Crooked, Dented or Broken. Girl! Wear your Crown

By Yvette Wood

There is a special feeling inside when a woman wears a crown. We feel royal, worthy, majestic, beautiful, and powerful. But what happens when that crown becomes crooked, dented, broken, or worse yet, is removed? Women are often left feeling hopeless, discouraged, unloved, with no self-love or self-worth. We attach ourselves to the wrong people t

• Language: English
• Publisher: Palmetto Publishing
• Release date: Nov 12, 2021
• ISBN: 9781685150808

Yvette Wood

Evangelist Yvette Hope Wood is an author, ordained minister of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, artistic director for Grace of God Dance Ensemble, registered nurse, and the owner and CEO of Five Legacy Group LLC. A gifted Bible teacher, motivational speaker, and health care consultant, Yvette currently serves as the district president of hospitality and district secretary in the North Central District of the COGIC. Yvette has held numerous training seminars and counseled many women on who they are in Christ and wearing the Crown of God.

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

MY DADDY

"O

H MY GOD! WHY DON’T PEOPLE JUST MOVE OUT OF THE WAY?" I’M sitting here on I-495 in the DMV, (Washington, DC, Maryland, and Virginia) and no one is getting out of the way for the ambulance. Why do people not understand that whoever is in the ambulance needs urgent medical attention? Ugh! A lump forms in my throat. God, please don’t let me have a panic attack this morning. I have a meeting. I manage to pull through traffic to the side of the road, put my head on the steering wheel, and close my eyes. When I close my eyes, I see the bright lights of the ambulance flashing all too well. I hear the noise, and my heart starts pounding; I see EMS picking my daddy up off the ground. They put my father inside the ambulance and close the doors. The ambulance goes up the hill and crosses over the railroad track, and then it disappears. I have no idea that would be the last time I would see my daddy.

I’m standing in the bathroom with Johnson's baby powder up to my neck. My mother picks out a bright yellow dress for me to wear. She combs my hair just so perfectly, places several bows in my hair, and puts the yellow dress, my anklet socks with lace, and my black patent leather shoes on me. We get in the car and drive to a building that had men in black suits and white gloves standing outside. I have not seen this building before. People are standing outside. I see my aunts, uncles, and cousins. My mother holds my hand, and we walk into this building together. I look toward the front of the room, and I see what looks like my daddy in a box. I run up to the box to show him my pretty yellow dress, but when I touch him, he is cold. His eyes are closed. He looks different.

I scream, Wake up! Wake up, Daddy; it's me, but Daddy never opens his eyes.

My mother's friend leans down next to my right ear and says to me, Your daddy, he's dead.

That precise moment has been frozen in my mind for most of my life, the words echoing your daddy is dead. The mind of a child could not fully grasp what that actually meant. All I knew was that my daddy was not waking up.

My father was a tall man in stature with an infectious smile. He was a chef. I remember one time he came home with a whole hog's head, and I mean the whole hog's head from the neck up, which he sat right on the kitchen table. When I heard his voice, being such a daddy's girl, I went flying down the steps to jump into my daddy's arms. However, the first thing I saw was not my daddy but this hog's head sitting on the kitchen table with its eyes looking right at me. I screamed for dear life and took off running—right into the coffee percolator. Scalding hot coffee spilled down my legs; big, huge blisters were all up and down both legs. I started crying. My dad and mom came running when they heard me scream and took me to the hospital. My mom blamed my dad for bringing home the hog's head. My dad blamed my mom for leaving the percolator plunged in. I still have the scars on my legs today. It was not until later in life that I learned my father was going to make something called hog's head cheese, although some people call it sous.

I have very few memories of my dad. The memory that stands out the most is when he took me to Burger King and put a paper Burger King crown on my head and said, Be crowned queen, Yvette. I was officially a queen—Daddy's little princess; I knew that he loved me. I will always remember how when we left the place—that horrible building with ghostlike music where I saw my daddy in a box. We left,—my mom, my sister, and I went home, but home was never the same.

Some months after my father's death, my mom started gathering boxes, and we began to pack up all our belongings. We would soon be moving to a different side of town. My mother had problems getting the insurance company to pay her when my father died because he lied about his age. Turns out he was fifteen years older than my mother. But they paid her, and we were moving. My mother's friends would sing the theme song from the TV show The Jeffersons, Movin’ On Up! My grandmother, my father's mother who I called Momma Amy, would be moving in with us at our new home.

We all loaded up into the car, a blue 1968 Chevrolet Impala station wagon with the rear-facing seat where I would sit in the back of the car and look out the rear window. I