by E. N. Joy
Tamarra’s last comment was more to herself than God. She turned up the music and bopped her head at least two beats faster than the beat of the song itself. The music was so loud that she didn’t hear her inner man warn her, “You can run, but you can’t hide . . . not from God.”
Chapter Twenty-one
Deborah had just finished editing a manuscript when her phone rang.
“Praise the Lord,” Deborah greeted through the phone receiver.
“Praise the Lord,” Mother Doreen replied.
“Mother Doreen . . .” Deborah hit the info button on her muted television in order to see what time it was. She knew it was late; after 8:00 P.M. She had been hardcopy editing the last few pages of a manuscript while comfortably lying in her bed, looking up at the television every few minutes to see any election coverage updates. Thus far, Obama was kickin’ McCain’s butt. Although eight P.M. might not have been late for the average person, she knew it was for Mother Doreen. “Is everything okay?”
“Actually, I just got a call from my sister’s doctor in Kentucky. She’s had another relapse and is back in the hospital.”
“Her sugar again?”
“Yes, dear,” Mother Doreen stated. “We just can’t seem to keep it under control.”
“Well, God is still in the healing business, so I’m sure if we all keep praying, He will heal her.”
“Oh, He’s healed her already.” Mother Doreen sounded so sure.
Deborah was puzzled. If God had already healed Mother Doreen’s sister, then why was she still sick and in and out of the hospital?
“When my sister first fell ill,” Mother Doreen continued, “we fasted and we prayed for that healing. Just the last time I was there I laid hands on that body and spoke to that illness. I rebuked it out of her body in prayer. And while we were praying, the praying turned into praise; praise for the healing that we knew was already done at that moment. Then the praise turned into worship. We couldn’t help but bow down and worship the one who, with a single touch, answered a prayer.” Mother Doreen let out a shout just thinking about what God had done for her sister.
Deborah knew her God was a healer and she believed in the healing power, but if this was the case with Mother Doreen’s sister, why was the illness still attacking her body? “So what was it that God healed her of that time?” Deborah asked, choosing her words carefully. She didn’t want Mother Doreen to think she was a doubting Thomas, but at the same time, she wanted clarity.
“Her diabetes,” Mother Doreen confirmed. “See, God did His part. He healed my sister, only she didn’t walk in the healing. She went right back to her old ways, eating Oreo’s, fried chicken and drinking soda pop like it was going out of style. It’s just like having the flu and God heals you from the flu, only you turn around and wash your hair, then leave it wet, put on shorts, and go outside barefoot in the dead of winter. How is that walking in a healing?”
“It’s not,” Deborah said, finally getting where Mother Doreen was going with things. “It’s like praying that God heals you from lung cancer while puffing on a cigarette.”
“Exactly, and that’s basically what my sister is doing,” Mother Doreen said, hiding the frustration she was feeling toward her sister’s behavior. “Anyway, I have to head back down to Kentucky. I don’t know how long I’m going to be there this time. You know my sister has those two babies; my fourteen-year-old niece and sixteen-year-old nephew. Their daddy is always on the road driving that truck, so he can’t tend to them like teenagers need to be tended to. Sometimes he’s gone a week or two at a time. And I know Satan is just lurking around for a crack to slither into and try to disrupt their lives. Not under my watch. So I’m going to head down in the morning.”
“Did you need me to do something for you?” Deborah asked.
“Yes, that’s why I called. I have an appointment on Thursday with one of the sisters at the church, just to go over some things regarding the Singles Ministry. I was wondering if you could meet with her for me. I want the ministry to continue to grow, and I don’t want this sister to lose interest while I’m away. You’re my backbone when it comes to running this ministry, so I knew I could call on you.”
How could Deborah decline after those kind words? “Sure, Mother Doreen, I’d be glad to. What time is the appointment?”
“It’s Thursday at five-thirty P.M. in the church conference room.”
“No problem, Mother Doreen. I’ll make sure I’m there. You be blessed, and I’ll be praying, touching, and agreeing with you that your sister will begin to walk in her healing.”
