I saw the man inching toward the dog, giving him hand signals and speaking in a quiet voice. I could hear the dog growl and bark with a loud, deep bark. His bark frightened Evan, and he began to scream and cry. “Lady,” the man said to me calmly, “he should not show fear to that dog. Listen to me, please. This is an emergency.”
I couldn’t think what to do next. I wondered why the owner did not command the dog to come to him. I was feeling a sense of panic with tears falling down my face. Matthew was feeling panic and whimpering while holding my hand tightly. I pondered what to do next, and I thought back to the first weeks I had gotten them—now almost a year ago. I had enrolled them in Sunday school, and we had done morning readings. We had talked daily about how strong and powerful Jesus is and how He is here now. I thought about the statement that my grandmother had constantly repeated when I was a child growing up. “God is as close to you as your skin, you have but to call out and He will answer, you have but to ask and He will help you.”
I realized right away I could not spread my panic to either one of the boys. I swallowed my fear and began speaking in a very low voice. I said to Evan, “Do you see Jesus? He’s right there beside you, son. See the beautiful waves and the sun on the flowers? Jesus must be right there. That is His beauty, His ocean, His sky. Oh, Evan, aren’t we lucky? Jesus is taking a walk with us.”
I paused to lower my voice even one more notch. I wanted him to stop his panicked outcry to me and to remain still and calm even as the dog owner told him, “Be still and put your hands at your side.” He was whimpering, his little, wrinkled face reflecting his fear.
I couldn’t think of anything to do next. I choked down more panic and tears as I said to him, “Jesus likes the dog. See Him smiling? Everything is going to be okay.”
He took a breath and looked around. “Where, Mama?”
“He’s right there beside you. Remember, I told you He brought you and me together, and He will always be with us.”
“But, Mom!”
“No, Evan, look at the doggie. Isn’t he beautiful? Don’t pet him now, just stand with Jesus and look at him.”
“He’s here?”
“Yes, Evan, He’s there.”
“Mom, Mom, you come now.”
“No, give me a moment, but stop crying and show Jesus how brave you are and how much you are enjoying His visit.”
Matthew stopped crying and looked up at me questioning. “Jesus came on the walk too? Do we have enough lunch for Him?”
“Jesus always has lunch. Remember the fishes and the loaves of bread? We are all okay.”
Evan began to fret again. “Mom, come. Why can’t I come to you?”
Between my son and that big dog there were mounds of sand. They were about twenty feet apart with smaller mounds between them. The owner was about twenty feet away to the left. Other people were beginning to gather around, talking of calling the police. Some of them had seen the dog previously and said he was a real danger.
Suddenly, as I said aloud, “God in heaven, show me what to do next,” one of the mounds of sand began to move. My eyes were riveted to the sight. It was a man, a bum with dirty clothes, a grungy face, and a beard. First he stretched, then he stood up, walked over to the dog, grabbed his collar, and walked him over to his owner where he said, “Man, you should do a better job handling your dog.” Then he turned and called out to me, “Lady, get your boy. This is one place where you have to keep him close to you because there are some vicious dogs out here.”
“Oh, my Lord, thank You so much.” I rushed over to Evan and picked him up and hugged him tight. Then I said to the man, “Thank you so much. What can I do for you? Can I give you cash for lunch or the lunch I have in this bag?”
He said, “No, Lady, no, no. The Lord Jesus provides everything I need every day. I just need a nap.” Turning to the crowd that had gathered, he said, “The show’s over.” The crowd started to disperse.
For a long moment, I stood still and thought, Jesus came with us on this walk, and it is really important for my children to know that Jesus is always with them, just like Grandma said.
I knew my boys would have to learn what Grandma had taught me, which is to walk by faith and not by sight alone. This experience was the first step in teaching them that no matter what threatening evidence appears to be true, we need not fear because God is always beside us.
Eighteen
Our Nightmare Dream House
My now seven-year-old twins and I were house hunting. After more than six weeks of being turned down because I was African American or because I had children or because, because—lo and behold, there before us was our dream home. We stared from outside the front gate, and I cautioned the boys not to dare to hope for this castle, which was obviously far beyond our budget.
Located in a most secretive area of lush Marin County, California, it was a mansion, a castle, far beyond my dreams. My real estate agent said, “Oh, take a chance. Step in and take a look! I have the key to the lockbox right here. It is far above your budget, but the owner is a bit anxious right now. Let’s make an offer if you really like it.”
I stepped through the gold, wrought-iron gate, and there before me was paradise. It looked like something from a movie about the rich and famous. It had double stained-glass doors at the entryway, sequestered below an overhanging second-floor balcony with a black and gold banister. The exterior of the building had been done in a rare Brazilian hardwood at an unmentionable price. According to Gina, the realtor and my good friend, it took an entire army of professionals to take care of the wood in this place. My inclination had been not to go one step farther, as I knew I could not afford it. Once again, Gina urged me forward, saying, “Miracles do happen, Melba. Don’t you believe in miracles?”
“Of course, I do, but I don’t believe they come in this form.”
