The Lord recently began highlighting this story from my youth and He said, "Tell them this: You're surrounded by enemies but 'Ice Cream is Coming!'"
Working at the Broom Shop
At 16, in Riverside, CA, I was newly licensed to drive and finally able to get to my very first real job; at least one with this much responsibility! Filled with optimism and a sense of new freedom, I felt grateful to land a job with this new employer in a small back-of-his-house shop.
I was to be trained to make brooms using a high-powered machine!
I was excited when I showed up at the shop for my first day of broom-making training.
There were only three employees and I was one of them—"the three broom makers" I guess. I was to learn this new trade from the ground up, or so I thought. Previously, I had jobs of only "grunt work" but now—NOW, I was going to learn to make brooms using a fancy machine. And the best of the good news was this—this was a Christian business with all Christian employees. How fun this was going to be, working with other Believers, doing this kind of enjoyable work.
Within moments of reporting for work, the proprietor, a white-haired man who walked with a limp, took me around the corner to show me how to gather the broom straw into neat piles for work on my machine. (Photo: Here is a typical broom shop machine in action)
Suddenly, he snapped at me with true anger! "What? You're LEFT-HANDED? How are you going to make brooms left handed?" he complained.
"What's happening to me?" I remember thinking. "I've only been here like three minutes," was all I could ponder!
Mr. Jones seemed suddenly furious at this discovery. From my memory, from that moment on that day and as long as I worked there, I never heard so much as a single "kind word" from this man. Not even one. He had hired a misfit and he let me hear about it. At that time, even in my own home, my own father continually called me the "black sheep of the family" and treated me like it. And now I was a misfit at this new job. "Maybe once I start making brooms, it'll get better," I thought to myself. I was wrong. It only grew worse...
Christian Adversaries
At this time, I was a junior in the local Christian Academy, but my two co-workers had graduated from the same academy and now were in "Christian" college. I say "Christian" college in quotes because there was not so much as a hint of Christianity in this place.
Whatever benefit the name "Christian" was to have, I would not see it on this job. What became a daily (or sometimes weekend) habit with these guys, as we made brooms, is that they would ask me simple questions—innocent questions—AS IF they were interested in learning more about me. I'd answer, hoping to build relationships with these two. Then a few more questions came from them. "This is going good," I would often think! We were becoming friends, or so I thought. But it was all a ruse.
After a break, or after lunch, came their sarcastic responses to every question they had asked me earlier. Every question they asked me only became fodder for planned sarcasm later in the day. It became literal emotional daily torture for me.
Each new day, with new hope, more questions would come to me as we worked. Because I didn't want to just refuse to talk, I tried to answer, attempting to leave little room for sarcasm back to me. It never worked. The most innocent answers would be thrown back in my face later in the day, mocking disdain.
On this job I had to work fast, we all did, because we were paid based on only completed and properly made brooms. To earn any income, speed was everything. So from time to time, finally things would get quiet and I could get my brooms made.
Then, suddenly, out of nowhere—SNAP!
The wire (to spin-wind my nearly-finished broom) broke, and the broom was instantly ruined. When this happened, I would have to either start over or throw away the nearly-completed broom. That's when I noticed it... "Wait, this broom's wire didn't break!" I realized, "This wire was cut!"
Exactly! It had been intentionally cut further down on the spool.
And it would not be the last time this would happen, causing a shout of victory from these two co-conspirators, my "Christian" co-workers. Time and again, throughout the summer and fall then winter and the next spring, the wire would be cut way down in the roll, so I would never know when it would hit. Every few days, it hit. Every few days, my "Christian" adversaries rejoiced out loud. These guys were largely built compared to me. To pick a fight with them was hopeless. I knew I had to endure this, and I also knew there was no way out. I had to work. Parents orders. I would pretend to chuckle with the "humor" of it all and I'd start over.
I was so miserable and there was no way out! I needed this job.
From my memory, I never told anyone at home what was going on. What was the use?
