I think I walked home. Or maybe I took a cab. I do remember picking up my son from the neighbor’s apartment and weeping at the kitchen table, holding him on my lap. I remember his sweet voice telling me, “Don’t cry, mommy,” while he patted me on my back, arm, and head as I had so often done for him.
When my stepmother arrived home from work, my face was swollen and my eyes were bloodshot. “What the hell happened to you?”
I told her what I had learned at the hospital earlier in the day.
Without saying a word, she retreated to her room to change out of her work clothes. We ate dinner in silence, except for the few words she said to Damon. I needed someone to talk to, someone who could navigate me through the terrain of my racing mind. But while I washed the dishes, she went into her room and closed the door. I perched myself on the windowsill, staring at the passing cars and people until the wee hours of the morning. I had learned that the window was the place to sit when you had trouble in your life.
In the morning, my stepmother emerged from her bedroom crisply starched and ready for work. She made our morning coffee without a single word to me. No girly chatter that morning.
Damon seemed thrown off by the silence, too. He ate his Cheerios and drank his orange juice while talking to himself. Finally, as Nett opened the door to leave, she spoke. These, I thought, would be the words of wisdom, comfort, and support. With her hand on the doorknob, her voice distant and firm, looking me squarely in the eyes, she said quite simply:
“If you do this, I will never speak to you again. Do you hear me? Never!”
Six months later, on the Friday before Mother’s Day, I gave birth to a healthy baby girl, Gemmia, which means “my precious jewel.” She was 6 pounds, 13 ounces, 19 inches long, born in an inter-uterine position, with her legs bent upward instead of downward. Her feet were resting on her shoulders instead of dangling below her waist. When I unwrapped her blanket, you can’t even imagine the horror. I thought that my child was deformed. It was punishment for what I had planned to do to her. Unable to face the reality of having not only another child, but a deformed one to boot, I made up that this was not my child at all. There must have been some mistake! They had confused my child with someone else’s, and I did not want this baby!
One of the more compassionate nurses told me not to worry about her legs. She said this was quite common and showed me how to bend the legs back into place. She assured me that with two weeks of this exercise, the legs would stay. She was absolutely right! And those strong, sturdy, beautiful legs carried me through most of her life. This little girl, who almost didn’t make it into this lifetime, born with legs that bent the wrong way to a mentally and emotionally fractured mother was more than just another human being. She was an angel in disguise. She taught me about life, about myself, and about the power of unconditional love. All that she taught me gave me a life. All that she taught me cost her her life.
Every Sunday morning, in a place beyond the beyond, the place commonly called heaven, the Creator, known to all as God, hosts a weekly Sunday brunch. The guests are all of the souls becoming. For the souls becoming, the Sunday brunch is a really big thing. Besides the tasty dishes and the live music that God provides, this is where the souls becoming sign up to live human lives on earth.
A soul becoming is the true essence at the center of every human being. It is the spark of divinity that keeps all human beings connected to God. At the divinely appointed time, a soul becoming takes on a life assignment—a life—and agrees to become a living demonstration of the nature of God in human form. Within its life assignment, the soul becoming will encounter one or more learning agreements to help it become a stronger and wiser being, more useful and pleasing to God. At the Sunday morning brunch, God provides details on the latest life assignments available. A soul can choose to stay in heaven with God or sign up for a life on earth.
All of the souls becoming know that fulfilling the learning agreements of a life assignment according to God’s specifications is a good thing. They also know that the minute a life assignment begins, the soul forgets its learning agreements. The soul must work very hard to maintain its connection to God or risk being overwhelmed by the experiences of the assignment. When that happens, well, let’s just say it is not a good thing. Successfully completing a learning agreement requires skill, and building skills requires the right tools. So God provides every soul becoming with the tools it will need, in the form of principles. Using these principles in the right way at the right time supports a soul in developing a good human character and a heart that remains connected to God.
The air is filled with anticipation as the souls becoming wait to find out if there are assignments suited to the skills they have and the lessons they still need to learn. Every life assignment provides a soul with the opportunity to shine in the world, and all souls love to shine. It is for this reason that some souls are recycled through many life assignments. These are known as advanced souls, and they get to stand at the front of the brunch line. They also get the best courtyard seats. It’s not that God has favorites, oh no! God loves every soul in the same measure. It’s just that an advanced soul has learned a lot about life and is eager for the opportunity to learn more. An advanced soul knows that life can be a joyful process. An advanced soul also knows that if it is to experience joy in a life assignment, it must learn and live the truth: God’s truth that is buried alive in each and every soul. Once a soul becomes a being, the truth has a way of becoming very elusive.
Since time has no meaning in God’s plan, the Sunday morning brunch takes the equivalent of two days. In that period, God details hundreds of thousands of life assignments: the country in which the assignment will begin; the language the soul will need to speak; the race and gender the soul will express; and the challenges the soul will face. When a soul hears the assignment it is called to, a light goes on in its heart center. In that moment, the soul receives a name, and the name is planted in God’s heart.