“Thank you, dear. God bless, and I’ll talk to you later.”
“Travel mercies and goodnight,” Deborah said. “Oh, Mother Doreen, what’s the lady’s name that I’m meeting?”
“Oh, just a second. Let me pull my appointment calendar out of my purse.” Deborah could hear some rustling in the background while Mother Doreen searched out her calendar. “Here it is. Helena Simmons. You know, that new child that came to the last meeting. Sister Helen, she goes by. All right then, dear. Goodnight.”
Before Deborah could even come up with an excuse as to why she suddenly couldn’t do Mother Doreen this one solid, the line was already dead. In two days she’d be face-to-face, alone, with Helen. She didn’t know if all of God’s armor in the world could shield her from this evil.
Chapter Twenty-two
When it was announced that the United States would have its first black president, Deborah thought she’d be celebrating for days, but waking up realizing that Thursday was now here, she didn’t have a celebratory bone in her body. It was time to face her giant. She’d thought of a million and one reasons to cancel the meeting. When she had seemed to find the perfect excuse, she realized she didn’t have Helen’s number to call and cancel the appointment. The last thing she wanted was for it to get back to Pastor that she wasn’t in position when she was supposed to be.
“The devil is always in position,” Pastor would say. “You never have to worry about him not showing up for an assignment. You never have to worry about the devil showing up late.”
That Thursday evening, Deborah prayed the entire drive to the church, wishing she could speak in tongues so that the devil wouldn’t be able to decipher her request to God regarding her situation with Helen. But she’d never been filled with the Holy Spirit and received tongues. At first she used to think God saw something in her that made her unworthy of the tongues. That there was an area of her life she needed work on, and the fact that she couldn’t speak in tongues was a dead give-away to everyone around her. She would always get embarrassed when Pastor would ask the congregation to pray in the Spirit and she wasn’t able to. But after awhile, it didn’t bother her much. She rarely even thought about communicating to God in an unfamiliar language. But now, more than ever she wished that she’d been blessed with the gift.
When Deborah pulled into the church parking lot, she saw four parked cars. One she recognized as the pastor’s. Two of the other cars belonged to two members of the New Day Janitorial Ministry. They were probably cleaning up from last night’s Bible Study. The remaining car Deborah didn’t recognize and assumed it was more than likely Helen’s. “I guess my prayer about her not showing up didn’t work,” Deborah said to herself. She then looked up and repented to God. She knew prayer worked and felt bad about the fact that she had just treated it like a magic trick gone wrong.
Upon entering the church, Deborah stalled going into the conference room by making a pit stop at the ladies room, even though she had just used the restroom right before leaving her home. “Holy Spirit, rise up in me, and take control of this meeting I have with Sister Helen,” Deborah stood and prayed in front of the mirror. “Sit down my flesh so that you may stand. Decrease me so that you may increase. In Jesus’ name. Amen and Amen.” Deborah took a deep breath, and then headed into the conference room.
She was surprised to see that the conference room was empty. For a moment she wondered if maybe Hel
en thought she was a no show and had decided to leave. Deborah laid her purse down on the conference table as well as the notebook she’d carried in with her. She headed back toward the church doors so that she could look out and see if the mystery car was still parked in the lot. Peering through the glass church doors, sure enough, the car was still there.
“Hmm,” Deborah pondered while rubbing her chin.
“Everything okay, Sister Deborah?”
The female voice behind Deborah startled her. She turned to see Nita, a member of the Janitorial Ministry, with a mop and bucket in hand.
“Oh, everything is fine, Sister Nita,” Deborah replied. “How are you?”
“Blessed and highly favored,” she said with sincerity and a smile.
Some people just recited that cliché to be saying it, but Deborah could always tell that Nita meant it. She knew some of Nita’s testimony as a survivor of domestic violence. She could tell Nita felt that every day God allowed her to live and breathe and be free was nothing short of a blessing. Nita had said that she felt His favor upon her by allowing her to run her own cleaning company, where she did contracts for apartment complexes. She used this skill to head the New Day Janitorial Ministry. And every time Pastor took up an offering specifically for her ministry, she always sewed the seed right back into the church.
