The Strawberry Room--: And Other Places Where a Woman Finds Herself

By Marilyn Sanders Mobley PhD

What happens to a woman when the room that was once the guest room of her home becomes the space of self-imposed exile? What does she tell her children? What does she tell herself? How does she survive her marriage coming to an end without becoming bitter, hard, or cold? What if her time in that space was actually the key to her spiritual destiny? This inspiring memoir attempts to answer these questions and shares a riveting story of how one woman navigated the journey from one of life’s darkest moments through the gateway to joy and to a new understanding of the calling on her life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Nov 8, 2016
• ISBN: 9781512753264

Marilyn Sanders Mobley PhD

Marilyn Sanders Mobley, PhD was born in Akron, Ohio and now lives in Shaker Heights, Ohio. She is Vice President for Inclusion, Diversity and Equal Opportunity and a tenured professor of English at Case Western Reserve University. She is a Toni Morrison scholar and published author in the fields of African American literature, Black studies, women’s studies, cultural studies, higher education, diversity and social justice. She is also a lay minister at Arlington Church of God in Akron, Ohio.

Book preview

The

Strawberry

Room—

And Other Places Where a Woman Finds Herself

Marilyn Sanders Mobley, PhD

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Copyright © 2016 Marilyn Sanders Mobley, PhD.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

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.

Scripture taken from the New King James Version. Copyright © 1979, 1980, 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

This book is a work of non-fiction. Unless otherwise noted, the author and the publisher make no explicit guarantees as to the accuracy of the information contained in this book and in some cases, names of people and places have been altered to protect their privacy.

Photograph by and ©Barney Taxel, Cleveland, Ohio

ISBN: 978-1-5127-5327-1 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5127-5328-8 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-5127-5326-4 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016913214

WestBow Press rev. date: 11/8/2016

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction: From a Post-It Note to a Memoir

Chapter 1 The Journey Down the Hall

Chapter 2 Life Before the Strawberry Room

Chapter 3 The Dark Night of the Soul in Self-Imposed Exile

Chapter 4 From Exile to Sanctuary

Chapter 5 From the Threshing Floor to Rebirth

Chapter 6 Lessons from the Strawberry Room

Chapter 7 Initial Sermon, Sunday, February 24, 2002: First Things First

Chapter 8 Second Sermon, December 12, 2010: Whose Report Will You Believe?

Chapter 9 Third Sermon, July 25, 2010: Be Encouraged

Chapter 10 Fourth Sermon, August 4, 2015: In Due Season

Conclusion: From the Strawberry Room to the Upper Room

This memoir is in loving memory of my parents,

Priscilla Ruth Lumpkins

and

Delbert Sanders Sr.,

and with gratitude to my beloved sons,

Rashad and Jamal

Acknowledgments

I thank God for the very breath of life, for the gift of being saved, and for the courage to acknowledge the calling on my life that this memoir represents. I am convinced that there is a divine order in the universe that gave me the parents I had who raised me in the church and who gave me such a wonderful beginning as a child. Though I strayed from my faith for many years, I know I probably would not have written this book had it not been for my parents. Mom taught me to read and write two years before kindergarten, so I think of her often when I reflect on the extraordinary life that reading and writing have created for me. Daddy taught me to be the best and to be sure I did my best even if I could not be the best all the time. Although I grieve that they have both gone home to glory without having the chance to read this memoir, I know they would be proud of me, because they always were. I have dedicated this memoir to them out of a profound need to acknowledge how blessed I am to have had them as my parents. My stepdad, the late Charles Chuck Lumpkins, was my mom’s second chance at love and a wonderful second father to me. I know he would be proud of me for keeping my word to myself in writing this book. My dad’s widow, Sandra, has always shared words of encouragement about this project and what it could mean to others. It is a joy to still be connected to her and to my family in Detroit, even after my father’s death.

