Career, Family And Living For The Lord
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A Twenty-Five Year History

While I had been growing professionally and academically, I had also been growing spiritually. As I stated in the opening chapter, the Lord is faithful to teach and prepare the heart of the one who truly wants to learn of and about Him. After our experience in July 1973, Linda and I had changed our whole priority scheme. We had begun to put the Lord first in as many areas as we knew, and by moving us to Norfolk just four months later, He was about to teach us even more. Right after moving to Norfolk, we had a problem with one of our major appliances, either the heater, air conditioner, hot water heater, or something like that. Because we were renting, I called the maintenance man, who immediately came to our home to look at the problem. While I was standing in the Utility Room watching him work, he asked me if I was new to the area. When I responded that we were, he invited me to his church, Fairmount Park Free Will Baptist Church, which was about five miles from where we lived.

A short time after talking to that maintenance man, Linda and I took our family to his church. It was a church of about two thousand worshippers, which was much larger than Memorial Baptist had been, but I was comforted rather than intimidated by the size. For that first service, we sat in the balcony and carefully watched and listened to the pastor, a man named Dale Burden. Reverend Burden preached in a way which was somewhat new to me. He preached with fire and intensity, and I was fixed on his every word. I was amazed by the power that I felt in that service, and Linda and I both really loved it!

After the service, though, something happened which I still do not understand. When we were leaving, we stood in a line to shake the pastor's hand. But he had started talking to a lady in front of us, so I began to move around her and out the door. Immediately, Pastor Burden stopped talking to the woman, grabbed me by the arm, and said, "You're Tom Lee, aren't you?" I just about dropped! We had never been to that church before. We had never spoken to that pastor before. Even the maintenance man, who had invited us to the church, had only talked to me for a few minutes. This was a large, busy church, yet the pastor knew my family and me by name before we were ever introduced. When I replied affirmatively to his question, he thanked us for coming and invited us back.

I can only think of one explanation which might have accounted for his having guessed or known who we were. We were a family of seven, and we were obviously visitors to the church. Therefore, to the pastor of the church, even though it was a large church, we must have stood out from the others. A single word from the maintenance man could have caused him to be on the lookout for a large family who was visiting. The important part of all of this, however, was not the pastor's amazing knowledge of our identity. It was in the fact that we had entered the church which would have a tremendous impact on our whole family for many years to come. Even though it would take me a couple of months before I would actually get the courage to jump right in, I would eventually do so, and Pastor Burden would have a very big influence on me personally.

We attended Fairmount Park for a little over a year before we joined. Finally, on February 2, 1975, I had decided that I was ready to join a church, in general, and that I wanted to join that specific church, in particular. Having never made that kind of decision before, I was the one who had been so hesitant and slow to move. Once we were in, though, I never regretted it! I was baptized on the same day, the second of February, I gave up smoking my pipe on that day, I started going on church visitation the next night, I became somewhat involved with the other men in the church, and I started attending every service, almost without fail! Most importantly, though, was that, with Pastor Burden's personal encouragement, I started reading the Bible daily, and that regular time of Bible study was the real beginning of my Christian education.

Our family life in Crown Point, like most of our life up to that point, had also been very complicated. With a large family, complexity always seems to be the order of the day, so just for the fun of it, I once came up with a mathematical factor which I used for determining the complexity of a person's life. I concluded that there was probably an exponential relationship, based on family size, which could be used to indicate the confusion or complexity level of any person's life. For example, when a person gets married, I decided that their life probably becomes twice as complicated. When that couple has their first child, then their life once again, in my opinion, probably becomes twice as complicated. Using this simple, highly subjective technique for determining complexity, a single person's life would have had a Complexity Factor of only one. Using my expression again, a married person without kids would have had a Complexity Factor of two. In general, my belief was that the complexity of a person's life could be determined by the following relationship:

With our family size of seven, we had a Complexity Factor of sixty-four, and it showed! We always had two or three or even more things going on simultaneously, and at times, it was impossible or very nearly impossible to keep up. For the first two or three years of her life, Crystal had had a terrible hearing problem, and we had not even known about it. Every night, and I mean every night, for her first two or three years of life, she would wake up crying, and nothing seemed to help! I occasionally lost my patience and punished her, not only because I had been worn down by never getting a full night's sleep but also because I had thought that her condition was related to her being spoiled. But then, sometime later, we learned from a doctor that she had actually had a medical condition since birth which had been causing her ears to drain in the middle of the night. Eventually, she had to have tubes put in her ears to have this problem corrected.

