by Ricky Doc Sauceda
In the Spring of 1987, I quit college to pursuit my estranged wife, who had left me and took our two children with her. We were living in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas; I was attending Pan American University in Edinburg. She was born and raised in Houston and that is where she went back. Before I quit...I had a long heart to heart with the Lord about my wife and my education. Which was more important? I went to be with my wife and children.
Now, with that being said, I began a new phase in my life. I would soon be working at the same company she was at - A&G Wholesalers, Inc, which was a produce distributor to restaurants. The owner was a Greek immigrant named George Gavrilos and he was a hard working, long haired and mustached man. He was a task master and very hard driven all around. One other thing he was...a Christian. George became the best person I would ever know in terms of being blessed by God.
He helped me to become a man in the world. Through him I learned how to work and deliver performance. He was a great friend to me and I have always been fond of those memories. I left him to go out and try my hand at the restaurant manager trade, which he had left to start a small produce company. He was endeared by the Houston Greek community because of his hard work ethic and good character. He started out with a used station wagon and when I left him he had a fleet of delivery trucks and was exclusively supplying the Pappas restaurants which are Greek owned, had a majority of Luby's Cafeterias business, had a brisk share of cargo ship supplying, and a host of other cafeterias and restaurants in the Greater Houston area. This was a self-made man of great proportions but with a center in Christian faith.
I would bounce around for a few years and end up back with another produce company for seventeen years. I enjoyed the work but did not enjoy the people. There was very little godliness at that company; a lot of sinfulness amongst the employees in various ways. From adultery to outright mistreatment, it was a torture chamber for someone like me. I am glad those days are behind me now.
Back to George. He had a stack of cassette tapes of a Greek musician he loved to listen to. He had them in his cars, office and home - the same cassette of the same artist. He must have bought a case of them...I have no idea. I would listen to it all the time just to get the experience of the music. I fell in love with the songs and asked him for a copy and he gave me one. I still have it.
(George came from a small village in Greece and built a great life here. He sold the produce company in 1990 and invested in import/export of freight via cargo ships out of Florida - he is a multi-millionaire in that endeavor now.)
Thinking back to the note about my son Christopher...he and I had a disagreement about my Christian Praise Music yesterday. He doesn't like it and it bothered him to know that after dropping him off at work I was listening to it on the way home - in his car. So, we had a disagreement and it concluded with me saying "I am a Christian all the time, not just when I want to be."
This morning he took his driving test and passed it. On the way to lunch, he pulled out a CD of Greek music that he burned for me. It was a peace offering for the disagreement we had yesterday. As the music played, he confided that he had prayed to the Lord to help settle him down for the driving test...he was very nervous. He said he was calm throughout the test and even made his parallel parking in one move. He was happy and feeling very good and then he said he would buy my lunch.
I said it had been a long time since anyone had been nice to me...I am not exaggerating. Aside from the goodness of the Lord, I have gone through a lot with my little family over the divorce between their mother and myself. There have been a lot of feelings and each of them has let me have their very strong opinions on this matter. It has been a very hard test but I have truly put it on the Lord's shoulders and He has done amazing things regarding this deep hurt in them.
My oldest lives on his own with two roommates; our relationship is strained to a point that I don't understand. I put a lot of energy into raising him, as he was my most difficult child due to his temperament. I had many bouts with his anger and its effects with his getting corrected at elementary and middle schools...by high school I had it worked out. Since then, he has favored his mom and is very bitter towards me and this was a few years before the divorce. We have some good moments now and then, but we are a work in progress at present.
My other two live with me and are very challenging in their own ways. Little by little, it is all working out and because of one factor...my faith. All of them know I am not putting on an act about my Christian faith. Through the years they know that I have a sincere interest in God, but getting it all sorted out took some time. I was too spread out with work and trying to make things succeed through my own efforts instead of seeking a true path in the Lord. In that, I failed and it is hard to live with. If I had persevered in my learning, I would have understood that God makes things work, not us. Literally.
My poems, Proclaim His Name and My Testament of Faith, reveal this discovery and it was a real awakening. I wish I could have learned to trust and understand the literal meanings in the bible long ago - it would have made me a better person. I was a good person, but I just didn't have the ways of the Lord completely. I lacked having the wisdom and knowledge of relying on the literal Word of God. The bible is potent with all it has to offer us in how to develop ourselves in the Lord.