Deborah, although she didn’t really know Nita all that well, was both inspired and moved by her perseverance and ability to obtain the victory in such an ordeal. Not many women would have made it after being abused physically, mentally, and sexually by their husband of seven years. It was a wonder Nita was still in her right mind. But God is able. He brought her through those last tormenting hours with her ex-husband, the father of her children.
For twelve hours straight, the man had beaten and raped her repeatedly while their five-year-old twin daughters remained locked in their rooms. Nita had given a testimony that he’d abused her for their entire seven years together, and had threatened to kill her if she ever left him. He added even more fear by telling her that she’d see their daughters dead before he’d allowed her to take them from him. So Nita said she endured the abuse for the sake of her children. But on this dreadful day, her ex-husband would see his threats through by cutting each of his daughter’s throats from ear to ear after slicing Nita’s throat and stabbing her twenty-seven times all over her body.
Nita probably would have died hadn’t the school gotten suspicious when the twin girls didn’t show up for school that day. They knew of the abuse against Nita going on in the home from some of the things the twins would tell their classmates on the playground at school. To their knowledge, though, the children’s father had never abused them. There wasn’t much the police could do about the abuse against Nita without her cooperation. In addition, that was the day Nita was scheduled to volunteer in the school library, and she’d never missed a day she was scheduled to volunteer. If either she or the girls weren’t going to make it to the school, Nita had always phoned and informed them. So the principal made the call to the local police and asked them to go check things out.
After three hours of negotiations, the police finally got her blood covered ex-husband to surrender and let them inside the house. When the police made it into the home, they were shocked to find such a massacre. They’d reported that all three stabbing victims were dead and awaited the coroner to arrive at the scene. To everyone’s surprise, no sooner than the coroner was about to pronounce Nita dead, she took a breath and her eyes opened.
“A miracle,” the coroner had told the media. “And I’m not a religious man by any means, never believed in all that God Almighty stuff before today. But I stand here a witness that this woman’s survival was nothing short of a miracle. The police and EMTs didn’t find a heartbeat or a pulse. I didn’t find a heartbeat or a pulse, but yet we saw this woman rise up with our very own eyes. And thank God I had witnesses, or I’d commit myself to the nearest institution,” the stunned coroner said before he concluded his interview with, “And if you want any more answers than what I’ve offered you, then you’ll have to get them from God Himself.”
Nita’s survival had been a miracle. She’d lived through a twelve-hour attack, the slicing of her throat and twenty-seven stab wounds. And after weeks of healing and God restoring her, she’d have to live through the mourning of her two daughters, whose joint funeral she was unable to attend.
The town of Malvonia raised up, united and supported Nita by sending in their prayers, condolences, cards filled with money, setting up trust funds, and paying for counseling sessions for her. New Day held a one-month fundraiser which resulted in enough money to purchase Nita a condo and pay her bills for a year in advance. New Day’s “Laborers Are Few” ministry helped her with some business courses that allowed her to find a trade, ultimately resulting in her owning her own business. So if anyone said they were blessed and highly favored and meant it, Nita was the one.
“Blessed and highly favored you are, Sister Nita,” Deborah smiled. “By the way, have you seen the person who is driving that car?” Deborah pointed to the mystery car she had labeled as Helen’s.
“Oh, yes. They are in the office with Pastor. It’s a couple. I think they’re doing marriage counseling or something.”
“Oh,” Deborah said confused. If it wasn’t Helen’s car, then that meant Helen hadn’t shown up. “Thank you, Sister Nita,” Deborah said as she turned toward the conference room to go retrieve her purse and notebook.
“No, problem, Sister Deborah. And you be blessed.”
“Blessed I am, Sister Nita. Blessed I am.” Deborah could breath again as she entered the conference room to collect her purse and notebook. She was so glad she’d repented to God for that comment about prayer not working. It obviously had worked as Helen was a no-show. “Thank you, God,” Deborah said before scooping up her belongings, and then turning around to head out of the door. She’d taken only a single step before she froze in her tracks.
