Life's Dance

By K. L. Smith

Life's Dance is an assortment of my life's memories and experiences that, even in my twilight years of life, still sit prominently in my heart and soul. I love all the characters that have traveled into and out of my life. Each character, whether good, bad, or in-between, added something to advance the days of my life. Life is a dance filled with every genre of music and lyrics and every type of dance. Some of the dances and musical lyrics of my life have been sad with hard lessons to learn. Some have been slow and sweet. Others have been frenzied, joyful, exciting, adventurous, passionate, and filled with love. Some of the people that I have met dance to the beat of a different drummer than most of us.

The sad times and the bad times make the good times much better. During life's good times, we plant seeds of goodness so that when the bad times come, with the proper love and nurturing, we can turn the bad times into something good. I believe that every person that we meet has a reason for being in our lives. We do not cross paths with anyone by chance. Some people are in our lives for a short time. Some people come into our lives at exactly the right time, often just in the nick of time. We have those people who are with us for a lifetime. We have people who love us and people that we love. We learn a lesson of some kind from every person we meet.

This assortment of my life's memories and experiences is in no particular order. I have written them as they have popped randomly into my head and flowed through my fingers onto the pages of this book. Each memory and experience represent a footprint on my heart and life that have served to make me the person that I am. I am incredibly grateful that God has given me the life that I have been fortunate enough to live.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Feb 8, 2023
• ISBN: 9798886859454

Book preview

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Life's Dance

K. L. Smith

ISBN 979-8-88685-944-7 (paperback)

ISBN 979-8-88685-945-4 (digital)

Copyright © 2023 by K. L. Smith

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

Christian Faith Publishing

832 Park Avenue

Meadville, PA 16335

www.christianfaithpublishing.com

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Other Books by K. L. Smith

To life and to everyone that I have ever known or will know before my final curtain drops. For whatever reason you were in my life, I am grateful that you were part of it. I am truly blessed to have had the life that I have been fortunate enough to live.

Everyone Does Not Love Me

The Gift of Dreams

Satan or Possum?

God's Messengers

Grief Is the Price of Love

Memories

Fancy Black Cadillac

What's in a Name?

God's Blessings

The Black Cat with the Big Green Eyes

Terrific Titus

Joy in the Morning

In the Zone

To Thine Own Self Be True

Pew on the Very Last Row

The Wish Book

Coincidence or a Trick of the Mind?

God's Divine Interventions

My Soul Mate

Life Is Just a Passing Breeze

Better than Going to a Carnival

Payback Is Hell

I Love Wings and Backbones

Theresa's Life's Choice

Simple Pleasures

The Past Is Only a Thought or a Dream Away

I Am Old Enough Not to Let My Wants Hurt Me

Sleeping through a Hurricane

Way Past Over Yonder

You Look Like Yoda!

Gadabout Frank

Remembering Patricia

Baby Sister

Neighborhood Grocery Stores, Alleys, Old Houses, and Clotheslines

All's Well that Ends Well

Unasked Questions

Cats or Dogs?

An Imperfect World

Be Prepared for the Worst and Hope for the Best

I'm Tired!

What Does God Look Like?

Taking Census

Rhythmatism

Laa-Laa Walks, Magic Rocks, and Sleeping Angels

Little Voices in My Head

Being Sarah

Reclaimed Wood

Peace and Comfort Are Wherever You Find Them

The Feeling of Being Less Than

The Heartbreak of Mental Illness

The Tree house

No Excuses

Just Breath, Pray, and Relax

Corporate America

At the End of Our Days

About the Author

Other Books by K. L. Smith

Life Behind the Train Station

Life on Heartsville Farm

Gemmy's Dreams

Gardenia Lane

Getting Past the Tears

Please-Don't-Rain Suitcase

The One Who's Not with Us

All I Have Is Me

To life and to everyone that I have ever known or will know before my final curtain drops. For whatever reason you were in my life, I am grateful that you were part of it. I am truly blessed to have had the life that I have been fortunate enough to live.

Everyone Does Not Love Me

I learned very early in my life that everyone does not love me. Even the people that I thought should love me did not. No matter how desperately I wanted them to love me, they still did not. That is a harsh lesson for a child to learn. I have managed to reach old age without being loved by everyone. It does not matter to me now. I learned to adapt and overcome any roadblocks, obstacles, and people that stood in my way. I have learned that who doesn't look for you and who doesn't miss you doesn't care for you. Destiny determines who enters your life, but you decide who stays. The truth hurts only once, and a lie hurts every time you think about it. There are three things in life that leave and never return: words, time, and opportunities. Therefore, value whoever values you and don't treat as a priority whoever treats you as an option. I learned to be grateful and appreciative for the people that did love me and accept me.

