70 years and 3 months old I retired from FlightSafety at my planned time I had set over a year earlier.
In my 60s while still working at FlightSafety Harper Collins Christian Book Publishing published my book: I Wish Sons Came With Instructions. As part of the contract they set me up with a personal website to advertise the book. About the same time I retired from FlightSafety, Harper Collins wrote to me and said they were no longer going to maintain that website. Being just retired this became a perfect task for me to do: learn to be my own website administrator. Over the next 8 months I ran with that but it never really grabbed my attention like actual simulation of aircraft engines did.
A headhunter found my presence on LinkedIn and asked me if I was interested in a full-time job with Fidelity Technologies helping the Navy maintain flight simulators. This sounded like something I would be interested in but not full time. I said no. He was able to work with the Vice President of Fidelity Technologies to create a part-time position which I then accepted. Low and behold I found my 40-year-old computer simulator software was still marketable! I’ve been working part-time for 4 1/2 years now and still continue to enjoy my work.
I’ve followed directions well. It should.