A Temporary Loss Yielded Permanent Gain
My name is Bob Meladandri, and this is my story.
I love my parents. They always wanted the best the world had to offer me in this life. They rose from very difficult circumstances in order to get to the place where they were of a marrying age and could get out of their homes. My mother grew up in a home where her mother was a drug addict and she was running her household from the age of a young teenager. My father survived fantastic extremes of mental and physical abuse to a level that would be considered criminal today. At the ages of 21 and 20 they married and quickly had me, my sister and my brother. My parents only had high school educations and my father worked two jobs to support us. My father worked hard. My parents were by no means perfect and made their own mistakes but I respect the effort they made for us while we were growing up.
My father always wanted me to be a doctor. Because I idealized my father, I worked hard like he did and tried to be everything he wanted me to be. He taught me that if I had a good job and made lots of money that I would be OK and wouldn't have to work as hard as he did. I got good grades in school. I became a Boy Scout and worked hard at achieving there. I became active in our local Catholic church and served there. I tried hard to be a good boy and do right, and I felt guilty when I didn't live up to my father's expectations.
My father told me to take advantage of every opportunity that came along in life. So when the recruiter for the local Rotary club came by our high school offering a chance to take high school overseas, I jumped at the chance. I was eventually selected to go to Belgium, a small country northeast of France to go to high school. I was ecstatic, and did a lot of maturing while I was there. It was my desire to stay and go to medical school there, but my mother wanted me to try an American college first, so I came home.
My college experience was academically productive and I was in the top 5 in my whole class. I did very well at premedical studies but chose not to become a doctor. After college I went overseas again, to France this time, to teach in the French public school system on a Fulbright Scholarship. I was making it in the world. I saw all of Western Europe and parts of Eastern Europe before The Wall fell; it was an exciting experience.
I got back to the United States after that teaching tour and started work in finance and real estate, with finance being my primary job for the first seven years of my adult working life. I did very well financially. I remember taking my Dad out to lunch one day and showing him my pay stub. I was so happy to see the look on his face of both surprise and satisfaction. Local firms were competing for me and my client base by offering me six figure signing bonuses if I came to work for them.
In 1994 I made the decision to boldly invest for my clients and myself in airline stocks, which were terribly out of favor at the time. During the next year those companies were doing much better and those investments paid off ten-fold. Having made the same investment myself, I had become a millionaire. Therefore, at the age of 28, I had accomplished everything that my parents wanted of me. I had a great job and had become a millionaire in the process!
I remember the very day that I closed those transactions. I was waiting for a bell to go off or something, but nothing happened. I went home and everything was the same. The next day I went to work and nothing had changed. Soon I started to become despondent. I had accomplished everything I set out to do, but nothing had changed in my life. I was frustrated because I felt I deserved to be happy and content, but still had the same uneasiness as I did before financial success. I figured that it must be because I needed to make more money, and set my sights on earning $5 million instead of one. I took greater and greater risks to accomplish this new goal that I thought would finally make me happy. The market had changed by this time and the methods I used to make the first million no longer worked and I began to lose my clients' money as well as my own. So much so that, just two short years later, I was broke, my firm had fired me, I lost my clients and multiple lawsuits were filed by individuals and state and federal regulatory agencies against me.
I was horrified at how everything had turned out. At the age of 30 I was broke and suicidal. I went to the doctor and he gave me some medicine to make me feel better. I am thankful that I went to the doctor, but afterwards I never felt settled or quite right about my life. I always felt like I amounted to a nobody or nothing and had let everyone down in my life, even though my parents and brother and sister always stood by me.
About two years later I was renting a place to a client of mine and he asked me to do a Bible study with him. He was studying at Lehigh Valley Baptist Church for the ministry. Although I had fallen far away from religion, the study of the Bible seemed interesting and challenging. After several weeks of study he asked me if I was saved. From what I had learned in the Bible, I knew I was not saved. Nonetheless, I started going to church with this client, Jeff Allison, on Sunday mornings and found the preaching to be unlike anything I had ever heard before. In addition I was learning things that I never knew before about God and the Bible. The more I learned, the more I came to realize that God loved me and wanted a relationship with me through his Son Jesus Christ. Suddenly, all of my life's circumstances began to make sense. I began to understand that God allowed these things to happen to me to point me in the direction of coming to know who God was and what he wanted for my life.
God specifically spoke to me through the Scriptures about how fruitless my pursuit of money had been. My reasoning that becoming wealthy could cure my anxiety about this life was shattered by the clear teaching of the Bible in Matthew, chapter 6. Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal: But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal: For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. . . . Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed? (For after all these things do the Gentiles seek:) for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things. But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you. (verses 19-21, 31-33)
This scripture passage is especially precious to me because, through these verses, God showed me what was really important in life. I realized that, if left alone to run my life, I would be casting myself into hell, not only here on earth in a figurative sense, but also literally in eternity. I realized that I needed Christ in my life to lead and guide me. At that moment, March 1, 2000, while on a plane headed for Florida, I turned from my sin and self-will, repented of my sins, and surrendered my life completely to God. I became one of His followers from that point on.
Since then, while there have been challenges along the way, my walk with God has yielded a great many fruits for which I am very thankful. I now have a purpose for living and a peace and fulfillment that only God can give. God has blessed my life, taken care of my needs, relieved my cares of this life, and has assured me of a place with Him in eternity. Then said Jesus unto his disciples, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it. For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul? (Matthew chapter 16, verses 24-26)
God loved me so much that despite all my failure, He came to me while I was at my worst and wanted a relationship with me. By accepting His Lordship in my life through His Son, Jesus Christ, He turned my temporary loss into a permanent gain!