All my life, I have dreamed of a house. It is a big house. It is a little house. It has many rooms. It has few rooms. There are many windows and doors in this house. There are few windows and doors in this house. Sometimes, in my dreams, I get caught up in trying to close and lock all the windows and doors. There are too many of them. The people in this house are often going behind me unlocking and opening all the windows and doors that I have managed to close and lock. I have never been able to accomplish the task of getting all the windows and doors shut and locked. In my dreams, I often get pulled away from my attempts to shut and lock all the windows and doors. Other tasks and circumstances occur that demand my participation or my attention.

There is a bank of elevators in the center of the house. I often get stuck alone in one of them. It seems that the power goes off every time I am able to catch one of the elevators. I most often am unable to use the elevators because they get too full of people and there is no room for me to crowd into the elevators. I usually have to use whatever form of stairs is available to the two upper stories of this house in my dreams.

Every room in the house has more than one door. In every room, there is a door that opens into a hallway and another door that opens into another room or onto a porch. There are ceiling fans and a stone fireplace in every room. There are multiple bedrooms, living rooms, and bathrooms in this house that I dream about. In every bathroom, there are fireplaces and two entrance doors that open into two different hallways.

There is one large kitchen at the back of the house with several wall ovens and a multi-burner cooktop. There are several commercial size refrigerators and freezers. There is a huge pantry located off the kitchen that is filled floor to ceiling with canning jars full of every kind of produce imaginable. One side of the kitchen opens into a large dining room with many dining tables and chairs. In the dining room, there is an elevated stage for live entertainment. At the back of the dining room is a grand staircase that leads to the second and third floors of the house. On another side, the kitchen opens onto a huge screened-in porch that is filled with picnic tables, cushioned white wicker couches and chairs, and white wicker side tables. There are many ceiling fans. There is an opened brick fireplace that covers one whole wall of the screened porch.

The screened porch opens onto a gigantic covered open porch filled with rocking chairs and several swings. There are multiple ceiling fans. The view from the back porch is ever-changing. Sometimes the view is of a mountain range. Often, it is the view of a lake, a river, or an ocean. It sometimes is a view of tall skyscrapers. It sometimes is a desert view. It can be any type of view. In the yard by the open porch are many firepits, each circled by chairs that sit close to the firepits.

There are porches, decks, or stoops on every side of this house. On the southern side of the house are multilayered sunrooms separated by walls of glass windows and doors. In order to reach the yard on the southern side of the house, it is necessary to go through several sunrooms that are arranged like a maze with the doors unaligned and scattered about the glass walls.

There is a large covered cement stoop on the front of the house. There are several vintage sky-blue metal porch gliders against the wall of the house. Double entrance doors open from the stoop into a large foyer. There are multiple doors in the entrance foyer that open into multiple hallways that lead all over the house. One of the doors opens to a staircase that leads to the second and third floors of the house. The staircase is ever-changing. Sometimes it is a floating staircase with huge distances between the steps that make it dangerous or impossible to climb or descend. At times, the staircase becomes very tall and steep, making it difficult to climb comfortably. Sometimes the staircase changes into a tall, shaky ladder. Sometimes there are only ropes that must be maneuvered and navigated in order to ascend or descend to and from the upper floors. Sometimes it is a normal staircase that presents no problems in navigating to and from the second and third floors. Another of the doors leads into a large garage with three double garage doors that open electrically onto a concrete driveway on the front of the house.

On the northern side of the house is an open deck with a built-in swimming pool. There are patio chairs and tables with large umbrellas. There are lounge chairs suitable for sunbathing. On one end of the deck is a covered outdoor kitchen.

It is as if the house is alive and it is constantly changing to meet any needs that I have for a house. Mostly everyone I know lives in this house in one dream or another. Some of these people are deceased friends and loved ones from my past. Sometimes there are people living in this house that I do not know and people that I do not remember ever having seen before. Familiar movie and television personalities, both currently alive and deceased, dwell here. Well-known people from all walks of life have rooms in the house. Celebrities, politicians, friends, and enemies often pop up in this ever-changing house. At times, I live in this house alone.

