The Story of Me

As I mentioned earlier, I had gone back to school to complete my last two classes. I continued to work at the fast food restaurant for a time while I looked for a job. Another friend of mine who I had worked with introduced me to a gentleman who helped me get a job with the local telephone company.

I started out working in the mailroom but after a few months was promoted into a job as a telephone installation technician. I was the first African-American woman in Michigan to hold that position. (This was in the late seventies). I had been taking college courses, but after I started making what I thought was really good money as an installation technician, I soon stopped going to school and moved on to the next phase of my life. I moved into my own apartment. I was truly an adult now. I still loved to party and hang out. And now, I even had the money to party as much as I wanted to.

When I lived with my Grandmother, she had given me an old Camero she bought. Even though I really appreciated that old car, it was still an old car with problems. One day while driving down the street, I passed a Ford dealership. It was a beautiful sunny summer afternoon. There in the showroom screaming my name was the most beautiful yellow Mustang I had ever seen. I walked in, said I wanted that car and bought it right on the spot. I didn’t even try to negotiate for a lower price. I paid sticker price I wanted that car so bad. Not even twenty years old, my own apartment, a brand new yellow Ford Mustang. I had it going on. I was out of control. With no adult supervision to check on me, I really began to hang out and party.

Now most people would find this hard to believe, but I had developed a pattern of partying six out of seven nights a week. My girlfriends and I knew what clubs were hot on whatever night of the week we would be going out on. The only night we didn’t go out was Tuesday. This was our one night of rest. We even knew where all of the after hour clubs were. On the weekends we would go out to the regular clubs, the after hour clubs, and then breakfast. We would sleep all day Saturday. Go to church on Sunday. Come home and sleep all afternoon on Sunday and then go out again on Sunday night. I can’t even begin to count the number of mornings I went to work without having been to sleep the night before.

I was still smoking marijuana but had been introduced to something that increased our ability to party as long as we wanted to. Debs and snorting cocaine. Debs were a diet pill that gave you increased energy and kept you awake. They also helped me to keep my size 5/6 body. Cocaine too was a stimulant. I look back at that lifestyle now and wonder why I didn’t just become burnt out.

Luke 15:13
And not many days after the younger son gathered all together, and took his journey into a far country, and there wasted his substance with riotous living.

I think about all the time, energy, and money that I squandered during those years. Not only was I being wasteful, I was living a very dangerous lifestyle. Not just by being out in a dangerous world, but I also think about what might have become of me during that time as I had not yet come to know Jesus Christ as my personal savior. I was not yet under God’s grace and could have been lost for all eternity.

Ladies, stop and think about all the times that you or someone you know has been caught-up in sin. We all have often looked back at a situation and thought “But for the grace of God go I”. We have all done some foolish things and been caught up in foolish situations. We have all heard the saying “God watches out for babies and fools”. Since I wasn’t a baby, I know I was a fool.