Finished to Begin

By Morena Caleb

Can you imagine what it means to have a husband who never apologizes? Yet, he is always sticking his shoes into his mouth. The book Finished to Begin is rich with stories of domestic abuse, violence and custody hearings. It talks about the utter frustration with the separation from my biological family. Moving from Louisiana after my husband's graduation to the Motor city, Detroit was like a death sentence. Living in the city depressed me so that daily I sat on the bed and wondered if the gun would to go off if I pulled the trigger. I didn't know who to get rid of; me or my husband.
Many mental hospitals beds were occupied by me. But thank God, I received the baptism of the Holy Spirit. In spite of the physical and mental abuse that was prevalent I came out without a scratch. I am ever grateful that I surrendered my life to Christ. I know because He was with me throughout all of my troubles. After all these years I managed to find myself in a good place. My faith in God is what brought me through hunger and poverty in the big city. A relationship with God brought me through many days of being isolated and alone.
The book deals with the lost custody of my children and the agony and pain I endured. It cost two trips to jail and much embarrassment. But I threw myself into the work of the church and that gave me a new lease on life. The relationship with the children was never as it was when they were so cruelly taken away from me. Yet, I understand.
Then in the mist of my troubles God sent an angel to take care of me, my second husband. He was the light at the end of the tunnel. He treated me with more love and respect than I deserved. I enjoyed eighteen years of marriage to a man that I cherished. I experienced the joys of marriage as God intended for it to be.
This is a story that you may not believe but it is true. When I look back on my life today, I realized that I have perfect peace. I have no lack in my life at all. That is because Jesus is the anchor of my soul. If you are going through the same kinds of difficulties, give your life to the one who gave it to you in the beginning.
The book ends on a sad note because it ends with the love of my life dying. I was just finishing to begin.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Morena Caleb
• Release date: Apr 27, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301052059

Morena Caleb

I am a grandmother who loves to write, to read and to study the Bible. My book on King David did not come over night. It took a lot of praying, listening to the Holy Spirit, meditating and digging deep into the Word of God. It took years before I could put this book together. I hope it will be inspirational, instructional and most of all will lead others to a deeper relationship with God. I have always loved the Bible and reading it is a daily habit. I have been a Sunday school student for more than fifty years. I regularly attend Bible study. I am currently under the leadership of Pastor Arnold Wykoff of St. Joseph/Mt. Zion ministries in Fenton/ Kinder, Louisiana. I graduated from high school in St. Landry Parish, Opelousas, Louisiana in 1963. Later, I attended Southern University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. To further my knowledge and understanding of the Bible I studied with Boulden Seminary UAME Church under the directions of Dr. Maurice H.Sykes.

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FINISHED TO BEGIN

By Morena Johnson Caleb

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Published by:

Morena Johnson Caleb at Smashwords

Copyright (c) 2013 by Morena Johnson Caleb

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Copyright April 4, 2013

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter One - -The Springtime of My Life

Chapter two - Moving On Up

Chapter Three- -No Longer a School Girl

Chapter Four -Moving to the Big City

Chapter Five-Multiply and Replenish the Earth

Chapter Six -The Big Surprise

Chapter seven -A New Adventure

Chapter Eight- Confrontation with the Doctor

Chapter Nine -You don’t Have a Choice

Chapter Ten -Free At Last

Chapter Eleven -Meeting the great god, Goldmire

Chapter Twelve- Home Again

Chapter Thirteen -In the Crazy House

Chapter Fourteen -The Hospital Grounds

Chapter Fifteen-Going to Church

Chapter Sixteen -Back into Society

Chapter Seventeen-Sweet Talked Again

Chapter Eighteen -Rachel Weeping for Her Children

Chapter Nineteen -A Love Story

Chapter twenty--Custody Battle

Chapter Twenty One -Long Days and Nights

Chapter Twenty two -My Son Return Home

Chapter Twenty-three -The End is Near

Word count -57,580

INTRODUCTION

Finished to begin is a part of my life story that I never discussed with anybody, not even my closest sisters. Part of it was just so hard to talk or write about it. There were things that happened to me that were utterly embarrassing. There is a period of feeling trapped and destined to a miserable existence. Then great is God’s mercy because my life was filled with a love that I had never experienced before. Amid the joy and peace was a never ending storm brewing in the background.

The way I look at life I was always finishing to begin. There was never an end to the miseries of depression. And the jittery, energetic nuisance of manic activities robbed me of my dignity. Going from one mental hospital to another was a sense of growth and acceptance of the illness called bi-polar disorder. It is a never ending battle but when God is in the plan his grace is sufficient to sustain you.