It is a grand house with the finest furnishings. It is a simple house with just the bare essentials. Sometimes it is the perfect house with just the right amount of everything. It is located in the middle of a thriving metropolis. It is located in a remote area in a forest. It is located in a large estate. It is located in a quiet middle-class neighborhood. Sometimes this house is in low-income and crime-riddled neighborhoods.

Every house that I have ever lived in since birth is part of this house. In my dreams, I can go back to any day in my past life and live it again. Memories from my childhood come back and are so clear and vivid that it's like being young again. I do not get to choose what people or circumstances will appear in my dreams. My dreams are random. I do not know what will occur in my dreams until I close my eyes in sleep.

There are times that I dream of situations in my life that have not occurred yet. When these situations occur at a future date, it is déjà vu. I realize that I have already experienced these situations in my dreams. It is not unsettling for me when these dreamed situations come to fruition in the real world. This phenomenon has been part of my life for as long as I can remember. All the things that I dream about do not come true. I dream some bizarre and hilarious dreams in my dream world that could never possibly come true in the real world. For example, in my dreams, I can fly. There are other superhuman feats that I am capable of performing in my dreams.

My mother was psychic. She had prophetic dreams. She often correctly predicted the future through her interpretations of her dreams. This caused my mother a great deal of stress at times. Her grandmother also had prophetic dreams. She told my mother that it was a special gift that was sometimes a blessing and often a curse.

I never met my great-grandmother. She died before I was born. My mother told us many stories about her Granny Mary Sarah. She and my great-grandfather were from Ireland. They came to the United States as indentured servants to work in a textile mill in the North Carolina mountains. They brought with them a young son. My grandmother was the first of their offspring born in the United States. They had other children after my grandmother. My mother told us many stories about them. I did not try to remember all of the names of her relatives. I do not remember all the tiny details of the stories that she told us about their lives. As a child, it did not seem important at the time to ask questions or try to remember or to get the facts straight.

I remember some of the stories she told us about them and some of their names. I remember my mother's uncles, Jeff and Bill. They used to visit with us. I have a few very distant memories of my grandmother, Roxie. She died a few months after I was born. The memories that I have of her are probably mostly the things my mother and older siblings told me about her.

My late Grandma Roxie used to visit with me in my dreams in the house that I dream about. My dreams of her seemed so real and in those dreams of Grandma Roxie, I got to know her quite well. When I dreamed of her, we were the same age and we visited as young friends. In my dreams, it did not seem strange that I called a person that was the same age as myself Grandma Roxie. It did not seem out of the ordinary that we were the same age. Since dreams are not reality, nothing seems strange or unusual in dreams. In these dreams, Grandma Roxie knew all the things that were going on in my life and often gave sage advice on how best to deal with things that needed to be dealt with. It has been many years since I have dreamed about Grandma Roxie.

Grandma Roxie told me when I was twelve years old, "You try so hard to be perfect. You are not perfect, you are real. No one is perfect. By striving for perfection, you are setting yourself up for disappointments and frustrations. Life is messy. You must learn to find satisfaction and happiness in the middle of the messes. Let go of the idea of perfection. You are going to have cracks in your life. Some cracks will be small and others will be large. Let yourself be flawed, and allow yourself to make mistakes. There is no way that you are always going to have it all together. Your heart is going to break. You are going to hurt and you are going to feel the pain. You do not have to apologize to anyone for being broken. Every time you break you become a little more real. You become more aware of yourself and your feelings. You become more open to yourself. You realize your sensibilities.

With every crack, you learn a little more about yourself. You learn what you are made of: your strengths, your vulnerabilities, your courage, your fears, your tenacity. These cracks and broken pieces are part of who you are. Do not hide these cracks and broken pieces from the world. Through your brokenness, you learn to love the deepest. You come to appreciate the brightest moments in your life more. You become more compassionate, appreciative, understanding, and empathetic. You learn to embrace the light and the good things in your life and to savor them. The most beautiful and kindest people in the world are people who are beautifully broken. These beautifully broken people have been through the darkness and have come out into the light. Beautiful hearts don't just happen without trials and tribulations.