I do trust Jesus to guide me, I thought to myself. For certain I do.
“I suppose there is no harm in taking a look.” My seven-year-olds were restless, ready to explore what seemed to be our dream house. The house was a stunning configuration of circles. The front of it looked like a semicircle with the sun bouncing off the glossy, Brazilian wood exterior. The roof was a dome like a Russian church, glistening even more in the sunlight.
Once inside the front hallway, we could see the entire house was filled with sunlight. I was overwhelmed by the surrounding deck doors and gigantic windows. As I looked up the two stories through a circular staircase, high up through the third story to the dome to the sky, I saw that three-quarters of the entire roof was glass. The second story was filled with four oversized bedrooms that surrounded a balcony in the center.
As the tour progressed, we saw the circular kitchen with its glossy, black granite counters and cupboards all framed in Brazilian wood to match the outside. The appliances were done in stainless steel. I felt I was continuing into a movie that began outside at the front gate. The enormous size and amazing, unique décor took my breath away. The house was beyond anything I had ever seen outside the movies.
Peering through the circular window in the living room, I saw it—a black onyx pool. The boys were running wild up the circular stairwell toward the second-floor bedrooms, none of them smaller than eighteen by twenty feet. The master suite was the size of a moderate apartment with a sunken Jacuzzi tub done in pink marble. I kept standing still and staring. The realtor had to grab my arm and drag me forward from each stop.
Suddenly, the realtor had changed her stance to a more formal one and was smiling at someone in the hall just outside the master suite. The smiling, petite Asian woman, the owner who had happened to drop by, came into the room and extended her hand to me. It seemed as though she had magically and silently appeared in a bubble of jewels and St. Laurent. Her face was beautiful with a smooth complexion. It was the deeply entrenched frown lines in her forehead that revealed the great stress she must have been under.
“How do you like it?” she asked.
I replied,
“Oh, it’s beautiful. Far more than anything I could imagine.”
“If you were to move in, I would want to be assured that the boys could treat the home with respect.”
“Oh yes,” I responded, “I’ve taught them that one must be committed to respecting one’s environment because it exemplifies respect for one’s self.”
“By the way, what do you do for a living? Do you give wild parties?”
“No, ma’am,” I said. “I am a Christian woman, the mother of two babies and a grown-up daughter. Now, in my fifties, I spend most of my time going to church, taking care of the children’s education, and writing. I’m thinking about going back to school to earn another doctorate degree.”
“You don’t smoke.”
“I don’t, and I don’t drink.”
“Oh, come have a seat. You are just who I’m looking for. I want more than anything else a tenant who will protect this house until I come back from Asia. I’ll rent it to you for half price. What are you?”
“I’m an African American.”
“Your boys don’t look African American. They have blond hair around the temple edges and golden-brown head hair, not at all the features of an African American.”
“Although with all the diversity going on, African Americans can look almost any way these days,” I said. “In my case, I adopted them a few years back.”
“All right,” she said. “The neighbors won’t necessarily applaud the African American identification.”
Even at half price, her $3,000 cost per month was over the top of my budget. But after much prayer and meditating, I thought this was a miracle blessing being offered by God because I’d been such an angel. Surely he could provide opportunities to earn extra money—like tutoring or writing ad copy, which I had done in the past. Before long, we were moved in and bathing ourselves in the splendor of it all.
It was heavenly—a real home that I felt was perfect for the boys and my grown-up daughter racing to carve a career for herself. The boys could walk back and forth to school through a safe neighborhood on their own. We found welcoming neighbors.
One morning a few weeks after settling in, as I walked about the backyard meditating and praying, the gardener greeted me with a stressed expression.
“Madam, I hate to show you this, but I feel you have a problem.”
He led me to the rear of the house and pointed out one of the family room windows. The screen was torn, and there were scrape marks all over the window sill—some of which dug deep into the wood—and damage to the window frame on all sides. I was stunned. It frightened me. Was someone trying to break into my house while we were sleeping? My bedroom was a story above this spot. What should I do?
I phoned the police, and they came right over. The combination police and fire department station was less than two blocks away. That information did make me feel a bit better, but they confirmed my greatest fear—someone had attempted to enter our home. When? And why? Those were the two questions I mulled over with Kellie. In one instant, the police had asked whether this was something the boys would do. However, without questioning them, they decided they were neither tall enough nor strong enough and not vicious enough.
Kellie and I concluded we would not discuss this matter with the boys. We already had a front door alarm that we seldom used because of its complexity. The police suggested we get a baby monitor to place downstairs in the front hallway with the listening device in our rooms to help us hear activity from the living room and the rear of the house, both of which were far away from our second-floor bedrooms. To say we were frightened was an understatement. It reminded me of my childhood when I feared the Ku Klux Klan or worried an individual would come and hurt us or take Mother or Grandmother away.
An entire month passed, and I certainly wasn’t living as though life were business as usual. I felt threatened and less comfortable in the home I had so treasured, especially when I was alone. I was even suspicious of the carpenter and painters the landlord sent to fix the window.