On Sunday evening, in a personal consultation, the soul becoming is imprinted by God with specific instructions about the gifts required to shine brightly in the state of being human. God also whispers in the soul’s ear about the particular principles it must master and the skills it must perfect to joyfully navigate through the process ahead. The principles, God cautions, will be revealed in a variety of ways, not always obvious. Recognizing them is absolutely essential to living a fulfilling life, a life that pleases God. Before the consultation ends, each soul is blessed with God’s love and instructed to use it in every situation it encounters. Love, the soul is told, is God’s healing balm. Love is like super glue! It maintains a soul’s connection to God. It overrides every possible error a soul can make. And God’s supply of love can never be diminished, no matter how much is used.
One Sunday morning, God read an assignment that involved a man we’ll call Festus and a woman we’ll call Lullabelle. They were married or in some other kind of intimate relationship. They were also, consciously or unconsciously, willing and ready to bring forth a new human being named you. Festus and Lullabelle lived in your hometown. They were your race and nationality. They had everything required for the soul-becoming-human that was you to create a life that was pleasing to God. Festus was a fireman, a police officer, an army lieutenant, an unemployed construction worker, or whatever your earthly father was or is in his life. In God’s eyes, Festus was a beautiful, loving soul, becoming a better human being through his relationships and experiences with life and with you. Although he tried very hard, things did not always turn out the way Festus thought they should. This upset him very much. You see, like all souls becoming, Festus forgot his learning agreement. Then he became overwhelmed by the experiences of his life assignment and lost his connection to God. In the process, he also forgot the instructions that God had imprinted on his heart about you and his relationship with you. Lullabelle was not much better off. Although she did things in a very different way, she also forgot much of what
God had told her about becoming human. Their loss of memory created the lesson you came to life to learn.
On another bright and sunny Sunday morning, God read another life assignment involving a man named Horace Lester Harris and a woman named Sahara Elizabeth Jefferson. My soul, an advanced soul, was sitting very close to God when this life assignment was offered. God made clear that it would be a very difficult assignment, because there were lessons that needed to be mastered rather than just learned. My soul knew that accepting this particular life assignment would mean some suffering and a great deal of loss. It also knew that the experiences I would have were necessary for the fulfillment of God’s plan—that I would teach other souls to learn to trust, have faith in God, and love unconditionally.
My soul joyfully accepted the assignment to be born through Horace and Sahara knowing that Sahara would not live long, leaving me to be raised by a grandmother who would abuse me and a father who would abandon me. My soul was aware that one of God’s angels, in the form of a stepmother, would be at my side to help me. My soul was well aware that I would become confused about my identity, lose my connection to God, and forget why I had come to life in the first place. This is how life becomes a puzzle. Thank goodness my soul was also clear about two important things: First, that I would eventually regain the faith and trust I was born with and turn back to my Creator for instructions; and second, that I would live to fulfill God’s plan for my life to the best of my ability. My soul also knew that in the process of becoming human, and in response to some of my human experiences, I would believe that I had become what many human beings refer to as a victim. My soul knew better.
I did not grow up knowing that I was an abused child. I was well into my adult life when I realized that I had been neglected. In fact, I was 30 years old when someone explained to me that anytime an adult male forces himself onto a child sexually, it is considered rape. I didn’t tell Aunt Nancy because I thought it was wrong. I told because I didn’t like it, it was painful, and because I simply was not willing to endure the smell of stale liquor forced upon me just to keep a roof over my head. Children are flexible and adaptable. They adapt to their environment with or without the labels. They learn what to accept and what to expect in response to what they see, hear, and are taught. I don’t believe that children who have no parents wake up each day bemoaning their fate or calling themselves orphans. Even those who have known the joys and security of a well-established family life will adapt to whatever the next day brings and offers them, even if it means that the family they once knew has disappeared. Children are simply innocent, willing souls.
I believe that God has placed in everyone the desire to live and know life in its fullest and most glorious expression. Children want to live and learn and grow. They are excited and intrigued about the wonders and mysteries of life. It takes children quite a while to realize when the people around them are not behaving in their best interest. How can they know? Children will love the most imbalanced people and adapt to the most dysfunctional situations. I think it is because children hold on to some memory of what they heard God whisper into their souls.
In many cases, children aspire to be just like the people who raise them. In other cases, like mine, they want to be anything and anyone other than the people who raised them. They get lost in the process of trying to be themselves while trying not to be like someone else. For a great deal of my life, I did not know who I was, but I knew who I would not be: Grandma, my father, Aunt Nancy, or Uncle Lee. I also knew that my children would never have to experience what I had experienced. That, I decided, was unacceptable! I had no idea that their souls had assignments and lessons just like mine.
Gemmia spent the first six months of her life crying. She cried all day and most of the night. She cried if I held her, she cried if I laid her down. Most days she cried until she was hoarse and fell asleep, I think to rest her throat. As soon as she woke up, she would eat and begin her cry-fest again. For a long time, I actually believed that she was crying because her father was absent. I thought that this young, innocent soul was crying about that loss because I refused to cry about it. Or perhaps she was communicating how I had felt during the entire nine months I carried her.
