314 580 3455 | Randy Dinwiddie The Story of the DealMaker Part 1 Childhood Faith Survival | Dependable Brokers
- Randy Dinwiddie
- 7 minutes ago
- 7 min read
╔══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════╗
DRAFT | UNPUBLISHED | FOR RANDY DINWIDDIE MANUAL REVIEW
SECTION 1 - CHILDHOOD, FAITH, AND SURVIVAL
RANDY DINWIDDIE: THE STORY OF THE DEALMAKER
A Testimony of Faith, Work, Failure, Reinvention, and Never Letting Your Beginning Determine Your Ending
MY TESTIMONY
My life is a testimony to anyone in the world who believes where they came from has already determined where they are going. It does not matter how little you begin with. It does not matter whether people counted you out, whether you followed the traditional path, whether you made mistakes, or whether life knocked you down more than once. With God's help, a willingness to work hard, and a commitment to treat other people the way you would want to be treated, there is very little in life that cannot be overcome.
I have been broke. I have been successful. I have lost things I thought I could never replace. I have made mistakes that hurt people I loved. I have rebuilt. I have started businesses with almost nothing. I have watched some ideas flourish and others fail. I have entered fights I probably couldn't win simply because I believed something needed to change. Through all of it, one thing has remained constant: God has been closer than a brother.
When the mountain was too high for me to climb, God somehow found a way to move me around it. And many times, the way He did that was by placing another human being in my path.
This is my story.
CHAPTER ONE: MY FIRST MEMORY
My earliest childhood memory is not a happy one. I was about three years old. My mother was home with six children and had reached her breaking point. My father had become involved with another woman. My mother knew what was happening, and the life she thought she had was coming apart.
At three years old, I could not understand cheating, marriage problems, abandonment, money, or any of the things adults were dealing with. I only knew something was terribly wrong.
I remember my mother breaking down. I remember things flying around. I remember a picture hitting me in the head. Those are the fragments that stayed with me.
As an adult, I do not tell that story to condemn my mother. Quite the opposite. Looking back, I see a woman who had six children, a husband who had given up on their marriage for another woman, and more pressure than she could continue carrying. She had had enough. And considering what she was going through, I understand why.
That is where my memories begin - not with money, business, or success, but with instability. Before I knew what it meant to build something, I learned what it felt like to watch something fall apart.
CHAPTER TWO: SIX KIDS AND A 1976 SCOUT II
My father knew he had been caught. My mother knew about the other woman, and instead of remaining in Oregon, my father decided to take us children back to the place he knew. Missouri.
My dad was the youngest of a large family and had grown up in Central Missouri, near Lake Ozark. So he packed six kids into a 1976 International Scout II and headed back toward Missouri.
For an adult, it was a major family crisis. For a little kid, it was simply life changing again. I did not get a vote. None of us did.
One day I was in Oregon. Then I was headed halfway across the country toward a completely different life. That would become a pattern during my childhood: adults making enormous decisions while the children simply dealt with whatever came afterward.
Missouri would eventually become home. But getting there did not mean the volatility ended. It meant a new chapter of it was beginning.
CHAPTER THREE: FISHERS TRAILER PARK
Some of my happiest childhood memories came from a place other people might have overlooked: Fishers Trailer Park in Lake Ozark, Missouri. I loved it there. There was a beautiful outdoor swimming pool, other kids, familiar surroundings, and owners named John and Penny Fisher, who treated me exceptionally well.
When you grow up around instability, you remember adults who make you feel safe and welcome. I remember John and Penny.
From kindergarten through sixth grade, I attended Leland O. Mills Elementary School. I loved elementary school. School became more than a place to learn. It became an escape from a life I often did not want to go home to.
At school, I could be a kid. I had friends. I had routines. I knew the teachers. I knew the hallways. I belonged somewhere.
For several hours every day, whatever was happening at home did not have to define me. Looking back, I understand how important that was. Children do not always have the language to say, "This place gives me emotional stability." They simply know where they feel good.
Leland O. Mills and Fishers Trailer Park were places where I felt good. Then, once again, somebody else decided my life was changing.
CHAPTER FOUR: THE MOVE I NEVER WANTED
Without much warning, my father bought five acres in Morgan County and moved us. Nobody asked whether I wanted to go. Nobody asked whether leaving the kids I had grown up with would hurt. We simply moved.
The property was near a little community called Marvin, on a gravel road roughly three miles outside Gravois Mills, Missouri. I went from the place I knew to a completely different environment.
Eventually I attended Morgan County R-II in Versailles. At the time, I thought I had been thrown into what I would have called a "hillbilly school." The kids there did not seem interested in accepting me because of where I came from. And if I am being fair about it today, the feeling was mutual. I did not want to accept them either.