One bright, sunny Sunday afternoon about a month later, the boys and I had gone to attend a dance theater performance my daughter participated in. We returned to the house at dusk. As I entered the front gate, it seemed eerie, and I immediately felt uncomfortable. Curtains were blowing out of all the upper-deck doors. But how could that be? I had locked all the deck doors both downstairs and on the second floor. Nevertheless, as we drew near to the front door, we could see the deck doors were all standing open, and the front door was also ajar an inch or two.
As I stepped across the threshold, my heart was pounding in my chest. I heard rustling in the back of the house. Then there was the breathtaking slam of the back door. I could see that the part of the house in my view was totally torn apart. It was astonishing! We grabbed the boys, backed out, and ran for the car. I called the police on my cell phone. They were there in an instant. Swarming about the house, they called in an additional gentleman who began taking pictures and brushing everything with a fine black powder.
As I moved about, I could see the house was torn apart from the top floor, which housed my tiny writing office, down to the first floor and even the garage and storage room. Nothing was in place—everything was torn off shelves and strewn about. It had taken us hours and hours of work to organize and distribute our possessions, and now what would we do?
“These persons were obviously searching for something specific,” the policeman in charge said. “Do you have any idea what they were seeking?”
“We do not,” I replied as my wounded mind frantically searched my memory.
“No, no, why—we don’t have anything anybody would covet,” Kellie whispered, sadness and fear painting her face.
Kellie and I could see that the uniformed police and their swarm of activity made the boys very nervous. They had been working on a special science project for weeks. It devastated them to find the fine black dust all over their work. Tears streaming down their cheeks, they finished their bowls of chicken soup and put on their pajamas. They went to bed by 8:30 without any coaxing. I had to get them up to get on their knees for our prayer time.
“Can Jesus make the robbers go away?” Evan asked.
“There is nothing Jesus cannot do, and we are going to pray unceasingly that He will always protect us.” They managed slight smiles and snuggled down on their pillows. We all were exhausted and frightened by 9:00 p.m. when the police finally left.
My heartbeat was fast and furious as I raced around the house checking window and door locks and covering windows with sheets that I had previously left uncovered with a casual attitude of safety and comfort. I experienced a feeling I had never felt before—that of knowing for certain that someone had been in my home, an uninvited stranger about whom I knew nothing and who knew absolutely nothing about all of us. It was clear to Kellie and me that the robbers had taken away what was most precious to us—the safety and sanctity of home. We were suddenly not so thrilled by the beautiful home; it was now perhaps an unsafe and temporary shelter.
I didn’t sleep at all that night, and neither did Kellie. The next morning, one of the female police officers came to talk to us. She informed us that we should take certain precautions—one might be to learn to use the house alarm efficiently and to purchase a device that would allow us to hear what was happening on the first floor at all times of the night. She pointed to the glass doors, floor-to-ceiling deck doors, and huge windows that made us very vulnerable. Following her visit, I felt as though we were living in a glass house and anyone could throw stones at any time. I felt nude.
It was a week before we felt comfortable sleeping even for a small portion of the night. Our schedules changed—no movies, no late-evening school meetings, no going to the library, despite the fact that both Kellie and I were working on doctoral degrees. We didn’t leave home at night, and we began a process of lockup and windows check at dusk that seemed to go on forever.
During the daylight hours, the huge, beveled-glass skylight
s, the stained-glass door with its sparkling colors, and the very wide, tall windows ceased to be beautiful. Instead, they were points of entry by a stranger who could be dangerous. The entire dynamic of our family changed to a focus on fear. Taking the next step to protect ourselves dominated our conversation and our time.
Less than a month later, we came home from our various schools to find the gardener pointing to all the windows at the rear of the house, which had been jammed with a sharp object. The wood frame of the windows had been seriously damaged. So we called the police to see what should be our next step. They came right over and confirmed that someone had tried to enter the rear of our home. Had it happened while we were at school or the night before? Pondering “when and why” robbery questions became my obsession.
The police asked that we immediately telephone the landlady to find out whether the rear glass windows were wired to the alarm system or just the front door, because it was seen as a real help in fending off robbers. The police suggested the landlady wire the rear windows. Within a week, that process began. Still, even the presence of the installers made me nervous.
We asked our church members to pray for us. We increased our Bible reading to ensure our trust and faith remained strong. Still, to feel vulnerable in the place we should be the safest is unexplainable in words. The interior of this wonderful castle became like a torture chamber. I began praying day and night, pleading with Jesus to help me rebuild my hope and joy and faith.
Months passed, and we kept in touch with the police. They questioned the landlord about whether she knew of anyone who sought something she had in that home. As Christmas approached, I noted we had all become nervous wrecks, frightened to stay at home, frightened to go out for any reason after dark, and reluctant to leave home at any time of the day. I feared being left home alone as I had been in the months before when I worked from home. I sought ways to find peace and to share that peace with my children. That led me to read the Bible each morning and evening and to form habits that included the family in my praying.
I Will Not Fear Page 13