When My Business Failed in 2023
When my business failed in 2023, I was angry and felt God abandoned me. Let me tell a story to show my path.
When I arrived in China in 1991, I taught English for two years, and decided I was not suitable to a career teaching as not very funny. I went and got an MBA in the US and came back to China to learn language and then do business to pay my bills and get a visa to stay in China. Nearly 30 years later, China made a startling change and started letting Westerners get green Chinese cards. I qualified under the category of marriage to a Chinese national and got my card in Dec of 2020 in any empty hall as China had closed its doors due to Covid 19.
Covid damaged our company a lot, and we were near death as a company when it ended, then the Chinese balloon floated over the US, and our business in crisis got quiet like a tomb.
Sad Face
By May 2023, our business had no money and no business and no hope. Our family needed income. In emotional crisis, I started to look for work which is a hard problem for 58 year old foreign small business owners in China. It seemed with the China US trade problems so big that I needed to find domestic Chinese work. I had a friend who had taught at a nearby Chinese college. Therefore, I applied to teach business, but they required a doctoral degree, so sent me to the foreign languages department to be an English teacher. I had left that career and felt I had chosen the right path to be in business and here, 30 years later, I was forced to go back to a world I felt unsuited for. I went kicking and screaming.
Business Failed and Off I Went
It took me and my wife 18 months to settle in to teaching and find a way to reach students. During the next 18 months 4 students came to faith and 20 more heard the good news clearly. Then, Chinese policy changed again, and because of my age, they could not keep me teaching. I got the news that I had to leave with sadness. I was sad to come in and sad to leave.
Our business had returned to strength after I started teaching, so I had two jobs which proved manageable. Now, I am back at doing only my business work. Trump chaos is still damaging our business, but we are marginally afloat.
Why am I, as a child of God, so hard to lead?
Ugh, naturally, facing death of my business that I had spent 15 years building was traumatic. By personality, it is hard for me to adapt to large change, and coming to and leaving school were both big changes. These are my excuses. The Bible says be thankful in all circumstances (note image above). I have tons to be thankful for beyond the fabulous gift of being a child of God.
I have been reading 2 Corinthians and came upon.
16 Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. 17 For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. 18 So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.