Our family was also becoming more involved with Fairmount Park, and we were in the midst of deciding whether or not to attend on Sunday and Wednesday nights. That, too, added some complexity. For three consecutive weeks, while we were trying to make a decision, we had to deal with various problems at home which threatened to make us stick to just Sunday mornings. In the first week, some neighborhood kids had tried to break into our house while we were at one of the Sunday night services. They had not succeeded, but they had done some damage to our front door. In the second week, when we had gotten home from church after the Sunday morning service, we found that the rotisserie grill in our kitchen had exploded and strewn food all over the kitchen. Fortunately, there was not any serious damage, but it still caused us to rethink our commitment to the extra services. Finally, on the third Sunday, after we had gotten home from that night's service, one of our kids slammed the car door on another one of our kids. Those three successive, random events caused Linda and me to at least consider changing our minds about attending all the church's services. But fortunately, we stuck to our original plan and kept going.

On another occasion, I came home from work to learn that Debbie had been caught smoking cigarettes, so I did the "standard" parent thing! I bought a pack of cigarettes and made her smoke most of the pack. She eventually got sick and threw up in front of her bed. Then, in a very emotional manner, she threw herself on the floor into her own vomit. I thought to myself that she was just trying to be melodramatic and get my goat, so I did not play along. Instead, I got our other four kids, showed them Debbie laying in her own vomit, and gave them a lecture about the perils of smoking. I might add, however, that my efforts to keep Debbie from cigarettes did not work! She had wanted to smoke both before and after our ordeal together, so all that I had really done was just make her work harder at not getting caught. As a parent, how can one ever know how best to handle any given situation? We simply do our best and then hope that no real harm comes from it. Through the years, I have had a lot to learn about parenting, but today, I am not sure that I know much more! The good news is that we all survived, and our family seems to be doing all right!

As a little girl, Melody was always my girl and my little pal. She always jumped into my arms, and she usually showed me attention when the others did not. On one Sunday afternoon, however, her closeness to me backfired. Some neighborhood boys were fighting and making a lot of noise in front of our townhouse. I sat inside listening to them until I could not take it anymore. Then, I angrily got up from my chair and charged outside to run them off. Unfortunately, I did not know that Melody was right behind me, and when I slammed our big front door behind me, her tiny finger got caught in the door. To make matters worse, the slamming door actually severed the tip of her finger from the rest of her finger, so we had to make a speedy trip to the Naval Base Emergency Room.

They could not help her in Norfolk, other than to stop the bleeding, so from there, we were sent to the Naval Base Hospital in Portsmouth. We were probably in that Emergency Room for most of the night and into the very early morning hours. They worked with Melody's hand and tried to sew the tip of her finger back on. But several weeks later when the bandages were removed, the tip of her finger came off, too. Melody ended up losing the tip of her finger because she had been too close to her dad's coattails, but fortunately, she has never been hindered by the loss of that part of her finger.

During those two years in Crown Point, we also had some very strange happenings. I used to lift weights and jog, and one day when I went to get out my barbells, I noticed that someone had loosened the collar attachment at one end of the bar. Of course, if I had not seen what had been done, the loosened collar and the weights on that end of the bar could have easily come off and done some damage. Fortunately, I did notice, so nothing bad happened. Another time, someone stuffed Pam's allowance, which was in dollar bills, into her piggy bank so that she could not get them out. She was very upset, but once again, that was a problem which had a fairly easy solution. In all, I suppose that the conclusion is that kids will be kids, and for most of those years, ours certainly were.

There is one final happening from those Crown Point days which had some significance to our family. Michael had a paper route, and one day, Linda and I had to talk to police about some mysterious break-ins which had been happening in our area. The police were not making any accusations, but they had determined that a possible connection to the crimes could have been that people going out of town usually alerted their paperboy to stop delivery. Because Michael was the paperboy of some of the victims, he was initially investigated as a possible link. But nothing ever happened with us after that one talk, so I suppose that the police gave up on their theory or found a better angle to pursue.