I took her advice to heart and allowed myself to relax and to enjoy life as it unfolded. I learned to go with the flow. I learned to find happiness, even in the middle of life's messes. Grandma Roxie and I grew up together in my dreams. We enjoyed many good visits in that magical house. I enjoyed growing up with Grandma Roxie. It was a comfort to know that she was only a dream away from me. After I became a working wife and mother, Grandma Roxie stopped visiting in my dreams. She was replaced in my dreams by other people in my life.

My mother told me and my siblings many things. She told us stories of her childhood and stories about our relatives and her friends. My mother taught us many skills that would help us survive. On Thanksgiving Eve, I was remembering my mother and all the delicious meals she lovingly prepared for us. She was selfless and did so many wonderful things for us. I remember all her hard work for our family. She always put our needs above her own.

There were not many things that my mother could not do. She was a great cook. She cooked three meals a day, seven days a week. She was a wonderful seamstress. She made all our clothes without store-bought patterns. Often, our clothes were made from feed sacks and flour bags. She grew the most beautiful flowers I have ever seen. I look out my window at my blooming camellia bushes. They remind me of my mother. She called the camellias winter roses. So many things remind me of my mother.

I learned so much from her. I helped her do laundry, clean the house, and cook. She was very strict about cleanliness. Everything that my mother had was clean. We took a good bath every night before we were allowed to crawl into her clean beds. We were poor, and she often told us, It's okay to be poor, but it is not okay to be dirty. Cleanliness is next to godliness!

She believed in good behavior. She told us, You don't have to be the smartest person in school, but you do have to behave yourselves and do the best you can. Being kind to others is more important than trying to know everything.

I helped her take care of our farm animals and worked beside her in the fields. I was given a hoe almost as soon as I could walk. My father shortened the hoe handles to make the hoes easier for small children to use. My mother taught us to harvest and process foods for our pantries and freezers. She knew so much about planting crops, growing vegetable gardens, and taking care of animals. She taught me many natural cures and healing procedures that were taught to her by her ancestors. I believe that God has put something on this earth to cure everything that's ailed us. Both mental and physical ailments. We just need to find them.

My mother was very superstitious, and I remember so many of her interpretations of how to detect and ward off evil spirits. She was a Christian. Due to her deafness, she did not attend church. She stayed home and read her Bible and listened to church services on the radio or television. She turned the volume up so loud that the windows in the house vibrated and the sound traveled to all the neighbors, whether they wanted to hear it or not. She taught us that the Bible has the answer to any problem that we may encounter in life. My mother could find a verse in the Bible that was appropriate for any situation that occurred in our world.

She taught me the verse in the Bible that stops bleeding. She used it often. This may sound a little spooky to someone who has never seen the verse work. I have seen it work and I have used the verse myself to stop bleeding. Ezekiel 16:6, And when I passed by thee, and saw thee polluted in thine own blood, I said unto thee when thou wast in thy blood, Live; yea, I said unto thee when thou wast in thy blood, Live.

There was not a mean or selfish bone in my mother's body. She loved everyone and was good to everyone, even when they didn't deserve her love and kindness. At seventy-five years old, I still miss her. My mother told us that through dreams, we could enjoy visits from our loved ones who had passed into heaven by placing an empty chair by our bedside. The empty chair is an invitation to our deceased loved ones to come visit us in our dreams. It is an excellent way to allow our departed loved ones to remain with us for moments at a time. It keeps them in our thoughts and hearts.

There is an empty chair by my bedside. Over the years, I have enjoyed so many wonderful visits from my parents, siblings, and friends in my dreams. My mother visits in my dreams the most often. My missing loved ones seem to come visit at times when I need them the most. My heart is so full of love for my family and friends. My head is so full of memories that were made with loved ones. I remember all the many things my loved ones told me, especially my mother. All I have to do is dream and remember, and I have my loved ones back with me for moments at the time. To me, dreams are indeed a very precious and special gift.

My God gives me a peace that passes all understanding in the magical house in my dreams with people from my past, people in my present, people that I do not know, and people that I will meet in my future.

Write this letter to the angel of the church in Philadelphia. This is the message from the one who is holy and true, the one who has the key of David. What he opens, no one can close; and what he closes, no one can open: I know all the things you do, and I have opened a door for you that no one can close. You have little strength, yet you obeyed my word and did not deny me.

