Chicken Soup for the African American Soul

by Jack Canfield

  It just so happened that she was planning and saving for the annual youth camping trip. The camp coordinators made camping fun; they had energetic speakers, lots of food, late night expeditions and fun crafts. Kids from all over the country met every year, renewing friendships and making new ones. And each year the camp coordinators added extras like a gift shop, special crafts and extracurricular activities for which there was a small fee. Knowing this, all the kids brought extra spending money.

  I thought the camping trip would be a great time to renew her friendship with God and I told her to ask God to speak to her while she was at camp.

  “How will I know it’s Him and not just my own thoughts?”

  “God has a way of speaking to us that we just know it is Him and not just our own thinking,” I explained. She looked skeptical, but agreed to give it a try.

  Over the next few days my heart was heavy for her. I knew it was very important for her to hear from Him now. I pleaded with Him to speak to her.

  “Mom!” she called when she arrived home from camp. “You won’t believe what happened! You remember I only had fifteen dollars to spend for crafts and things, right?”

  “Yes, I remember.”

  She continued excitedly, “Well, I bought some friendship bracelets for me and my friends, and I made a craft. I decided to save the last four dollars so I could do another craft. The first morning of camp, I asked God to speak to me just like you said, and during the second session the speaker talked about giving to missionaries. He said they had a hard time out there in the field and they needed all of us to help out. And even though we couldn’t be there, we could help by sending money.

  “Right then I felt God wanted me to give to missions. Mom, I really wanted to do the craft. It was all the money I had left, but I didn’t care. I knew it was the right thing to do, so when the time came I put the four dollars I was saving in the basket. I felt good inside.

  “And then, that afternoon, during mail call, the leader called my name. Mom, I was surprised because we only have four days at camp and I’ve never gotten mail before. And guess what? It was a letter from you with four dollars in it! Mom, how did you know?”

  “I didn’t know! A few days before you left for camp I prayed for God to speak to you in a special way, where you would know for sure it was Him. After I prayed, I felt a strong urge to take all the money from my pocket and mail it to you. At first I thought it strange, but I knew God wanted me to do it and it had to be mailed that day.”

  “Mom, God is so awesome! He asked me to give all the money I had to help someone else, and then He sent me money to do my favorite craft! He listens even to the smallest prayer, doesn’t He?”

  “Yes, my love, indeed He does!” My heart raced with gratitude that not only had God listened to her smallest prayers but that I had been obedient to His smallest messages as well.

  Ray Driver

  A Miracle for My Heart

  It’s pretty hard for the Lord to guide you if you haven’t made up your mind which way you want to go.

  Madame C. J. Walker

  Imagine a boulder jarred loose from its solid rock foundation after a series of earthquakes. Can you see it perched precariously on a crumbling, rocky overhang midway down a steep mountainside, one aftershock away from violent descent and disintegration into millions of tiny fragments? If you have a mental picture of that, then you can visualize my marriage from 1991 to 1996.

  After nine sometimes challenging but mostly wonderful years, my standard response to any cheerful, “Hi, how are you?” was a flat, “Hey, just trying to stay married.” And I wasn’t trying to be funny. I was just keeping it real. When had reality evolved to this? I had to dig deep to resurrect our first reality, the happy one, the beginning. . . .

  Our first official date at a restaurant ended with us hanging out at his mother’s house with his sister and her boyfriend. Lots of talking and laughing, meaningful glances, teasing, testing. But more than anything, I remember feeling incredibly comfortable and connected. Somewhere near the end of the evening, this funny, spiritual, musical, ambitious, solid-rock-steady, bold, beautiful black man became the brand-new owner of my heart.

  Gradually, the tart aftertaste from my previous relationship was invaded by the fresh sweetness of our three-year romance. We laughed and played, kissed and cuddled, shared and dreamed. I didn’t have to wonder what heaven was like. Being with this man was the closest I’d ever come to being on hallowed ground.

  Now, don’t get me wrong. Naturally, I’d always understood God as holy and Creator, but I’d never experienced Him as friend and companion. I realize now that if there had been a simpler, less painful way for me to learn that my God—not my fiancé—was to be the number-one man in my life, events would have unfolded differently.

  So what was all the talk about “Marriage is work”? Marriage was marvelous! I didn’t know who all the other women in the world had married, but I had a prince! That’s why I was careful not to rock the boat, not to say or be anything that might jeopardize this miracle on Earth. I was determined that nothing would separate us—not careers, or children, or “growing apart,” or “irreconcilable differences.”

  I wanted it to be a perfect marriage, but I didn’t understand that perfection grows from the seeds of humanness, watered by divine grace. How could I possibly know that the turbulent waterfall we were headed for eventually surfaced in pristine pools of calm, clear, deeply peaceful waters? I had read that God’s strength was made perfect in our weakness, but I had to live it to learn it.

  It was the mid-1990s. I was oblivious to politics, the economy, world events, whatever. I only knew that I had forgotten what it meant to be a vibrant, versatile participant in a meaningful life. Everything that could possibly go wrong in our marriage gradually did. I suddenly found that my duties as a wife, mother, homemaker, RN, and church deaconess were performed with robotic obligation, completely devoid of joy or purpose. God seemed to be on extended vacation, and I sure hoped He was having fun, because I definitely wasn’t.

