“Oh God. Oh God,” Michelle yelled, not wanting to believe the child she had given birth to had been in her presence, her arms, for that matter. They may have been struggling within a fight; nevertheless, Michelle had touched her child. “What happened?” she wanted to believe it was all a dream. “What happened, Keithe? why am I in here?” Michelle looked at the hospital surroundings.
He didn’t want to just blurt it out. Rather, he wanted her to figure out her own truth.
“Michelle.” he lingered with his head down, but his eyes were still on his wife.
“Is she my daughter?” her face appeared as if she had never signed up for monthly Botox fill-ins. “Stoney is my daughter?” she asked again as she rubbed her stomach, which once held her baby. The years’ worth of worry and scorn had jumped from her past and made a spot on her present.
Michelle had named her daughter alexia. “Her name…my daughter’s name is alexia,” she stated to Keithe, knowing he wouldn’t know one way or another. No one would, maybe the nurses who delivered her, maybe Bishop would, but who would care to remember her? no one.
All those years ago, once DNA results came back and Bishop Perry was announced not to be the father, he left Michelle’s world, and being that he was the only one remotely interested in her, Michelle hardened her heart. The day she dropped her baby on her mother’s doorstep, Michelle drove the road back, all the way back into Dallas, from Greenville Texas, with the birth certificate on the passenger’s seat. Crossing city limits back into Dallas, Michelle tore alexia’s birth certificate into the smallest of pieces. As far as she was concerned, the day was never supposed to happen. It was as if she was continually dealt a bad hand.
Her hard luck seemed to begin the day her dad passed away. It seemed as though the day her father died in the car accident was the same day her mother took her own life. No get up and go and no family support system, Susie hart lost her way, and in the center of it all, Michelle lost her mother. Just barely in high school herself, Michelle couldn’t grieve the loss of her dad due to watching the next move her mother would make.
A manic depressive, one day her mother would be up and the next she would literally be out for the count, to the point where Michelle would walk in Susie’s bedroom and find her on the bare floor just lying, staring at the ceiling. For two straight years, until it was time for graduation, Michelle had to fight the demons her mother usually let win. Even with the memories, the knowledge of illness, it didn’t persuade Michelle’s thought of leaving her child. The life she had built for herself and the things she wanted outweighed her want to do right.
Her mother didn’t have a job before her father died, and having no trade she didn’t even try to find one afterward, so the county supported them. With no clothing, Michelle had to piece together what she could. It had gotten to the point where Michelle loathed her mother for giving up, for not fighting. Even the church Michelle had tried to continue to go to had given up on Susie. Seeing that for herself, Michelle gave up on the church and their so-called God in turn.
“Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall,” Michelle rattled Isaiah 40:30 off the top of her head.
“But those who wait for the Lord will renew their strength.” Keithe wanted to help his wife complete the scripture he had no idea she knew.
“I waited,” Michelle yelled out with burning tears in her eyes. “I waited for the Lord, Keithe.” She wanted her husband to understand her plight. “For two years I prayed and cried and waited for the Lord to pull my mother out of her depression, out of her self-induced depression. Do you think he listened to me?” she spat venom, thinking about God not showing up.
“My daddy.” Michelle looked at her husband, now despising herself for never opening up to the one person who seemed to sincerely love her. “My father died, Keithe.” She started on a story that she never shared before with her husband. “But she had no right, no right, to give up, leaving me alone in a world by myself.” Sitting up in her hospital bed, still fully clothed, Michelle shifted her body to one side.
“My father died. Not me!” she screamed forty years worth of pain from her vocal cords. “My mother grieved so much, so long for my father. She never let him rest. I needed her, Keithe.” Michelle’s voice trailed off into a calm pain.
“I needed my mother to let me know everything would be all right. That life still goes on, that we could have made it together. But she gave up!”
Keithe squeezed his way into Michelle’s hospital bed. “It’s okay, Michelle. I’m here for you,” he said, wanting her to believe it.
“But you can’t fix it. You didn’t do it,” she snapped.
“You’re right. I didn’t do it, and I can’t fix it. Only God can. Only God can mend your heart. Only God can allow you to be the mother you wanted in your own life.” Keithe seemed to have struck a nerve.
“Oh, God. I can’t. I can’t do it.”
“Jesus said you can do all things through him,” Keithe witnessed to his wife.
“Stop it! stop it now! You go on and on about what God can do, and here I am, fifty-five years old, and I don’t even respect you as my husband. You know why? wanna know why, Keithe? Because I can’t even respect myself for all that I’ve done to myself. What I did to my mother.” She shed tears for leaving her needy mother. “What I did to her.” She couldn’t bring herself to release the truth.
She tried to break free from Keithe’s hold. With her mind swarming about, with the possibilities of leaving the hospital and getting as far away as she could from Houston, Keithe prayed a declaration over her life.
“The place you think is dead is indeed alive, Michelle. God said he will bring health and healing to your life. Jeremiah says God will heal his people and let them enjoy all the peace and security they can handle. He can rebuild you, Michelle.” Keithe held his grip on his wife.
“No. Let me go,” she fought.
“Let him back in, Michelle. God can cleanse you from your sin and rebellion. He will walk you into a place of joy, praise, and his glory. God has peace for you, honey. Seek him, Michelle. Seek him.”
Tired of running, and tired of being the person she had built, her pride was broken, and Michelle released her pain by crying as if a hydrant had been unscrewed. She released tears nonstop. The wrestle she had given as a fight ceased.
“I don’t know how,” she whispered.
With tears all ready in their holding place, the revelation of his being in Michelle’s life released them. Through his pain, he silently praised God because there was purpose. All of what he’d gone through with his wife of fifteen years was for a reason: God’s reason. God’s purpose for Michelle and her daughter to be reunited so that they both may heal.
“Tell God about your pain. Tell him what you’ve been holding in. God placed us together for a reason. Today is that reason. Trust God. Trust us, Michelle.” Keithe let go of his own tears.
“I dropped my baby off. I just left her. I just left my baby. Oh my goodness. Oh, God. Oh, God. Forgive me.” She asked something of the Lord she had never asked before.
“Call out to him, Michelle. Honey, call out to the Lord. Tell him to renew your mind.”
Groggily, Michelle obeyed the voice she heard. Though it was Keithe’s physical voice speaking, the piercing in her heart let her know that God was asking her to release her cares over to him.
Come unto me, Michelle heard the Lord speak.
“Oh, God. I…I need you.” She closed her eyes.
What do you need of me, my child? Michelle heard the Lord say. Speak to me so that I may speak to you. Fear not.
“The Lord is my light,” Keithe started off. “Whom shall I fear?” Michelle carried in full verse, barely taking breaths until she had completed all fourteen verses.
Astonished, but not without doubt, Keithe thanked God for Michelle’s hidden knowledge of God’s word. The word that had been hidden deep in her heart. Keithe could only marvel at what God had shown. Planting a kiss atop his wife’s head, Keithe rocked Michelle in place as she mumbled prayers from her soul. Her continued conversation with the Lord showed to soothe Michelle’s eternal pain, bringing peace to her heart and salvation to her soul.