God Ain't No Joke!

When I was just a little girl about six or seven years old, my grandmother would have me read the Holy Bible to her whenever I stayed at her house on the weekends. I could not pronounce most of the words, and when I stumbled upon a verse that contained the word “ass” in reference to a donkey, I would stop reading and stare at my granny like a deer in headlights. She would laugh hysterically as she tried to get me to repeat (what I thought was) the bad word. Although she prayed for me constantly, I still did not believe in God and fell from grace as I went out and got me a huge dose of this world and all of the sinful things it has to offer one. 

I bore my first child, a girl when I was 23 years old. Her dad and I lived in one of three small, one-bedroom apartments in a large house near the local university. The landlord wanted to rent to college students, but in our desperation, we begged him to let us be his tenants, and he did. My daughter’s father was 10 years older than me and took pretty good care of us, but we argued a lot because he lied a lot. For example, he and I began our relationship two years prior to me getting pregnant. I had known him as a family friend, and at that time he was living with a woman in Cincinnati Ohio but was visiting our hometown because his nephew had passed away. I and a member of my family attended the funeral, and that is when he and I started a friendship. He was in town for about a week, and during that week we spent the majority of our time out on dates; sometimes more than one date in a day. 

He told me that he resided with a female whom he’d recently broken off an engagement with, but the two of them had agreed to go their separate ways: she was moving to Seattle, Washington, and he would be moving back home. So I felt good about kindling a little fire with him. He went back to Cincinnati with the promise of returning (for good) within two months. He called me every day, several times a day, even when he was at work. I sent him photos of me at his request, and we really began cultivating a long-distance relationship; that was until the lady found my photos and phone number, and decided to give me a call. She introduced herself and explained that she had been in a 10 year relationship/5 year engagement with this man. Just so happened that the two of them (not just her) were moving to Seattle, and as she was packing some of his things my photos fell out of an envelope that he had hidden behind a poster on the wall in his man cave. Longer story shortened – just about everything he had told me was a lie. I apologized to the woman and reassured her that I would no longer be in contact with him out of respect for their union. I walked away.

Just as he promised, he moved back, but sooner than the two-month time frame he’d given me. I was living with my grandmother and mother at the time, and he sat down with the three of us and gave (what appeared to be) the sincerest, most tearful apology that I had ever witnessed. He also set my mind at rest by proving to me that his ex companion had indeed moved on to Seattle without him. As convincing as he was, I still was not interested in a relationship with him, but he was very persistent; and with a lot of help from my family, he eventually won me over. 

We ended up moving in with his father, and he begged me to have his baby. I was 21 years old and did not want to be tied down with kids, but he was 31 and was saddened at the thought of not being able to have children, simply because he’d never gotten anyone pregnant. He told his story, sounding sad, and I was moved by it and agreed to have his baby. We went to my Gynecologist and she helped us formulate a plan for me to get pregnant. I started taking my temperature daily in order to know when I was ovulating. Finally, after a month or so my daughter was conceived, and we moved into our own apartment. 

The pregnancy was rough for me, not due to morning sickness or anything like that, but because he mistreated me, disappeared often, and lied a lot. I just had no way of proving the truth, but I knew better than what he was telling me. He was often sad and complained that he missed a lot of his personal things that he’d left in storage in Cincinnati. But when the baby was seven months old, these same items he often mentioned just magically appeared in our home. When I questioned him about it, he told me he forgot that the stuff had been in his dad’s attic the entire time. Also, whenever we were out he would stop at the bank and pick up at least four rolls of quarters, and keep them in his pocket. He said it was because his mom had told him to always make sure he has quarters because they may come in handy. Yeah right! 

He would go to the corner store at random and stay gone for two to three hours. When he’d return and I’d ask what took so long, he would tell me that he ran into an old drinking buddy, and they got wrapped up in a long conversation. 

Fast Forward

So I’m 24, he’s gone out, and I’m sitting at home nursing our baby girl. I glanced over at the Holy Bible which was lying on the coffee table for sheer decoration and nothing more. Neither of us believed in God, but some lady knocked on our door about three weeks prior and explained that everyone ought to have at least one Bible in their home. So we took it out of kindness and laid it on the table. Curiosity got the best of me and I said, “Hmm, I wonder if I can pronounce those words now?” I reached and picked up that Bible, and not only did I pronounce every word, but what I read was so interesting to me that I could not put the book back down: it was the most fascinating, captivating thing I had ever read. 

That night, when he came home I put the Bible back on the table. But the next morning when he went to work, I was right back in it, my eyes glued to every page, and I found something more exciting each time I read it, and I read it every chance I got; I buried myself in it. Then without any effort of my own, things about me started to change, oftentimes without me even realizing it. I started thinking differently, and I had begun to mature in many areas of my life. I stopped using profanity. Also, I started being uncomfortable living with him, but I was not sure why. I did not know what was wrong with it, but it no longer felt right to me. Then I started wanting to go to church badly, like do or die, and I did not understand because the person I was at the time, absolutely despised going to church. My grandmother had always forced me to go as a kid and I hated it. But I had a strong desire to go, so I told my aunt and uncle and they picked me up for church each Sunday. 