—Revelation 3:7–8

The Gift of Dreams

I am fortunate that I have no problem sleeping. I am also blessed with colorful, bizarre, amusing, romantic, inspiring, and interesting dreams. I always have dreams when I sleep. I see it as a special gift from our Creator. God has not only blessed me with the incredibly wonderful gift of dreams, but he has also given me a great capacity for remembering people and events from my very early childhood. The magical house in my dreams helps me to hold onto these precious memories from long ago.

The night was made for dreamers and dreams were made to come true. Often the answers to life's problems and circumstances come to us in dreams. That's why our elders often told us to sleep on it before making major decisions. I am surprised when some people tell me they do not dream when they sleep. My husband tells me that he does not often have dreams, and when he does, they are nightmares. Frank only has nightmares. He also tells me his dreams are not in color. He says his dreams are always in black and white. I understand that most people dream in color. To dream in black and white represents distance from you and the emotional events you see happening in your dreams.

There are a lot of psychological interpretations associated with dreams. There are many books written concerning the subject. My mother, Gemmy, had prophetic dreams that often caused her worry and stress. Prophetic dreams involve seeing images, symbols, or events surrounding the future. She told me that sometimes she saw her dreams as blessings, but she saw them most often as a curse. In her dreams, she was warned of dangers to herself and people that she loved. Through her dreams, she was warned of sicknesses, injuries, and deaths. Sometimes in her dreams, my mother saw good things in the future for herself and her loved ones. Mama said that it was most often best not to know what the future held. Knowing the future often caused her to not enjoy the present moments of her life.

I remember once my mother was in the hospital suffering with kidney stones. It was in the early 1960s before the advanced technologies in the treatment of kidney stones. She was drinking increased amounts of fluids, including beer, to hopefully flush the stones from her kidneys. The increased fluids therapy had not worked. She was scheduled to have the stones surgically removed.

A couple of days before she was to have surgery, she dreamed of my deceased paternal grandmother, Willie. My paternal grandmother never accepted my mother or us because we belonged to my mother. Grandma Willie was a Tuscarora Native American. My mother was half Cherokee. My mother's father was a full-blooded Cherokee. He was born and raised on the Cherokee reservation in the North Carolina mountains. The Cherokees had fought as allies with the white settlers against other Native American tribes in the Tuscarora War, one of the bloodiest colonial wars in North Carolina history. Grandma Willie hated Cherokees.

In my mother's dream, Grandma Willie gave her a handful of black watermelon seeds. She told her, Gemmy, boil the pulp from these black watermelon seeds and make a tea with them. They have to be black seeds. Drinking the tea will dissolve the stones.

When my mother awakened from her dream, the dream had seemed so real that her hand was still closed as if she were holding the seeds in her hand. My mother asked my sisters and me to get a watermelon and make the tea and bring it to the hospital. We did as we were told. My mother drank the tea. The next day, her doctor ordered a presurgical x-ray of her kidneys. The stones were gone. My mother told her doctor about her dream and drinking watermelon seed tea. He was aware of the Native American belief concerning the tea made from black watermelon seeds.

My mother interpreted the dream to mean that Grandma Willie had made it into heaven and had finally accepted her. She considered this prophetic dream as a blessing. Mama felt that Grandma Willie had saved her from the surgeon's knife.

I do not have dreams of my Grandma Willie. Maybe it's because she never wanted us in her life. She died when I was ten years old. I had tried over my ten years of life to get Grandma Willie to love me or at least like me. I felt that she should love me and my siblings because she was our grandmother. A strange thing about her was that she accepted only my baby sister out of our family of six children. She did things that let the rest of us know that she did not care for us. I remember my baby sister was welcomed into her house when our family traveled to Bridgeton, North Carolina, to visit with her. Me and my other siblings usually waited outside in my father's car. My mother was tolerated in Grandma Willie's presence because she always brought mountains of canned and prepared foods to her. Even Grandma Willie knew better than to bite the hand that fed her.

I remember once on a visit to Grandma Willie, me and my other outcast siblings had been sitting in the hot car in the summer heat for what seemed like hours. Grandma Willie had no shade trees in her yard. Her entire yard was planted in beautiful flowers. I thought that anyone who loved God's flowers should love their grandchildren. We had to use the bathroom and our throats were dry. Grandma Willie had an outhouse, and her source of water was a rusty hand pump in the yard outside her kitchen door. We held our full bladders as long as we could. We ventured to her outhouse. We had inside plumbing facilities at our house and were not used to an outhouse at that time in our lives. When my oldest sister opened the door to the outhouse, the stench almost blew us over. My sister, Theresa, hurriedly closed the door. We rushed to the back of Grandma Willie's barn to relieve ourselves. We covered our excretions with sand like we had watched our cats do.