“Sorry, I’m late. It’s something I’m working on, being on time that is.” There stood Helen in the conference room doorway almost as surprised to see Deborah as Deborah was to see her. “I’m supposed to be meeting with Mother Doreen,” Helen said, looking around. “Did she ask you to sit in or something?”
“Actually, Mother Doreen is not going to be able to make it and asked that I sit in for her,” Deborah informed Helen, trying hard to hide her disappointment.
“Oh, is that so? And you agreed?” Helen picked.
“Of course, why wouldn’t I?” Deborah swallowed hard, then pointed to a chair. “Please have a seat.”
“Shall I close the door?” Helen asked.
“I was just going to go over some information regarding the Singles Ministry. You can leave it open unless you think you are going to speak on something confidential.”
Helen thought for a minute. “I’ll go ahead and close the door just in case. I mean, one never knows what might come out of my mouth,” she taunted before closing the door and taking a seat at the conference table; two chairs down from where Deborah sat.
“Well, uh, why don’t we start out with prayer?” Deborah asked.
“Sure,” Helen shrugged, then followed Deborah’s lead in standing.
Deborah made her way over to Helen and both hesitantly and nervously took the other’s hands. To Deborah, Helen’s hands were cold and slippery. Almost made Deborah want to gag. How could God put her in such a position to have to pray with this woman? It was so easy to do God’s work when the package was wrapped up nice, neat, and pretty. Why wasn’t it just as easy when the package didn’t come looking like one thought it should?
“Dear Heavenly Father,” Deborah prayed as the two women stood holding hands with eyes closed. After she finished, she made her way back over to her chair and sat down. Opening her notebook, Deborah began. “Well, first off, let me tell you a little bit about how the Singles Ministry was formed. Almost a year ago, Mother Doreen had a vision—”
H
elen interrupted Deborah with a chuckle. “Are we really going to sit here and do this?” she asked. “Act like everything is gravy?”
“What do you mean?” Deborah asked.
“You know exactly what I mean,” Helen spat, then leaned back in the chair comfortably. “So tell me, how are you and Mr. Chase coming along?”
“We’re not,” Deborah assured her. “Lynox and my relationship is strictly business.”
“So you admit you did have a relationship?”
“Yes, I mean no, I mean . . . not like you think,” Deborah stammered. Then in frustration she said, “I don’t understand what this has to do with anything. You told Mother Doreen you were interested in learning about the New Day Singles Ministry, and that’s what I’m here to talk about. Not anything else, especially not my involvement with Mr. Chase.”
“Involvement? So you two are involved? I mean, why try to hide it? You don’t want to end up like your little friend. What’s her name, Tamarra? Look what happened to her when she tried to hide a relationship.”
“For Pete’s sake, I’m out of here!” Deborah stood, slamming her notebook closed, then standing.
Helen quickly blocked the conference room door. “Not so quickly,” she told Deborah.
“Look,” Deborah said, fed up. “I’m not playing your games any longer, Helen. As a matter of fact, I don’t know why I’ve let you get to me this long. You are no better than I am.” Deborah leaned in close to Helen and whispered. “Don’t forget, you were there too.” Deborah finally decided to fight fire with fire by reminding Helen that she wasn’t such an innocent bystander all those years ago either.
“Yeah, but look at my situation, and look at yours. But anyway,” Helen quickly decided to change the subject, “does Lynox know your dirty little secret?”
“Does he know yours?” Deborah shot back, straightening out her backbone.
“As a matter of fact, Lynox knows everything about me, and I him. I don’t know what he’s told you about me, but I’ve got that man’s nose wide open. He still be ringing my phone. But I don’t have the time of day for him. He’s a dog just like the rest of them. That was obvious when I caught him sniffing around the trash.” She looked Deborah up and down. “Anyway, don’t be fooled, sweetie. He’s a player. Whether you decide to hang around and get played is your business.”