I was too young to understand something I know today: Every new situation deserves a chance. Sometimes you carry your previous hurt into a new room and blame the people standing in that room for pain they did not create.
I had already lost my mother, lost homes, lost stability, and now lost the friends and school that had become my refuge. I was angry. And I carried that anger with me.
About 75 percent of what happened during those school years is stuff I wish had never happened. But not all of it. I developed a small circle of genuinely loyal friends.
Sometimes you do not need everybody. Sometimes a handful of good people is enough to help you survive.
CHAPTER FIVE: LEARNING TO FIGHT BACK
I was picked on badly in middle school. Eventually, one of the kids named Jimmy found out that I had reached my limit. We got into a fight right in front of Carmen Hayden's office. I bloodied his nose and beat him up.
I am not telling that story because I believe fighting solves everything. It doesn't. But that fight represented something much bigger to the kid I was then.
I had spent years having other people decide where I would live, where I would go to school, what kind of life I was going to have, and sometimes even whether I was worthy of belonging. That day I refused to let somebody else put me into submission. I refused to let unfair people define me.
Something unexpected happened afterward. Jimmy and I became friends. Once all the posturing was over, I think he understood that I would never have fought him if he had simply accepted me instead of trying to impress people who did not want to accept the new kid.
And I learned something too. Sometimes the person fighting against you is not really your enemy. Sometimes he is another kid trying to fit in.
That fight stayed with me because it reinforced something that would follow me throughout my life: You do not get to decide who I am.
CHAPTER SIX: GOD IN THE MIDDLE OF THE CHAOS
One thing my father did very well was raise me in church. There were plenty of things in my childhood I wish had been different, but faith was something valuable he gave me.
From an early age, I learned to put God first. That relationship became increasingly personal as everything else around me became more unstable.
I believe God put His hand on my life and helped me escape repeating the sins and mistakes I saw around me. That did not mean I became perfect. Far from it. I made plenty of mistakes.
But I came to believe that I did not have to become the circumstances I came from.
You can love your parents and still recognize their failures. You can come from dysfunction without carrying it forward forever. You can be hurt without making hurting other people your life's mission.
And you can find something stable in God when almost everything else around you feels unstable.
CHAPTER SEVEN: FIFTEEN AND GETTING OUT
By fifteen, I knew one thing: I needed to get out. I did not have money. I did not have some wonderful plan waiting for me. I did not have the advantages most people would associate with starting an adult life.
At one point, I was living underneath a salon in Barnett, Missouri. I was trying to exist. Trying to survive. Trying to figure out how to shake off the stigma I felt had followed me.
And for the first time, I was trying to build a life on my own terms.
At fifteen years old, I did not know exactly what I wanted my life to become. But I knew what I did not want it to become.
Sometimes that is enough to get started.
CHAPTER EIGHT: GOD'S SCHOOL OF EXPERIENCE
From roughly fifteen until my early twenties, I worked job after job after job. Looking back, maybe God wanted me to have plenty of experience. I certainly got it.
I also carried another label that people liked to use against me: You didn't graduate.
People judged me because I had not taken the standard route. I was not what people considered a standard boy. I did not have the diploma, resume, or background that automatically made people believe I was going places.
So I had to develop something else.
Experience. Work ethic. People skills. Survival skills. The ability to walk into a room where nobody knew me and convince somebody to give me a chance.
I learned that the world can educate you in ways a classroom never will. That does not diminish education. It simply means there is more than one classroom.
Mine was life.
Search terms | Randy Dinwiddie story
Randy Dinwiddie story
The Story of the DealMaker Part 1
childhood faith and survival story
Randy Dinwiddie testimony
Dependable Brokers Randy Dinwiddie
Randy Dinwiddie Missouri story
childhood survival memoir
faith and resilience life story
Randy Dinwiddie childhood
The DealMaker memoir
Tags | Dependable Brokers
#DependableBrokersInsurance #RandyDinwiddie #TheDealMaker #ChildhoodFaithAndSurvival #FaithAndSurvival #PersonalTestimony #LifeStory #Memoir #ChristianFaith #Resilience #OvercomingAdversity #MissouriStory #LakeOzark #AstoriaOregon #BarnettMissouri #EntrepreneurStory #BusinessFounder #WorkEthic #StartingOver #NeverGiveUp #FamilyHistory #ChildhoodMemories #SurvivalStory #FaithInGod #LifeLessons #PersonalGrowth #Reinvention #SmallBusinessStory #DealMakerStory #DependableBrokers
🏠 CONTINUE HOME
╚══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════╝
Comments