My life is a book that has many pages. There were trials and tribulation, agony and defeat, joys and sorrows. My life has been a tedious journey that I wouldn’t take nothing for. There were bayous and swamps, cotton and potatoes and days filled with poverty, dirt, grit and grime. There was a sense of darkness and fear but God gave me experiences that caused me to appreciate my humble beginning. He allowed me to travel to every place my heart desired. Along the way I met many people from all walks of life. I had many stumbling blocks but God turned them into stepping stones.

God allowed me to realize all of my dreams and in the end I said the words of the great King Solomon. All is vanity. Throughout my life I was always finishing one episode to begin another.

I pray that my readers will glean a closer walk with God as they see the trials and tribulations that God brought me through. I hope they can see the mercies of God and develop a closer walk with God.

Right now I am in the autumn of my life. I am reaping the harvest from planting good seeds. I planted, I watered and God gave the growth. I am finishing to begin a new phase of my life. These are the golden years. Just remember that gold is hard and cold but it is a most precious metal that the world seeks after.

I feel like the Apostle Paul when he said We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair, persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed; II Cor.4:8-9 (KJV)

CHAPTER 1

THE SPRINGTIME OF MY LIFE

When I was young I thought I had all the answers. I thought I could make it without my parents and definitely without a God in my life. I had dreams and visions of being filthy rich, well-educated and being somebody important. I thought I could own the world. I thought that someday I would be able to snap my fingers and everything would fall into place. I thought that one day people would bow down to me and respect me. I was going to be somebody!

Well now I am old and I realize that those dreams were fantasies. They were figments of the imagination. I am somebody! But I am not the person that I expected to become. No, I don’t own the wealth of the world nor do I have people bowing down to me. Instead of people bowing down to me I am the one who is bowing. I became a servant instead of a queen. For that I am now thankful.

Here is part of the story of my life starting when I was nineteen years old. This is a saga of a life that was filled with sorrow, woes, and disappointments in the beginning of adulthood. After many years of struggling I reached a point of sheer joy and fulfillment. The road was bumpy and took many twist and turns but in the end I was victorious.

It was 1963 when I graduated from high school. That was the same year that President Kennedy was killed. On the day of his death I found myself in the laundry room working for a white family, Compared to where I lived in a black neighborhood, the people I worked for were rich people. I had cleaned the house, washed the dishes, mopped the floors and I was finishing off the laundry when I got the news of the President’s death.

I was putting clothes in the dryer when the man of the house came running in. He was red faced and excited. The mistress of the house was having a leisurely cup of coffee next door with a friend while I completed the chores.

Mr. James yelled, Me, Me, (my nickname) drop the clothes and let’s go turn the television on. The President just got shot. Someone shot the President of the United States!

I left the laundry room and went into the house, not believing what I had just heard. We turned the television on and listened to the newscast. Walter Cronkite was sad as he announce the news that John F. Kennedy was dead I listened to the report then I returned to my work in the laundry room.

That was the first time I ever saw the television on in that house. I had been working there for four years and although there were four children in the home the television was never on. The parents did not turn the television on in the mornings. Maybe they watched it at night when the children were asleep. The children were trained. They went outside to play after breakfast. They had no idea what a cartoon was until they went to school.

After I finished work that day I walked to the five and ten cent store to pay on my lay-a-way. I had an olive green, corduroy car coat that I was paying on. I had been paying fifty cents a week on that coat for months. The total cost of the coat was sixteen dollars. I had taken fifty cents out of my mere earnings of three dollars a day every week for a very long time. This was the day that I would pay it off. That was a dark day in the store. I don’t know if the lights were turned off or if I was just that depressed over the President’s death. But I can still remember the darkness and gloomy shadows that hung over that store. It was a very a sad, mournful day.

That was during the month of November, 1963. I had graduated in May of that same year. Already I realized that I would have to leave my home town if I wanted a better life. I could never see myself working for three dollars a day as a domestic laborer. After I graduated from high school I frustrated myself by going from business to business looking for a job. They would give me a very simple test then they would smile a cheesy grin and tell me I failed the test.

Back then I didn’t realize it but there was no industry in the city. In order to survive people had to leave town to look for work. I thought this was limited to black people. But now that I am older I realize that it was not much better for the white people of the area. Sure some of them could get jobs in department stores and offices but jobs were hard to come by and the pay was limited.

Black men and women had a rough time. Black women, if they were fortunate, could work as domestic laborers. A few worked in the local pressing shop and some worked in the kitchen of the five and dime store where we were not allowed to be served.. The standard pay was three dollars a day. The domestic job consisted of doing everything from cleaning, to cooking and laundry. Baby-sitting was just an added chore.

