Did You Hear About My Worst Mistake?

Archie Brown was challenged to write a piece about his worst mistake. Here is what he wrote for the challenge.

I could tell about the time when I was 12 years old and lied to my dad about someone stealing my gym clothes, but that is probably not the worst mistake I have made. I could tell you about a time when my daughter was two and I was explaining to her when she should not do what she had just done ever again. I held her by both arms and spoke very sternly to her. The next day I saw where there were bruises on the inside to both of her arms where I had been holding her attention. But I don't want to you about that.

So I think I will tell you about them long ago. I had bought a doughnut shop, the same one which had worked as a high-school boy. The first year-and-a-half of the business, we did very well. Then the union workers of the chemical plant in our community went on strike. I was invited to cross the picket line and take doughnuts in to the salaried personnel that were running the plant during the strike. I was promised I would be guaranteed to sell hundred dozen doughnuts a day for the duration of the strike. I declined to take the offer, for couple of reasons.

First, I had grown up in a union home it and it would've gone against my conscience to cross a picket line, even though by that time my dad was salaried and in the plant. Second, I was fairly certain that the strike would not last for long and I did not want to alienate friends and customers if I crossed the picket line.

But the strike lasted for 13 weeks. Those union workers had a very hard time it recouping from the strike. We found out that donuts are a luxury, if you don't have money you don't buy doughnuts.

I could have made enough money during the strike to a pay off my business loans and would have been able to weather any storms after the strike. But because the decision I made not to cross the picket line, my business fell off by a more than 65%. We worked very hard for more than a year to try to make a comeback. But it was not to be and we the lost business. In some ways that was a mistake. But that decision led to other decisions that took me back to school, tio getting my degrees, and led to my life in ministry, rather than rolling in the dough.

I guess I was meant to be a holy man and not a hole-y man.

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