|My Dad in his shoe store|
By Marcia Lee Laycock
My dad was in the shoe business. He started young, working in a shoe factory while still in grade school. He was taught how shoes were made from the sole up. The smell of leather must have gotten to him because when he finished high school he went to work in a shoe store and when he came home after WW2, chose that as his trade. By the time I was born he owned his own store and within a few years had opened a second one.
My dad knew shoes. He knew them so well that when he noticed a customer wasn’t walking properly, he advised them on what needed to be done to their shoes to make things easier. Word got around and soon orthopedic doctors were sending their patients to him to have shoes specially made. When he finally retired, those same doctors begged him to keep working, at least part-time. They said he wasn't just a salesman, he was a craftsman and there were few people of his skill around anymore.
I think of my father from time to time, the years he spent in apprenticeship, the obstacles he had to overcome to set up his own business, the satisfaction he had in later years, knowing his attention to detail made a difference in people’s lives.
I think of my father when I’m frustrated with my writing career. When I wonder what difference I am making in the world, I think of the man with a crooked leg who was able to walk without pain because of the shoes my dad made for him. I remember the three-year-old who skipped into my dad’s store one day, his mother beaming from the doorway. That child had been unable to walk barely a year before.
I remember the look on my father’s face that day, and I keep writing because this is the work I have been given to do. There have been frustrations and obstacles but there have also been those moments – times when I’ve received an email or a letter or a phone call from someone telling me how my writing has made a difference.
We are in the word business. Some of us started young, scribbling poems and stories in school. We learned our grammar and spelling and all the rules of writing. We've done our apprenticeship and have become skilled craftsmen. There may be times when we want to quit, when the obstacles seem too high and the frustrations too much to handle.
But we must hang onto those times when we know that what God has directed us to do has made a difference. This is the work we have been given to do. So, like my dad, we must keep on, until Jesus calls us home.
“For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do” (Ephesians 2:10).
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