I have several people to thank for this book finally seeing the light of day. My colleagues at George Mason University gave me a reading from the book in progress while it was in its earliest rough stages. Though the late Alan Cheuse, who was my colleague in the English department, warned me against reading from a book in progress in public, I defied his advice and remain grateful for the experience of sharing what was taking place with colleagues who until then only knew me as a fellow literary scholar and cultural critic. They had no idea I was trying to work on what was then an autobiographical novel. I thank the owners of the now-closed Sister Space and Books, who also gave me a chance to read from the book in progress at their once famous bookstore in DC. Each opportunity to read from the manuscript gave me more courage to keep writing, as audiences inspired me with feedback about what they liked and heard, understood, and did not quite understand. My Virginia church family and the First Friday group from Ebenezer Baptist Church—Marietta, Darlene, Pam, Mary, Jennifer, Melissa (Mo), Cathy (aka Butterbean), Alona, and Marion—were particularly encouraging. When I moved from Virginia to North Carolina, they even gave me a blank notebook with a strawberry design on the cover to encourage me to keep writing. I miss the camaraderie of that group of sister friends, and I appreciate that they wanted me to complete the book even more than I did at times.

I thank my sister friends from the Wintergreen Women Writers group who listened with such constructive, empathic ears to earlier versions of this book. Their feedback was always in my head and heart as I continued to work on the manuscript. I especially appreciate feedback from Dr. Joanne Gabbin, Opal Moore, Toi Derricotte, Dr. Maryemma Graham, Janus Adams, Dr. Trudier Harris, and my sister friend Dr. Linda Nelson, who has lived whole sections of my life story with me in real time since our graduate school days at New York University. Our conversations about her writing and mine have sustained us both as we have addressed how central our writing has been to our very lives, even when we could not get to it as often as we wanted.

I thank my prayer partner, Sandra Roebuck, who prayed with me and for me as I struggled to complete the manuscript. She prayed for me when I was in the church, after I left the church, and when I returned, so in many ways this memoir is an answer to her prayers. I thank Maxine Clair, my dear writer sister friend from my Ford Postdoctoral Fellowship at George Washington University who, over the years, has been a confidante and fellow traveler on the path to greater spiritual enlightenment. Her comments on the manuscript were most helpful as I attempted to fill in gaps and tie up loose ends. I thank my neighbor Elise Ellick for being one of the first persons to respond to the project with such enthusiasm as I finished it. In many respects, I doubt that I would have completed the project when I did had it not been for Dr. Rachel Talton’s Flourish conference, where I met Christine Labas, the woman who offered to be my accountability partner during the one-hundred-day period following the executive coaching session at that women’s leadership conference. Had I not begun the serious writing routine that I openly committed to in public (in fact, I still have notes from that coaching session on the wall in my home office) and that Christine vowed to hold me to, I wonder whether this book would ever have been completed.

My mother-sister-friend, Dr. Patricia Stewart, has been in my life since I was nine years old. Her son, the late Dr. Ernest Stewart, had been my debate partner all through high school and a friend into our adult lives. It seemed only natural that Dr. Pat and I would remain close and become even closer when he died years ago. Her wise counsel about life and education, her commitment to the interconnection between faith and social justice, her understanding of the connection between community and public policy, and her habit of avid reading, journaling, and sending me e-mail links to what catches her fancy, have been staples of my adult life. I love her dearly and thank God for our friendship. I am most grateful for the Honorable Judge Sheila Abdus-Salaam, the sister-friend I met the very first day I set foot on campus at Barnard College. We met as teenagers and bonded over being smart enough to have gotten accepted to Barnard despite family challenges we left back at home, and we have remained close over the years as we have endured marriages, divorces, illnesses, family traumas of one sort or another, the deaths of our parents, the deaths of friends, and the joys of our longstanding connections to our Barnard-Columbia family. Our sisterhood has been an important mainstay of my adult life. Though we are not actually related, I count her as family and have been blessed by our friendship down through the years.

I cannot say enough about my family, including my brothers (from my dad’s marriage to Mom), Calvin, Bennett, and Rowland, and my other siblings, Del, Debbie, Maurice, Danny, and Deanna. I consider their love a true blessing. Rowland, in particular, was a constant support through our caregiving for Mom during her final years. In fact, even before I came back home to Ohio, he was my regular source of information about her well-being and Chuck’s. When I couldn’t write, I could always talk through serious challenges with him. I appreciate his warm spirit, his great sense of humor, and his prayer life—a prayer life I could trust—and I am truly grateful for our close relationship and the encouragement from my sister-in-law Deborah.