My Salary from the Broom Shop
Every Friday I got paid. Just about $20. When I arrived home on the first week of my job, my father stunned me by telling me to "sign my check over to my parent's account." It would be used for groceries for the family. There were six kids in the family and at least four of us were working. I was the third child, and yet no other sibling had to sign over their paychecks. I felt picked on!
This was mostly, just being honest here, because I was indeed being picked on both at work and at home. It was just the way it was. I learned to just "grin and bear it" as the saying goes.
(As a side note, my father would pass away nearly 20 years later and at his funeral, I asked my mother, "Why did Dad hate me when I was growing up?" Rather than deny it, her response was, "Yes he did, but when you were an adult, you became his favorite.")
Now, before you're thinking that the $20 I signed over each week was not much, let me clarify. According to Google, $20 in 1970 is worth over $130 today. Each week, I was literally purchasing most of my family's groceries.
My "Sweet New Job"
After just about one full year at the broom shop, the opportunity suddenly arrived, and another job presented itself. I was about to go into my senior year in Christian Academy. Slowly, I felt life's pressure on me beginning to lift. My older brother had landed a job at Farrell's Ice Cream Parlor, and there was a brand-new opening for a bus boy. Nothing fancy, mind you. I would have to work until midnight on most school nights and I would have to be either a bus boy on a given night or the dishwasher—not a waiter like my brother.
I jumped at the opportunity. And about that job...
You know what? I LOVED IT!
God had showed up on the scene and rescued me out of the miry pit. I was out of this "supposedly Christian environment" and entered into the secular world while working with a whole lot of people who never professed Christ, and I LOVED IT! Add to that, I was one of the best dishwashers they'd ever seen. I was fast. I was clean. I would get out early and no one ever had to wait for dishes.
And every night...EVERY-SINGLE-NIGHT, on most days of the week, it was free ice cream. I made myself a huge banana split every night I worked. Good food. Nice People. And yes, you read that correctly—a yummy and massive BANANA SPLIT at NO COST TO ME, every single night! That year I gained a "massive three whole pounds" (crazy right?).
Now, for some reason in this new job, I was suddenly allowed to keep my own money rather than signing it over, which was a bit more than I'd been making at the broom shop. PLUS, I'd come home each night with a huge pocket full of a few bills and lots of change from my share of the tips each night.
Yeah, I ran a hundred Zoos around Farrell's, and yes, it felt like a thousand Zoos (a Zoo is an ice cream bowl large enough to feed a large table of guests and was carried by two employees)—but I was in my seventh heaven compared to the past year. I loved the people and my bosses, and they loved me. (Photo: Two employees running a Zoo)
Now, if you're waiting for this story to get spiritual...OK, here I go...
In the years since, I've tried to make sense out of what God was trying to teach me in that broom shop. I can only come up with the supposition that God was working into me both "patience and longsuffering" for those claiming to serve Christ and for my family. I had to forgive every day in my heart or I would never have made it.
Maybe I needed to learn hard work without so much as a single word of kindness and without being able to keep even one penny of the money. I don't know. God never told me back then what this was about; but someone out there, and maybe it's YOU, needs to hear this. You need to hear and so I'm telling you, "YOUR HARD SEASON IS ALMOST OVER—AND ICE CREAM IS COMING!!
As I prepared to write up this story, God popped this Scripture into my head from Psalm 30:5: "Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes with the morning."
This story—and that Scripture—are literally a Word of the Lord for probably a whole lot of people reading this article right now.
"Joy is on the way!" God is saying to you. "Hold on just a bit longer," God is saying.
God has not forgotten you. He's been working into you a great depth of character. Don't look at what it feels like now. Look at what it's doing inside of you. And look forward to your next position that is going to delight you!!
So now, HEAR THE WORD OF THE LORD...
"Enemies may surround you right now...but hold on—"Ice Cream is coming!"
PS: If this word and many others are helping you, we do depend on donations to keep going ... (Donate Here).
Steve and Derene Shultz, Founders
Elijah List Ministries
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