From The Storyteller
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Hello All: This is part of the tuition I've paid to earn my BS degree from the College of Life which is granted to those who survive. Enjoy. Doug
Tuition “Boy was that dumb”, me congratulating myself after being scammed out of $300 dollars. It happened in the pre-cell phone days when long distance charges were expensive, and my long-distance bills were enough to get my attention. Enter the advertisement I noticed in a small-town, Kansas newspaper. For a one-time fee of $300 I would be connected to their phone network, and for just $30 a month I would have unlimited long-distance. I called the 800 number, and after talking to a pleasant woman who explained how it worked, I took the bait. She took my information, gave me a PO Box to mail my check to and assured me that, as soon as my check cleared, I would be connected. I’m still waiting! Yes, my $300 was gone, and I was faced with the fact that “I” just did something stupid. Quoting Forest Gump, “Stupid is as stupid does.” Note: This is one of those times when I recognized the value of experience, and the truth that experience is something you get shortly AFTER you need it. Which naturally brings me to why I’m smiling as I begin thinking of my $300 as a tuition payment for a valuable life lesson. Here I learned that if it sounds to be too good to be true, it’s not true. With this understanding, I was able to successfully transition from lawyer to church pastor. New preachers often have expectations that their church will be filled with great “saints”, which is wishful thinking and too good to be true. By starting with the understanding that church people, like everyone else, will occasionally fall far short of “saint” status, loving them for who they “are” was a whole lot easier than fretting over what they “should” be. Lesson learned and applied! Moral: Tuition is always paid in advance. |