Most of all, I am grateful for the love and encouragement I received from my sons, Rashad and Jamal. They have always kept me grounded, even when I was tempted to give up on myself. They lived the strawberry room in more ways than one. Even when I was nervous and reluctant to tell this story, they trusted me. When I explained I was compelled to tell the story because it was my own, not theirs, they also trusted that I would tell my story with respect for them and their dad. Rashad’s wife, Renita, and Jamal’s wife, Kanika, have been wonderful daughter-in-laws, and I have always had their support as well. I pray that my grandsons—Nyles, Nazir, and Carlton—will one day read this book and gain greater insight about their grandmother and her faith. I hope they will also appreciate the reality that their grandfather, Michael Mobley, and I have enjoyed the blessings of forgiveness and friendship that come from the way time can heal and give perspective.

I thank the pastors who have nurtured my spiritual growth. Reverend Dr. C. A. Lundy, pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Woodbridge, Virginia, was my pastor when I rededicated my life to Christ, got baptized again, and heard the call on my life to ministry. I am forever grateful for his guidance and prayers in the early months of trying to come to terms with what it means to teach and preach the Gospel. His wife, Jackie, has been one of my steadfast cheerleaders and supporters. I thank Reverend Dr. James Cone of Union Theological Seminary, not only for being the first person to help me connect my faith with social justice and the history of the black church when I was an undergraduate at Barnard College taking classes that were cross-listed with the seminary, but also for writing me a letter of recommendation for Howard University’s divinity school. After my first mentor in the ministry, Reverend Doris Crews, Dr. Cone was the second person I told, God must have a sense of humor to have called me to ministry! Dr. Cone assured me that many ministers feel that way initially.

Not long after I was called to ministry, I shared the news with Reverend Dr. Ronald Fowler, the former senior pastor of Arlington Church of God, where I am now a member. In many respects, he was my first father in the ministry, when I consider all the years of growing up in Robert Street Church of God (the former name for Arlington). The pride, support, and prayers that I have received from him and his wife, Joyce, over the years have been a blessing to me. When I returned home in 2008 to be near Mom and Chuck, much to my surprise, Brother Ron, as we affectionately call him, was stepping down after forty years to hand the pastorate over to Reverend Dr. Diana Swoope. Pastor Di, as we affectionately call her, has been a blessing beyond measure. She has prayed for me, given me opportunities to preach as one of her lay ministers, and encouraged me in my ministry through her dynamic preaching and leadership. I doubt that she knows just how much of an inspiration she has been to me, but I pray that I will discover as many ways as possible to let her know.

There is a host of others who helped me at one point or another, either by asking me how the book was going or simply by offering words of encouragement. Alfie Chatman-Walter has been a true cheerleader of this project from the moment she heard about it, and I’m grateful for her and other friends and colleagues at Case Western Reserve University who encouraged me to keep writing, despite numerous distractions and work commitments. To my Barnard sister-friends, Rachelle Viki Browne, Deborah Thorny Thornhill, and Dr. Marsha Coleman-Adebayo; to my other family and friends, including my cousin JoEllen Rutland, Dr. Alfreda Brown, Veronica Sims (who let me share about this project at her Let There Be Peace gatherings), the Honorable Judge Carla Moore, Asenath Cindy Nevels, Gloria Redding, Anne Sojourner, Dr. Keith Clark, Kenyatta Dorey Graves, Chadra Pittman-Walke, Dr. Benson Cooke, Dr. Keysha Gamor, Dr. Deborah McDowell, Reverend Dr. Mary Wade, Reverent June Gatlin, my aunt Monica, my dear friend Delyna Diop, Dr. Jacqueline McLemore, Terrie Williams, Dr. Julianne Malveaux, and my beloved sister-friend Betty Roberson; to my beloved sorors of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Incorporated and to everyone else who offered support and encouragement, I thank you!

There are several women, including family, fellow sister scholars, friends, and former students, whom I told about this memoir. They died before I finished the manuscript, but I have to pay tribute to them by naming them—Dr. Claudia Tate, Dr. Nellie McKay, Lorraine Hattie Spence, Shawnee Price, Charisse Cecil, and my cousin, Parlee Pal Templeton Watson.