At one church service, they had it where different random people stood up and gave testimony. I stood up too, and I told them how I had recently started reading the Bible, that I really liked it, and then I asked the congregation to pray for me. After service ended, an old lady approached me and asked me just what I had been reading in the Bible. The night before, I read “ask and believe, and you shall receive,” so I shared that with her. Then she said the strangest thing to me. She said, “Well I'll tell you what: try it, and see if He means what He says.” I was baffled, and my face must’ve shown it because she repeated it and explained: “The Bible is supposed to be the Word of God, right?” I nodded my head in agreement. “Well then, if it’s God’s words, then it’s God talking. So try it, and see if He is telling the truth!” 

“And just how do I do that?” I asked. That is when she advised me to go home, pray and ask God if He is real. She told me to ask Him to do something that I knew was impossible for me to do on my own, and to make sure it was also something that no one else could do for me. She basically told me to ask God for a miracle of some sort. I walked away from her smiling but thinking “What-ever!”

For the remainder of that day, I could not get that old lady and her advice out of my head, and it was burdening me. I tried to forget about her, but I could not. Her words were on rewind, and I was not the one pressing the rewind button. I had no control. Finally, I gave in. I got down on my knees, and I started talking to God the best way I knew how:

“Dear God, I’ve been reading the Bible and I really like it. Last night I read, “ask and believe, and you shall receive” so I got down here to ask You something. First, please let me know if You are real, and I need to ask You if my baby’s father really loves me and is he faithful to me? God, a couple of months ago all this stuff that he said was in storage out of town, just randomly showed up. He claims it was in his father’s attic, but I know he’s lying. God, I wanna know how he got those things, where he disappeared to on Christmas weekend last year, why he needs those quarters, and why he takes so long at the store? I have absolutely no way to find out the truth on my own, and I don’t know anybody who can help me. I haven’t even told anybody all this because I feel stupid because I know he’s a liar, and now we have this baby. God, I asked You, and I believe You are going to answer, so thank You.”

Once I finished my talk with God, I got up off my knees and started making dinner. When he came home, we sat down at the kitchen table and began eating. He stopped when I admitted to him that I had been reading the Bible every day. He yelled at me, “Why are you reading that junk? You know we don’t believe in that…” 

I looked directly into his eyes and I asked if he loved me. He became even angrier and started cursing me out while proclaiming his undying love for me. I took a minute to make it plain to him that the only reason I was asking was that God was going to bust him out, and I was giving him a chance to come clean before God did it. He was so angry that he got up and scraped his steak dinner into the garbage, and left the kitchen. Then he turned and came back to reiterate to me that God was not going to do anything because there is no God. I responded, “Okay! You’ve been warned! I asked and I believe, and I shall receive!” 

Two days later, he and his best friend were standing outside in our driveway having a conversation, and he had left his phone on the coffee table, and it rang. Anytime he left his phone behind while he was outside for whatever reason, I would go to the door and tell him whatever number was calling him, and he would decide whether or not he wanted to take the call right then. This particular number that showed up on his phone stood out, and as I was running to the back door to relay it to him, something in my gut said, “call the number back”; something I had never done before. The closer I got to that door, the more “call the number back” was piercing my spirit. So I halted, turned back, and dialed the number. When the person on the other end of the phone answered, I immediately recognized the voice of his ex who had moved on to Seattle without him. She also recognized my voice, and after we said our hellos she began to spill all of the tea. She described for me, in detail, the items she had brought to him two months before, how he called her daily from a certain payphone (per the quarters) so that the calls could not be traced back to our cell phone bill. “Don’t you ever wonder why he carries so many quarters with him?” she asked, but I did not respond. She went on to congratulate me on the baby; told me my daughter’s name, date of birth, and how he’d cried and apologized to her because he never meant to get me pregnant. She filled me in on the fact that she had come to town the year before and they’d spent the previous Christmas weekend together; and if that did not beat all, he was in the process of finding “them” an apartment so she could move to our hometown because he hated her being so far away. She informed me that the two of them had been having a long-distance relationship behind my back for two and a half of the three years he and I had been together; and she ended her speaking with, “Well now, I guess everybody has gotten what they deserve ''. After she said her peace, and I confronted the liar (who continued to lie), the invisible God comforted me and mended me from what felt like the most damaging heartbreak ever. That situation broke me, and I wish I could say that it was the worst thing I have ever experienced, but by far it was not. But through it all, I matured, and I learned a lot about God. I learned to trust Him, that He can be taken at His word, that He loves us no matter what, and (for all of us) to never give up on Him because He will never give up on you. 

The baby’s father never loved me. His belongings were never in his father’s attic. He lied. He sought out what was probably one of the only payphones left on this planet to assist in his cheating. He was as fake as a three-dollar bill, and God is not only real, but in two days' time I found that He is positively no joke. 

“Thank You God. Thanks an awful lot.”