No Longer Afraid of my Goliaths

By Everette W. Howell

Everette W. Howell was born on the beautiful island of Barbados. He is an ordained Minister with degrees from universities in the USA. He is a Certified Family Life Educator. He has served as a Pastor, educator, administrator, and counselor, in the Caribbean, the USA, and the United Kingdom. He is a VP with the Barbados Association of Palli

• Language: English
• Publisher: The Regency Publishers, US
• Release date: Sep 12, 2022
• ISBN: 9781959434153

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Copyright © 2023 by Everette W. Howell.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author and publisher, except by reviewers, who may quote brief passages in a review.

ISBN: 978-1-959434-16-0 (Paperback Edition)

ISBN: 978-1-959434-17-7 (Hardcover Edition)

ISBN: 978-1-959434-15-3 (E-book Edition)

Some characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to the real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

Book Ordering Information

The Regency Publishers, US

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Printed in the United States of America

Dedication

July 28-2022

This book, No Longer Afraid of My Goliaths is lovingly dedicated to the memory of My parents, Cecil Da Costa Howell, Myril Elaine, and my mother-in-law, Athena Iotha Boyce.

Their deaths significantly impacted my life and caused me to give serious thought to the experience of grief. For them I grieved deeply.

I thought about life and about death. Life is challenging and sometimes hopeless and frustrating, but to die is to be robbed of friends, their fellowship, and their sharing and loving forever.

I have learnt not to be afraid of living or dying because that which Christ has promised is the greatest option ever offered to a person. It is the promise of life eternal, free from pain, loss and death.

Thanks, Dad and Mom for giving me that perspective.

Appreciation

To my wife, Audrey, our children, Richelle and Siegfried and my brother, Dr Halsted Howell, for their advice in the preparation and reading of the manuscript.

To, Leanna Stewart, Jasmine Griffith and Janice Applewhite for their willingness to type the manuscript and to encourage me to meet deadlines.

Thanks to each one who has made useful suggestions for the improvement leading to the final product, No Longer Afraid of My Goliaths.

Introduction

There are few families that have not experienced loss of some treasured item.

All families have experienced the emotional pain associated with the loss of a family member to death.

From these experiences, many have asked questions about grief, death, what happens to their loved ones when they die and where do they go.

Do the dead go to some place to suffer or to experience karma for some indefinite period? Who supervises such situations if they exist?

This volume recognizes that we grieve when we suffer loss and it answers many of the questions about death, the state of the dead and what happens when one dies.

This book assures that death, when it comes, can be faced with hope and courage because of the biblical answers about this important human experience.

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Chapter 1

Pomp and Circumstance

For us, it was a graduation weekend with a difference. My wife Audrey and I had travelled from the tourist resort Caribbean Island of Barbados to the United States of America by way of St. Croix in the Virgin Islands, and Puerto Rico. Now, tired and worn by the journey, we arrived in the city of Huntsville, Alabama, the home of Oakwood University. Our son, Siegfried, would be graduating from Oakwood University in a few hours.

Our tired bodies and minds, no longer alert, received the necessary fillip; for as we exited the airport, we were welcomed with opened arms, excited and high-pitched voices from the prospective graduate, and his friends.

We were on time for the Commencement Service. Our son was well and ready for the occasion. His parents had arrived, his bills were cancelled, his grades entered, four years of studies, sleepless nights, nervous tensions and nail-biting were being rewarded.

What made this graduation weekend so different? It was not the pomp and circumstances usually associated with graduation. It was not even the nostalgia a former graduate experienced while witnessing the celebrating students march in their full regalia.

It was not the attractive colors on the professors’ gowns, the varied shaped mortar-board caps, or their free waving tassels, or even their beautiful capes trailing on their shoulders.

All of these had been experienced to the fullest in the past. I had drunk my full cup already. I had reached cloud nine on previous occasions when the music Pomp and Circumstances was played and the heart-beat quickened. We had joined happy parents before and had identified with the struggles and successes of children who were graduating. Our daughter, Richelle, had graduated from this University a few years before.

Were we excited? Yes, we were. Audrey whispered in my ear, ‘I am excited’.