Black men had to leave the city before day in the morning and board a bus to either Baton Rouge or Lake Charles. So often they would take that early morning ride and would not find work as laborers. They would find themselves spending the day in union halls just waiting for a ride to return home. Needless to say, money was scarce where black families were concerned. The average woman earned fifteen dollars a week. Sometimes that was all the money that was brought into the household. There were no food stamps or government help for the poor. If there were programs my family never utilized them. We firmly believed that we should earn our living.

Those were the conditions of the black people living in South Central Louisiana. In the early sixties many Creole families earned their living by picking cotton. Hiring out to pick cotton was not a lot of money but it required no skills. So, almost everyone who was able bodied went out early in the morning and worked until sundown. What they did not earn in the fall of the year they had to do without. Either that or they left home and sought refuge in the big cities.

The only exceptions to that were the people who were fortunate enough to go to college and get a degree. Then they could become school teachers or nurses. Very few of the people I graduated with went to college.

So my adult life began in deep-seated poverty. But my dreams were full of the riches of the world. I thought that happiness was bound up in the ability to earn money. If only I had money, I wouldn’t have to work so hard I would eat gourmet foods served on a silver platter.

By the end of 1963 the forecast for my life was bleak. But my hopes and dreams were still vivid. No one could convince me that I would live my whole life in poverty. I was going to make it! I had to! I just had to make it out of that horrible existence. I was tired of being poor and struggling for every dime I earned. The work was hard and brutal. There had to be a better way.

By the beginning of the next year I enrolled in beauty school. It was a whole new avenue for me. It was never in my plans to do such a menial type of work but when nothing else turned out the way I wanted to I accepted a downward position. Beauticians were plentiful in my home town. The required hours of training were less than a year. You attended Beauty School for nine months. Then the State of Louisiana would give you a test and if you could pass the test you were qualified to open your own shop.

Beauty school just highlighted my poverty. The owner of the school and her students were so far ahead of me. They knew nothing of the cotton patch or of domestic labor. They had a hard time relating to my background and to my broken English. I did not know how to take care of my physical hygiene. I was nervous and shy with sun burnt skin while the other ladies were glamorous. They made me aware of my short comings. I convinced myself that they would be sorry because I was going to be famous someday and they would be still pressing hair.

My dream at that time was to learn a trade and work for someone else. I thought I could go to one of the cities and get a job in a white beauty shop and make my own money. I would be getting a paycheck and I could go to school at night and get my education. Boy! Was I dreaming? Boy, was I wrong!

My parents had a different idea. They went all out to surprise me. And surprise me they did. When I got my license they had a cute little shop built right in the front yard with my name on it. They presented it to me after I passed the State Board of Cosmetology test and got my license. I had barely noticed that a building was being constructed but I never, in my wildest dream expected my parents to go all out for me.

I was horrified but what could I do? I just couldn’t erase the look on my parent’s sun burnt faces. So I walked into the shop, scared and unprepared for all of the hard work of running a business. I was only twenty years old and knew nothing about business nor did I have very much knowledge of dressing hair. I was perplexed but I put a smile on my face and tried to make it work. Plus, my earnings were so great. I could make a hundred dollars in one afternoon once I learned some of the modern techniques. But, I was still despondent. I wanted to go to college and become a lawyer.

From the first day that my shop opened to the day it closed I never had a shortage of customers. All of my neighbors and kin folks came out to support me. They allowed me to learn how to do hair by practicing on their heads. Yet, I was unhappy. This was not my idea of being a rich influential woman. This work paid well compared to my other choices but it just was not what I wanted. So at the end of two years, I closed the shop and left home. I think that was more heart-breaking for my parents than if I had not accepted it in the first place. I didn’t mean to hurt them but I was growing older and I had not made any life’s decision.

Leaving the shop meant taking a BIG pay cut. I lost the independence of setting my own hours and choosing my own customers. I had finally landed a job in a department store. I thought I was doing real well. I always wanted to work in a store. But once I started working I found out what discrimination meant. I was hired to do sewing and alteration. I had no idea that I would be shut up in a little room next to the ladies restroom ripping out seams and taking orders from an unhappy old maid. I had a very prejudiced employer. He was Jewish and he used the word nigger frequently. So I lasted on the job less than three months.

The boss had yelled at me a few times and I took his insults but when he insisted that I clean the men and women’s bathroom I retaliated. I was hired to do alterations but when the janitor had a heart attack I was assigned to replace him.

I thought I told you to clean both bathrooms, He yelled.

I cleaned the ladies room but I am not going to clean the men’s room. There are enough men working here to clean their own bathroom, I said flatly.

If that’s the case I guess you don’t want to work here anymore. He snapped.

"Sir,