The early years of our marriage and household were characterized by extreme poverty and hectic schedules. When I had worked on the last two years of my Undergraduate degree, I had also held a full-time job. I was working five days per week, from 8:00am to 5:00pm, and then attending school, twenty to twenty-five miles away, four nights per week from 7:00pm to 10:00pm. While in my last year of Graduate school, which would have been during the September 1974 to August 1975 school year, I was holding a full-time job with the Navy, a part-time job at J.B. Hunter's Department Store, plus I was driving from Norfolk to Williamsburg two nights per week to attend class. Not only that, but in the midst of all of that activity, I was also trying to write my thesis.

However, I was not the only one who had a lot of things going. While I had been so busy that I had had very little free time of my own, Linda was also very busy raising our five children and watching anywhere from two to five kids for other people. She was doing in-home day care so that she could be at home for our kids and still try to make some extra money to help pay the bills. During those days, we were always busy, and we were always poor! Yet, in the midst of it all, we still tried to consistently be in church on Sunday morning, Sunday night, and Wednesday night. Being so busy was never easy, but at the same time, we never really minded.

During the Spring of 1975, when I was trying to wrap up work on my Masters degree, I was faced with a difficult dilemma. I had just started reading the Bible a few months earlier, and I was being influenced by Its teachings. I was also under the influence of regular Gospel preaching. So, through both of those mediums, I was being shaped almost daily by spiritual teaching. Then, one night when I reported to my part-time job, I was told, along with my co-workers, that we "had" to participate in an upcoming, all-day Sunday inventory. Most people would not have thought much of that, but as a young Christian, trying my best to live for the Lord, I felt like I had to take a stand. Therefore, when the Store Manager indicated that everyone "had" to work, I told him that I would not. I also told him and the others that I would be in my church on the Sunday that they were planning to do their work.

J.B. Hunter's normal policy, in 1975, was that they did not open on Sundays, so their inventory was to be performed at a time when the store would have normally been closed. Therefore, my taking a stand against management was something that caught other people's attention, and it even became the talk of the store. While I had not intended to become something of a local spectacle, that did, in fact, happen. Many of my co-workers warned me that I would be fired if I persisted. Even my Department Manager advised against my taking such an extreme action. He said that I was not right to force management's hand. But despite all of the warnings, I did not back down!

When the week of the inventory came, I fully expected to be fired for having taken my position, but much to my surprise, I was not! In fact, many of my co-workers, who had expected to pocket a few extra dollars for working on Sunday, were disappointed to find that their normal hours for the rest of the week had been cut to offset the extra time which had been worked on Sunday. In the end, I was the only one in the store who did not work, yet we all took home our normal paycheck. For me, the conclusion was simple. In 1975, at a major department store in Norfolk, Virginia, the Lord had led me to take a stand for Him, and when I had done so, He did not let me fall.

In just a few years, a number of significant things had worked themselves out in my life. I had gotten married and assumed the immediate responsibilities of a family. Linda and I had finally gotten our family into a good church where we were starting to learn of and grow in the Lord. Plus, I had taken a real stand for the Lord at J.B. Hunter's and come out on top. My career seemed to be going well, and I was even about to complete work on my Masters degree from William and Mary.

It was then, when I had thought that everything was just about perfect, that I got the silliest idea. I am not sure what prompted my thinking, but I woke up one morning thinking that I should not accept my Masters degree. To many, that thought might have been totally insane, especially since Linda and I had sacrificed so much and had worked so hard to get it, but I was completely serious. While I did not know all of the particulars about my Undergraduate degree, I did know that ODU had not combined my two sets of records, the records from my first year when I had flunked out and the records from the last four years when I had earned my degree in Mathematics. Therefore, I thought that the Lord had given me my first degree and that, in return, He might want me to give up my second.

I was very serious about my feelings, so much so that I made an appointment to talk to my pastor and friend, Reverend Dale Burden. He understood how I felt and even why I felt that way, but he did not advise me to back off from what I had already done at William and Mary. Instead, his advice was for me to continue on my path and get the degree. First of all, he raised the possibility that I could maybe do more for the Lord with the additional degree than I could without. Of course, that was debatable but still probably true. Second, he told me to not intentionally give up my degree but instead to be willing to give it up if the Lord put some obvious stumbling block in my path. Pastor Burden's advice seemed reasonable, so I took it. Still, I am glad that even as soon as 1975, I had already reached the point spiritually to where I wanted the Lord to be in complete control of my life.

