Dream: What Are You Willing to Do for Your Dream?

By Robert Grant

This is a story about a man that has dreams . . . lives that dream, meets his dream, and is blessed with a dream. He is in a place that he has always dreamed ofthe lights, the recognition, and the stardom . . . everything that he has always wanted. He had the money, the fame, the cars, and the attention of every woman that crossed his path. All this and still unhappy . . . Whats the problem? Could God be trying to tell him something more, and is he willing to listen?
One night, while performing, he meets a womana woman that would help shape the course of his life, a woman that had him from the very moment he laid eyes on her. He never imagined that, from that very moment, he would have to make choices that would change his life forever.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jan 7, 2015
• ISBN: 9781503531505

Robert Grant

Robert G. Grant is a political activist, and the former leader of several Christian right groups. He is considered by many the "father" of the Christian Right in the US.

Book preview

Dream

What Are You Willing To

Do For Your Dream?

Robert Grant

Copyright © 2015 by Robert Grant.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 01/06/2015

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CONTENTS

Prologue

Chapter 1 The Voice

Chapter 2 Childhood

Chapter 3 Bodyguards

Chapter 4 Heart and Soul Food

Chapter 5 The Start

Chapter 6 The Teenager

Chapter 7 Choices

Chapter 8 Signature

Chapter 9 Success Story

Chapter 10 Family Meeting

Chapter 11 The Promise

Chapter 12 The Angel

Chapter 13 Courtship

Chapter 14 Holiday Thanks

Chapter 15 Holiday Giving

Chapter 16 One

Chapter 17 Blessings That Overtake You

Chapter 18 She Was Ready; I Wasn’t

Chapter 19 Going Home

Chapter 20 On Empty

Chapter 21 Identity Crisis

Chapter 22 Sweet Sixteen

Chapter 23 The Accident

Chapter 24 The Awakening

Chapter 25 Reconciliation

Chapter 26 Decision Time

Chapter 27 Dream

Chapter 28 The Dream, the Vision

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

This book is

dedicated to the memory of my grandmother, Mrs. Lovada Carson, and my mother, Jean Carson Grant. These two ladies have shown me so much about love and the love of God. Without you two there is no story.

PROLOGUE

D REAM: A SERIES of thoughts, images, and sensations occurring in a person’s mind during sleep. This is one way of looking at it. But there is also another way.

This is a story about a man that has dreams… lives that dream, meets his dream, and is blessed with a dream. He is in a place that he has always dreamed of—the lights, the recognition, and the stardom… everything that he has always wanted. He had the money, the fame, the cars, and the attention of every woman that crossed his path. All this and still unhappy… What’s the problem? Could God be trying to tell him something more, and is he willing to listen?

One night, while performing, he meets a woman—a woman that would help shape the course of his life, a woman that had him from the very moment he laid eyes on her. He never imagined that, from that very moment, he would have to make choices that would change his life forever.

What do you take from your dreams? Is it just a dream and that’s it? Does it have some purpose or meaning? Your dream can be become a reality!

What do you dream about?

Hi, my name is Jordan Alexander. I’m a successful forty-five-year-old black man who has everything, but at the same time, I really have nothing. I live a good life, depending on whose eyes you are looking through. I have money, cars, houses, and stardom. I’ve had a career and lifestyle most would sell their souls to have. I was the hottest thing happening on the R&B scene for years, appearing on guest shows and movies and having the attention of every beautiful woman that I crossed paths with. Everywhere I went, people knew who I was and would do anything to get a piece of me. You would think I was the happiest man on the planet during this period with all the attention and things I possessed, but you couldn’t be furthest from the truth. Why, you ask? Let me start by telling you how I got to this point in my life and the road I had to take to get here.

CHAPTER 1

The Voice

I T’S AMAZING THE things you can remember as a kid or as a small child. In most cases, you can remember things as far back as when you were two years old and maybe even earlier than that if your parents reminded you of it. You could see it clearly in your mind. For example, music started very early for me—I mean, when I was very young. What I remember is a small child playing on the kitchen floor as his mother cleaned the dishes. I remember pulling out pots and pans from under the sink and making them my drum set. I remember having two wooden mixing spoons and beating those pans like I was at a concert, while my mother kept washing dishes and doing whatever she was doing. I still don’t know how she tolerated so much noise, but she would just smile at me. How does a small child know how to do that except to hear the noise that it makes? What I don’t remember is how I would get that spoon to be making so much noise. I only went through that phase until I learned to walk, I think. Then it was on to getting in other things; you know, the terrible twos is what they called it in those days. But here is what I remember most.

My story starts in a small Baptist church where my mother was a member and singer. My grandfather was president of the usher board, and my grandmother was just a beautiful white-haired lady that sat on the second row every Sunday. The church was called St. Paul Baptist Church, a small white church that sat on the corner of two streets. My mother was very well-known in the church and the surrounding area for her vocal ability. My mother had a gift that only God could have given her; at least that is what I always hear people say. As a kid, I couldn’t understand what and why it was such a big deal for my mother to sing. She was just Mama to me. I was used to seeing her up in front of the church doing what she really loved to do because she just didn’t just do it there—she did it at home too. Here is where I started to understand what everyone was talking about and how they were affected by it. I was about to experience what most adults saw, and I was seeing it as a young boy at a very early age for the very first time.

I can remember the first time I truly heard what I call a love song, a song which made me fall in love with music, with lyrics so meaningful and sensual that they spoke to every fiber of my being. I could feel it going through my entire body. You must understand something: I grew up around music. There was always music around me, from my mother singing around the house to me clapping my hands to the church choirs and enjoying my uncles singing in quartets. So music was not anything unusual for me. We had a raggedy old record player in the back room—you know, the one where you would have to put a quarter on top of the needle to keep it from skipping.

