for 6 Jan 07: COLD, HARD, LITTLE CASH

(BLOGGER'S NOTE: You may find this item humorous, serious, or a little of both - but we offer these thoughts from time to time, as we keep a seventh-day Sabbath.)

It's been on the warm side in Columbus this week, but I've been remembering a much colder winter. It happened 25 years ago this month -- at a time when people were more concerned about nuclear winters than global warming.

Sports fans may remember how cold it was in January 1982. Cincinnati won the A.F.C. Championship at home, beating San Diego in below-zero weather. The weather may have changed - but the shock of Cincinnati playing in a Super Bowl still hasn't.

I lived in my home town of Kansas City in January 1982, and things looked grim. I was part of a two-man radio news team which was fired four months before, when the station changed formats to "The Music of Your Life." Their life, maybe - but it denied me a livelihood.

On top of that, Kansas City had big snowstorms and below-freezing weather -- while I drove a used Karmann-Ghia sports car which only had working heat emanating from the engine. It blew hot in July, and didn't blow nearly enough in early January.

I made a one-hour commute from Kansas City to Lawrence, Kansas for part-time work at a radio reading service for the blind. That provided a little income, to go with unemployment checks. But it wasn't a lot - and for a few days, I resorted to delivering Yellow Pages door-to-door for money. As long as no dogs were inside fences in the yard, that was OK....

But as I searched for full-time broadcasting work, I had a dictionary definition of a "lemon" car. The Amoco Motor Club couldn't believe how many times I called them for jump-start assistance while I was unemployed. And when you have to plug something into the engine like a computer USB to make it start, that's not a good sign.

One day in Lawrence, the car simply died -- and after I was towed to a repair shop, the repair crew gave me devastating news. My used Karmann-Ghia needed an engine overhaul. The cost: $1,000 -- more than my monthly pay at the Kansas City radio station which laid me off. I traded money for a nice line on the resume, but nice-looking resumes don't fix cars.

(If there were stores such as "Check Into Cash" in Kansas City back then, I knew nothing about them. All I knew were the rules to Monopoly and Milton Bradley's "Game of Life" - and if you went bankrupt, the game effectively was over.)

What would you have done at a moment like that? I obtained an "Ugly Duckling" rent-a-car for a few days, while the engine was overhauled -- and when I returned home to Kansas City on a Friday evening, I fell to my knees. I surrendered. I decided God had taken my job away from me, then taken my car away from me -- and with my bank account dwindling, the apartment would have been the third strike.

While I worked at the radio station in Kansas City, I started taking "short cuts" from what the Bible tells me to do. I stopped going to church. I worked or played on God's "holy day." And while I wasn't swearing, I still used language God doesn't like - such as what old-timers used to do to socks with holes in them.

After I fell on my knees and surrendered to God, amazing things began to happen. The car engine kept working for months - well, after it died a second time, and I demanded the Lawrence repair shop fix whatever it missed. The staff actually did it for free -- as I said, amazing things.

And a couple of weeks after I surrendered, I was offered a new radio job. I moved to Enid, Oklahoma, which back then had a population of about 50,000 -- and actually was paid more than the Kansas City station did. My supervisor couldn't believe radio executives in a big city could be such cheapskates.

This 25^th anniversary of the surrender would have blown right by me, but for a radio preacher I heard this week. He talked about how God sometimes allows us to go through very low moments to get our attention. In my case, it worked -- and I've striven to stay close to God since then. While I make no guarantees about the benefits, my 13-year-old Honda IS still running.

If you're at a low or difficult point in life, maybe you should do what I did. Maybe it's time to surrender. You don't need a white flag, and you don't have to sign a document aboard a battleship. Simply pray to God for help, and turn from the things that have you at a distance from Him. Go ahead and give it up - the 1982 kind of "give it up," as opposed to applauding.

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