  In fact, if this was to be my life, I was no longer interested. How had my failing marriage come to represent my self-esteem, my accomplishments, my entire world? And when exactly had my emotional whirlwind of anger, resentment, irritability and depression settled into a mindless state of numb indifference? It would take a miracle for my heart to live and breathe and thrive again. And that is exactly what God had in mind.

  By the time my husband invited me to hear him play with a jazz band one evening at a local function, I didn’t care enough anymore to have any man in my life, divine or otherwise. God, however, was a sweet and faithful song, looking beyond my faults to see my need. Even as I refused my husband’s invitation, ignored the flicker of hope that faded from his eyes as I claimed to be without a babysitter, angels must have been hastily dispatched to do the Master’s bidding. While I returned to my magazine, he finished loading up his instruments and paused at the door.

  “If we can’t support each other anymore, there’s no reason to stay together. If you really don’t want to go tonight, it’s okay. But I already packed a bag, and I won’t be back after the concert.”

  He couldn’t possibly feel the chill that instantly descended on my heart and stilled the flow of blood in my veins. He could only see my brief upward glance, and the casual shrug of my shoulders. He only heard a flippant “Okay, whatever,” before turning slowly and walking out.

  I remember the crushing silence that followed the closing of the door. Finally, it could all be over. Why wasn’t I relieved? What was that strange stirring in my heart that in some mystical way made me struggle to catch my breath and order my thoughts? Fear? Indecision? Desperation? Or was it simply the unmistakable fluttering of angels on assignment? I tried to refocus on my ridiculous magazine, but the words blurred into a haze of gray and it fell from my hands.

  A silent prayer exploded in my mind, God, you said you’d handle this and you didn’t! I talked to you over and over again
about this and trusted you to work it out, but it’s falling apart. What about my children? My family? I did my part but you didn’t do yours!

  I slid off the couch and collapsed face down on the carpet, knees drawn up under my belly, arms outstretched in abject surrender.

  “God, please . . .” For the first time in my life I felt truly connected to the Savior as my lifeline. “God, please . . .”

  My humanness was swallowed up in His divinity, His peace was mine.

  An intense restlessness suddenly dispelled my calm and compelled me to my feet, willed me to the phone. Three attempts. Three failures. No babysitter. A jumble of disconnected thoughts: Maybe my marriage wasn’t meant to work? Why can’t I just read my magazine? I don’t want him to leave! But it’s too hard; I already tried. It’s too soon to give up; it could work. Swallow your pride. You know you still love him, and you saw his eyes, he loves you back. But I’m so tired.

  The shrill ringing of the phone vaporized my thoughts.

  “Hello?”

  It was a close family friend. “Is there something you’d like to do tonight? I can babysit for you if you want.”

  “What?” How was this possible? (Obviously my faith was quite a bit smaller than a mustard seed.) “I thought you were at a program tonight,” I whispered.

  “Well, for some reason I think it’s more important that I babysit for you. Do you want me to come?”

  A surge of excitement. Crazy hope. “Yes!”

  He didn’t see me slip silently into an empty seat in an unlit corner, but his eyes periodically swept the room, purposeful, persistent—things I’d always loved about him. When he found me his face lit up like the sun. He grabbed the mike and announced to 150 people that “a very special person has just arrived, and I’d like to ask my beautiful wife to please stand.”

  Even as my tears threaten to spill over at this moment, I would be lying if I said it was easy after that night. We would return to the brink of collapse more than once. But that night we both knew that God had engineered a miracle to keep us together. And today, two weeks from our twentieth anniversary, I am still amazed at the shift in my chest when I see him across a crowded room, at the ache in my gut when I miss him and hear his voice on the telephone across the miles, at the way I bask contentedly in the warmth of his eyes and the sweetness of his kiss.

  And I never cease to wonder that my own personal God loves me enough to send angels on a mission to transform hurt into healing, and grant me a miracle for my heart.

  Karlene McCowan

  A Lesson Learned

  in an Answered Prayer

  I learned to really believe—and you can add a thousand more reallys—that the Lord loves me and wants only the best for me. That is an absolute. I made mistakes and I will again. I know I may step out of the light and go off and make the biggest mess in the world. But I always know that I can step back into the light!

  Della Reese

  Some years ago, I taught at a small Christian school in Yonkers, New York. Most of our students commuted daily from the Bronx-Harlem areas. A group of African American parents convinced that private education was the only way to spare their children from the often forsaken inner-city public system had started the school years before. Even though the parents of most of our students claimed no particular religious affiliation, they respected the fact that our school days always began with Bible class and prayer.

  One day during our regular devotional, my eighth-graders and I were discussing the Ninth Commandment as recorded in the Bible in Exodus 20:16: “Thou shall not bear false witness against thy neighbor” (KJV). A lively discussion about lies and lying ensued. Most of the children concluded that lies were harmful because they open the door for mistrust.

  Suddenly Shari’s interjection gave the discussion a different spin, “But what if someone is about to rape me, Mrs. Richards?”