Grandma said that she was probably going to be mean. I knew better than to listen to her. On most days, once I knew that Gemmia was dry and fed, I had no choice but to let her cry. I never yelled or became annoyed, although there were days I would turn the television up to its maximum volume to drown her out. My son had a better idea.
I always let Damon help me hold, change, and feed his baby sister. He was amazed by her little feet, and it didn’t bother him at all that she was screaming her head off most of the time. I also gave him very clear instructions that he was never to touch the baby unless Nett or I was around. One day, I was doing laundry in the kitchen, Gemmia was crying as usual, and I thought Damon was watching Sesame Street. Suddenly I realized that it had been several minutes since I heard Gemmia. I figured she had fallen off to sleep, but I also thought I needed to check on her just to make sure. As I left the kitchen on my way into the bedroom, I noticed that Damon was not sitting in front of the television. S——! My walk became a trot up the short hallway. At the bedroom door, I saw Damon standing on his tippy-toes peering into Gemmia’s bassinet. He turned with a burst of excitement, saying, “Baby no cry. Baby no cry, Mommy.” He was right, but the reason why was horrifying!
Over the edge of the bassinet I could see Gemmia’s little hands and feet flailing. I also heard a slight gurgling sound. Upon closer inspection, I saw that she had a mouthful of pennies. Damon had taken pennies from the dish I kept on the nightstand and dropped them into his baby sister’s open mouth. The child was choking! As quickly as I could, I flipped her over onto her stomach and patted her back. One by one, the pennies fell out until I could hear that familiar sound. Gemmia was crying again. Cradling her in my arms, I scolded Damon. Through the tears he continued to inform me: “Baby no cry, Mommy. Baby no cry!” He spent an hour in the corner. Gemmia took a nice long nap and woke up without a sound. Whether it was the shock of almost choking or some mysterious healing power of the copper, I would never know, but from that day forward, Gemmia was a model child. That is, until she learned how to dress and undress herself.
Gemmia was both a picky eater and a neat freak. When she learned how to feed herself, she ate one grain of rice or one green pea at a time, and she chewed everything according to the dietary recommendation—50 times. On most days, she would just be finishing lunch when it was time to start dinner. She didn’t mind sitting alone in her high chair, chewing and entertaining herself for as long as it took to complete her meal. Any meat on her plate had to be presented in neat little squares. If the edges were jagged or if the food was piled on her plate, she would not touch it. Gemmia did not eat anything with her fingers because she would not, under any circumstances, get food on her hands. And if for any reason she ever dropped food or gravy or spaghetti sauce on her clothes, she would take them off and deposit them on the floor next to her chair.
We had a lovely front yard, and often I would put Damon and Gemmia outside to play while I washed dishes or hung laundry on the clothesline. Checking on the children every ten or fifteen minutes, I frequently found Gemmia in the yard stripped down to her panties. All it took was for her to get a drop—and I do mean a drop—of popsicle juice or a smudge of dirt on her shirt or shorts. She just couldn’t stand it! She would take all of her clothes off and put them in the trash can or the bushes.
Some mothers might be concerned about some of the weird behaviors Gemmia displayed. I was just glad that her legs were still straight. However, when she started eating her hair, I must admit, I got a bit worried. She had the habit of sucking two fingers, the pointer and the third finger. While engaged in deep sucking, she would grab hold of one of her braids and twist back and forth until it broke off in her hand. When it did, if I wasn’t watching her closely, she would pull off one or two strands of
the hair and eat it. Now, that was weird! Before I actually figured out what was happening, my baby girl had bald patches all over her head. Once I did figure it out, I didn’t know what to do about it. Gemmia’s godmother, my best friend at the time, Ruth Carlos, figured it out during one weekend of babysitting.
Ruth discovered that Gemmia didn’t always eat the hair. Most often she rolled it into a tiny ball and massaged it with her fingertips. Ruth called it fuzzy. Gemmia loved fuzzy! The bad news was, we never figured out why she wanted it. The good news was, we discovered a wide variety of sources for fuzzy—old blankets, sweaters, even carpet, if picked or shaved, produced lovely little balls of satisfying fuzzy stuff. I shaved every old sweater, sock, and blanket I could find and kept those balls in a plastic baggie that I carried everywhere in my purse. When the fingers went in the mouth, a fuzzy ball came out of the bag. Like a Motrin works on a headache, Gemmia stopped pulling her hair out. Nine months later, she also stopped sucking her fingers. I kept the fuzzy just in case.
You might ask why I went to such great lengths to indulge a child in such a nasty habit as pulling out and eating her hair. My first response is that I remembered how many of my childhood needs went ignored and unmet. I was determined to give my children whatever they needed to feel welcomed, wanted, and loved. My second response: guilt! Having come as close as I did to aborting my child only to have her turn out to be such a joy in my life, I felt guilty each time I looked at her.
Peace From Broken Pieces: How to Get Through What You're Going Through Page 9