But those did not make the difference for us then. What made the difference that weekend? On the Oakwood Campus, that weekend, were many of our classmates of nearly thirty years ago. They too were present to feel the thrill of excitement as their sons and daughters graduated.

We had come with bespectacled eyes and arthritic limbs to revel in the moment of glory. We greeted each other with laughter and warm embraces. We exchanged cordialities such as, you haven’t changed a bit since I last saw you nearly thirty years ago. O, how kind nature can be! Nature had so dimmed our vision over the years so we really could not see the ravages of time on our fifty-year-old bodies. Or maybe we chose not to see it, for to see it was to admit that change and decay were setting in.

The honest on-looker knew that we had already joined the ‘Five B’s Club’, for some of us were completely bald, or working feverishly to stop the remnants of hair from departing, too rapidly. Others were appealing to the chemist to find the correct color to give the remaining hair the correct shade, while neglecting to tell moustache to coordinate with the head.

Some had applied for ‘bifocals’ to facilitate reading the instructions on the new camera purchased for recording the glory of the weekend. Some were using the ‘bridges’ because milk teeth and wisdom teeth were all now gone.

The battle of the ‘bulge’ had been fought and lost. The thirty-two inches waist of thirty years ago was now thirty-six or thirty-eight. The brisk walk of thirty years ago had been replaced by a more deliberate pace because the ‘bunions’ were making their presence felt. Yet we teased and assured each other that no changes had taken place in the thirty years. The reminiscences of thirty years revealed much during that weekend.

Some classmates had done rather well. Ralph was a medical doctor, a specialist in cancer research he was there, balding and bifocaled, to see his daughter march. Hal was a general surgeon. He had come to support his son who had already been accepted for medical school.

Doreen was there as another of her three beautiful daughters had graduated and was planning to do a master’s degree in Anesthesiology. Ward was there, he could not get his camera to work. Perhaps he could not read the instructions. His daughter was graduating.

Our son was there. He had studied biochemistry and was still deciding what facet of chemistry he should pursue. Judy was there. Judy had lost her sight and had to be guided to her seat.

Suddenly, light broke through, and I began to see it. Nature had put our replacements in place. We were being replaced. I had been replaced.

This aging group of alumni, parents, senior citizens; friends and relatives attending graduation, were gradually and imperceptibly being replaced. Nature was ensuring that life goes on. Parents were being replaced. These fifty-year old parents had come to the graduation of their children, but in a sense, they were witnessing a new generation of professionals being prepared to replace them.

That was what made that weekend of Pomp and Circumstance a unique one for me. It was a delicate time for us. Insurance companies make our premiums high at this stage because much time is not left for the policy. It is the time of mid-life crisis for men and changed of life for ladies. It is a time when job changes and job losses have traumatic effect on men. It is almost too late to be retrained and retreaded, relocated or retrenched.

For more than twenty-five years we functioned as parents for our children. Mothers nursed the sick ones back to health and fed them to keep them healthy. Their warm arms and caring words provided comfort and solace to little souls. Fathers were security and ensured family solidarity through the turbulent and stressful teenage years. Children were taught to be seen and not heard. To contradict their seniors in public was an act of unpardonable proportions. Their musical selections caused us headaches and earaches. Of course, our more mature and discriminating selections caused them equal pain, if, they remained awaked long enough to listen.

We told them about the rules of the home, what time they should go out and by what hour they were expected to be back home. We even advised them on their selection of personal friends. Money was not a commodity to be wasted on junk foods. Money was a scarce commodity, difficult to get in but would quickly slip through the fingers of teenage hands.

We had guided them on the importance of respecting people, their person, and their property. The use of the family car was an event to be treasured and recorded in the diary. That boy who, just a few years ago, had sneaked the car out of the garage and had covered the scratch with shoe polish was now making his own decisions on when to come in and when to go out and advising us on the use of his car. We had been replaced.

That day, they marched with pomp and pride and a triumphant air. They had survived mass-produced cafeteria meals, endless laboratory sessions, boring professors, meaningless tests, and pestering parents.

There they were, teeth exposed in jubilation, responding to friendly congratulations and commendations. Just look at them, born alone, but now vividly demonstrating the need for the physical presence and support of someone of the opposite sex.

"Mum, dad,