  Faced with our silence she added, “I honestly don’t think God would want something bad like that to happen to me. So if I tell the guy that I have AIDS, so that he doesn’t rape me, would that lie be such a bad thing?”

  All eyes turned towards me. Shari’s reasoning seemed logical enough to refute all previous conclusions.

  “Well,” I began slowly, “a lie is a lie. And that would definitely be a lie because you do not have AIDS. But if you ever find yourself in such a situation, or in any situation of danger for that matter, I think your best bet is to pray.”

  “Pray?”

  “Yes. There are some situations that are definitely out of our control and we need to ask God for help. A lie like that may not help, because what if that doesn’t matter to him or he doesn’t believe you?”

  The kids all shook their heads in deep thought.

  I continued, “I honestly think that the best thing to do is start praying, aloud if you can, but pray.”

  Bible class ended, and we moved on to other topics, yet little did I know that this answer would prepare one of my students to face a most horrifying experience.

  The following Monday morning I was startled from my sleep at 3:30 A.M. by the phone. It was the principal.

  “I’m on my way to the hospital. . . . Donald’s family was robbed at gunpoint last night. I’ll be bringing him to school today, but you need to keep an eye on him. He might experience some after-effects during the day. His mother is in shock.”

  At the time, Donald and his mother lived in the Bronx— a part of the city often notorious for its elevated crime rates. I could not go back to sleep after hearing this, all the while envisioning terrible scenes of what could have happened.

  Upon my arrival at school, I went straight to the cafeteria. Donald ran to me; we embraced, and he started crying. Seeing and feeling his pain, I started crying also. I took him up to the classroom, where he recounted his nightmare.

  Donald was having dinner while his mother prepared to style a client’s hair, when three men, dressed in dark clothing and heavily armed, burst into the apartment. They laid the client on the floor and pointed a gun to her head. One of the intruders also put a gun to Donald’s head. The three men yelled at his mother, telling her to hand over the “merchandise” or else they were going to kill Donald. By then, another gun was placed at his head.

  Donald’s mother did not know what they were talking about and kept crying and pleading that she did not have anything or know about any merchandise.

  Obviously intent on recovering the merchandise, they locked the victims in the bathroom. Meanwhile, the men trashed the house in search of the alleged merchandise.

  The captives could hear loud cursing and furniture and lamps breaking. One of the gunmen insisted that whether they found the merchandise or not they had to kill the hostages because their faces had been seen. The two women cried uncontrollably, gripping each other in agony, certain they were going to be murdered.

  In the midst of their despair, Donald said, “Momma, if I die, I want you to know I love you. But I need to do this now. I need to pray.” He climbed into the bathtub, knelt and started praying.

  Donald never told me what he prayed that night. Yet the petition of a thirteen-year-old boy, who had learned to pray in school, touched the heart of God. Donald’s family did not profess or support any particular religious denomination. His only religious exposure was at school. Donald said that he prayed for a long time until they realized that there was silence in the house.

  They dared to turn the lock. With the door open, to their dismay—and relief—they saw the house was trashed, but the invaders had left.

  “Teacher,” Donald said at the end of his story, “I remembered you said the best thing to do when we’re in trouble is to pray. God answered my prayer.”

  The police could not understand why they were not murdered. It would have been a “clean job” since no one else in the neighborhood claimed to have heard or seen anything.

  Later that day, with Donald’s permission, I retold his experience to the class. The kids were shocked, and they all rallied
around Donald. Each time prayer was offered special mention was made of him and his mother. On a weekly basis, we sent handmade cards and candy to Donald’s mother to encourage her and to show our support. Yet the lesson remained unquestionably reaffirmed.

  Norka Blackman-Richards

  Let the Church Say Amen!

  It’s no disgrace to start over or to begin anew.

  Bebe Moore Campbell

  When I received my acceptance to medical school, I was excited to begin my medical training, but frightened to be moving far from my hometown. My son was just four years old, and I was looking at spending four years in a new city in which I didn’t know anyone. Growing up in the church, I wanted to seek out some supportive, kind people to connect with. My search led me to a small church located just a few minutes away from the medical school. The church was in a dilapidated building with sparse grass and modest trees. Little did I know that the building would be in sharp contrast to the warmth and love inside.

  “Hello! Hello!” We were greeted by the usher, an elderly man with a down-home voice. His eyes brightened at our arrival as if welcoming old friends. I asked to sit in the last pew because I was shy and wasn’t quite sure if this would be our new church home. I knew it would allow a quick exit if this was not the place for us.

  But as the service progressed, I looked over at Jonathan clapping his small hands and swinging his feet gleefully to and fro. The music was lively and my soul, too, was exploding with the spirit and vigor of the people around me.

  Then the pastor asked, “Are there any visitors this mornin’?”

  I looked down at Jonathan who looked up at me and then I looked at the congregation. They all knew who the visitors were—the mother and son in the back of the church! No hiding for us!

  Holding my son’s hand, I stood. “Good morning. My name is Melanie and this is my son, Jonathan. We just moved here a week ago and we are looking for a church family.”