We listened to songs from James Cleveland, Shirley Caesar, Diana Ross, and Larry Graham. There was a wide variety to choose from in my house, from gospel albums to eight-tracks or Mom’s favorite forty-fives and especially her absolute favorite song Brandy by the O’Jays. I must have heard that song a million times as a kid. There was something about that song that always brought a smile to her face, and she would begin to groove to it. Not to mention that while growing up, I was fortunate to have older cousins who loved music, so I heard a wide variety from them as well. I especially loved the fact that my cousins were females because they always had the most beautiful friends to go along with the great music they played. We would be jamming on their front porch to their favorite songs like Boogie Wonderland by Earth, Wind & Fire, Best of My Love by the Emotions, and Holding On by L.T.D. I think you get the picture. That was some incredible and real music back then.

Anyway, back to my mom and this thing called music—Mom really knew how to make the house seem happy. Yeah, that’s the word I am looking for. She would open the curtains to let the sunlight in and allow the music to take over the house. In the living room, we had this console TV. You remember the one where if you opened the top, you would find the record player and an eight-track tape. Whenever she was cleaning the house, the music came on, and she would be in her own world. I think it put her in a certain groove and mind-set that made cleaning enjoyable and easier. I loved watching her happy because she had every reason not to be.

We were not a rich family. We struggled just like any other family during those days, and it was especially rough on my mother being a single parent raising three kids alone. That was one of the reasons why I loved the power of music and the passion my mother had for it. She was always humming, singing to something that just made you feel good. You would really know when it was getting good to her—she would start snapping her fingers and moving her body to the rhythm of the sound. It was great to see. And if she started the two-step dance and grabbed one of us to dance with her, we knew it was on. We would laugh as we danced with her. It was such a happy time for us. We forgot anything and everything that may have been going on that day. I truly believe that she knew what she was doing during those times.

I grew up in this small church where it seemed like we were there seven days a week. No, really, if there was a prayer meeting, revival, or something going on, we were there. We didn’t have the options about church as these kids do today because we came from that old-school religion. There was no such thing back in those days, saying that you did not want to go or you didn’t feel like going. Like I said, that was never an option. Even if your parents didn’t go, you were going with someone else’s family. Your butt was going to church, and it started with Sunday school. Sunday school, I didn’t mind too much; there was actually a reward for going.

I remember, every Sunday morning, Mom would give us each a nickel or dime for Sunday school to put in the offering. If we were lucky, we may get a quarter. Why was this such a big deal? I’m glad you asked. Back in those days, beside every church was a liquor store, and it was pretty safe and normal for a kid to go into one after church. The problem was we were keeping our Sunday school money and going to buy what we called penny candy.

Man, those were the days. If you were lucky enough to get the full quarter, you were able to buy a lot of candy for twenty-five cents. But trust me, we didn’t complain about a penny or nickel either. You could buy a big dill pickle, pork rinds or chips, some Now & Laters, Pixi Stix, and Mary Janes. It was like you were rich. There was so much to choose from if you had the right money, so you were able to get a variety. But we got into trouble most of the time because we never thought it through. We just knew there was penny candy to be had, and we wanted it. After we would get this brown bag of candy, we would feel really good about ourselves.

Well, at least until our parents wanted to know how we got it. They wanted to know if we had put the money they gave us for Sunday school in the offering. I tried that I-found-a-nickel-on-the-ground lie, and that didn’t end well. The one thing Mom hated the most was a lie. She couldn’t stand it, and it really made her angry more than anything else. Most of the time, you just didn’t answer and just suffer the consequences of her either taking the candy away and you not seeing it for a while or grounding you and not being able to go outside and play. I’m telling you, not being able to go out and play with your friends and cousins, hearing all the fun they were having, hurt a lot more than a whipping. What’s funny was we never seemed to learn the consequences of going to the liquor store after church. We still continued to do it.

Now back to the church—like I said, we were always in church, so most of the time, I had a front-row seat and plenty of girlfriends. When my mother was singing, we sat next to her friends most of the time, and they would call me their little boyfriend. I liked it; I liked the attention. While at church, there was one thing we were not allowed to do: play in church. Man, was that trouble with a capital T. If you got caught doing it, there was a beating when you got home. Well, as usual, I was on the front pew, so I had the privilege of hearing and seeing my mother sing almost every other Sunday.

But on this particular Sunday, something was different, really different. I remember when the pastor called her up, he said, I would like Sister Alexander to come up and give us a selection. The pastor was a small elderly man who had a very unique voice when he spoke. He seemed to love my mother like a daughter. He was always bragging about her or asking her to go with him when he had to preach at someone else’s church.

After the pastor made his request that morning, I can remember hearing someone saying, Let the Lord use you now.

Mom got up from sitting beside us and headed for the microphone that was awaiting her. As she went up there, it didn’t faze us. It was the norm, and we were used to hearing her sing. But for some reason this time, it wasn’t the norm.

I can recall sitting on the front with my younger brother Brendan and my sister Vanessa. We were sitting there as usual—no big deal. But something about my mother was different, beautifully different. She looked like an angel, as if I knew how one really looked, but at that moment, she did.

Mom began to sing this song titled His Eye Is on the Sparrow. It’s an amazing song. As she sung, I could see the actual words coming out of her mouth, and I understood every one of them. You have to understand I was only a ten-year-old boy who just wanted to play and be a kid. Playing was my specialty; I was good at it. I had no intentions of ever pursuing music or singing like my mother did, but on this day, all that changed.

As she was singing this particular song, I looked up and could do nothing but stare. Her aura and presence was something like I had never seen before. When I did happen to look up and look around, I saw nothing but tears throughout the church. People were in a different place because