I stayed my three years in the Navy, and on October 31, 1975, I was released from active duty. Over the past seven years, I had accomplished each of my objectives, plus a few more which I had not earlier thought about. For instance, I had not just gotten a single degree but instead had gotten two. I not only had a good family life, but I also had five kids to go along with it. My career was doing well, I was being recognized both educationally and experientially as a Computer Scientist and Mathematician, and I was becoming well-grounded in my understanding of the Bible and spiritual principles. On February 2, 1975, I had started reading the Bible. By October of that year, I had already gotten about half way through, and my daily time of reading and study was paying off.

In October, as I was about to exit the military, I was concerned about finding time in my new life to read the Bible. In just six months, a regular study of God's Word had become very important to me. So, I prayed and asked the Lord to show me how I might take on the challenges of a new work life and still find the time to read. In just a few days, I would be moving to Northern Virginia to work for Planning Research Corporation as a Computer Systems Analyst. I knew that I would have a daily commute of probably an hour or more each way, and I was not sure how I could find the time to still do everything that I wanted to be doing.

Through the years, the Lord has repeatedly been faithful to me, and He was on that occasion, as well. In answer to my prayer, He impressed upon me the fact that people generally find a way to eat three meals a day. They also find a way to go to sleep at some time during the day to get their needed rest. In order to read the Bible through in a year, I knew that I had to average reading at least four chapters a day, but the Lord, by making the above impressions on my heart, had indirectly given me the answer. Therefore, starting in November 1975, I began reading a chapter in the Bible before each meal and then again before going to bed at night. With that simple routine, I was able to read the Bible through each year from 1975 through 1985. In fact, during that time, I also started another pretty good, Bible-reading habit.

On a given day of the month, I would read the chapter in the Book of Proverbs which corresponded to that day. On the first of the month, for example, I would read Chapter One. On the tenth, I would read Chapter Ten, and so forth. That simple exercise, alone, meant that I was reading the Book of Proverbs twelve times a year, but that was all right because I could use the extra training in wisdom. Another practice which I got into was reading two extra chapters in the New Testament each day, which meant that I was reading the New Testament through an extra three to four times a year. I was doing a lot of Bible reading, yet I have always believed that the Lord was blessing me for my efforts. During those magic ten years, from 1975 until 1985, I can remember the deep commitment that I had to the Bible, and I can also remember how that Book guided Linda and me through some very difficult times.

Reading the Bible and becoming active at Fairmount Park had been very instructive for Linda and me. Over the next few years, that training and the biblical principles which we had learned would be quite helpful to us as we would deal with some very tough family problems. Before leaving Norfolk, however, I did one other thing which I still recall even after more than twenty years. I gave our kids away!

The time period would have been around August, September, or October of 1975, and our church was in the middle of a revival. Actually, it was much more than just a revival! It was probably one of the best revivals that Linda and I had or have ever attended, even rivaling the tremendous meetings which we had experienced two years earlier at Memorial Baptist. The evangelist was Richard Adams, from the Elizabethan Free Will Baptist Church in Elizabethan, Tennessee, and he was very good and very entertaining. Our whole family went each night, and even the kids seemed to enjoy his preaching. But more than just the entertainment value of those meetings, though, was how the Lord had actually been speaking to each of us. I can personally say that, after all these years, I still think back from time to time to how that evangelist's messages had sparked a few chords within me.

On the morning following one of his messages, for example, I was driving to my office at COMOCEANSYSLANT. It was then, at the exact moment that I was exiting off of Interstate-64 onto Terminal Avenue in route to CINCLANTFLT, that I began to pray. The message from the previous night had been about the importance of right parenting or at least it had been making me think about right parenting. So, while driving and pondering those thoughts, I began to realize what a tremendous responsibility I had as a parent. I, then, confessed to the Lord that Linda and I were not able to raise any, much less all, of our five kids to live for Him. Therefore, I completed my prayer by dedicating each of them to Him and asking Him to look after and raise them for us.

From that moment until this, I have never thought of any of the kids as ours. Linda and I have only been the parents. At times, it would not be easy to do the right thing, but despite the obstacles that still lay ahead, she and I have never wavered from our single, simple commitment. For me, it had started on a typical work day while driving to work after a revival meeting. But in telling this story, my intent has been twofold. First, I want to let each of our children know of their early Christian heritage, and second, I want to tell to all who will listen that God honors those prayers which come from the heart. He has certainly been faithful to my family and me.