After relieving ourselves, we met our brother, Doodle, at Grandma Willie's hand pump to quench our thirst. He showed us how to cup our hands to drink from the pump. With Doodle working the hand pump, we were all able to enjoy a drink of water and splash water on our faces to help us cool off a bit. We were giggling and laughing when Grandma Willie appeared at her kitchen door with the evilest look on her face.

She shouted at us. What are you hooligans doing? I see all of you are trying to tear something up! Get back in your daddy's car and stay there. I don't need a bunch of wild savages running around in my yard.

Needless to say, we all ran to the car and sought refuge from her hateful words. We were glad when our parents finally ended their visit with her.

There was one time that all of our family entered our widowed Grandma Willie's house. It was Easter, and my mother had cooked the usual mountain of foods and packed canned goods to take to Grandma Willie. When we arrived, my father found her lying on the floor where she had lain for several days. She had fallen and was not strong enough to right herself. She had a leg ulcer. Her leg was swollen three times its normal size. She was glad to see all of our family that day. We cleaned her house, washed her clothes, and bathed her. She needed medical attention. We closed up her house and got a nearby relative to watch her property while we took her to the hospital across the Neuse/Trent Rivers in New Bern.

She was hospitalized in New Bern, North Carolina, for a couple of weeks. When she was discharged from the hospital, she came to our house in Goldsboro to recuperate. Me and my siblings questioned why she was at our house instead of one of her other children's houses. She had eight grown children, including my father. Her other children lived closer to her than we did. They were adult children with whom she had relationships and that she actually seemed to like.

My mother told us that God wanted us to help Grandma Willie because it was the right thing for us to do. She quoted the Bible verse Luke 6:27–28: But to those of you who will listen, I say: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.

While she recuperated at our house, we waited on Grandma Willie. We assisted her to the bathroom and helped her bathe. We cooked for her and kept fresh water by her bedside. I picked fresh flowers for her. We were nothing but kind to her. She was not unkind to us. She was just not warm to us. When she was well enough to go back home, she never uttered one word of thanks to us.

Grandma Willie died a couple of years after her stay with us. I cried when she died. I did not cry because I would miss her. You do not miss what you never had. I cried because the door was permanently closed to ever winning Grandma Willie's acceptance and love. I believe that it was her great loss because we were so full of love that we would have liked to have given to her.

That is probably why she never visits me in my dreams at my special house. The empty chair is by my bedside. If Grandma Willie ever decides to visit with me, I will welcome her. Hopefully, if she ever visits, she can tell me why she never accepted my mother and most of my siblings. It is not anything that I worry too much about as an adult. I have experienced many rejections in my lifetime. It hurts when it happens, but with the help of God, I survive and get past it.

No matter what happens in our lives, we know that it will not last forever. There will be good, bad, and mediocre happenings. Life is a mix of all kinds of emotions and events. The good, the bad, and the mediocre will all pass away leaving us remnants and pieces in our memories.

Then, after doing all those things,

I will pour out my Spirit upon all people.

Your sons and daughters will prophesy.

Your old men will dream dreams,

and your young men will see visions.

—Joel 2:28

Satan or Possum?

As a Baptist woman, my mama, Gemmy, felt that there was some good in every human being alive. She only ran into one man that she felt was absolutely good for nothing. His nickname was Possum. She stated that he was the one exception to her belief. She called Possum a wellspring of devilment with his silver tongue and pretty words full of empty promises.

She predicted that this man would live a very long life because God could not accept such a man into heaven unless he repented for his sins and accepted Christ as his personal Savior. She didn't believe that Possum would ever see the error of his ways. She declared Possum was so dishonest, sinful, and manipulative that the devil would not allow him into hell because he did not want him in hell interfering in his deviling business. Gemmy stood by her belief that Possum would be on the earth a long time because neither God or the devil wanted him.

This silver-tongued devil of a man managed to get himself shot and killed over his involvement with another man's woman. When my mama heard of Possum's death, she declared, Batten down the hatches! We are going to have a devil of a storm tonight as the gates of hell swing wide open. The devil and Possum are most likely going to fight. Ole Possum may just outwit the devil tonight.

Just as Mama predicted, we had a terrible storm that evening with bright flashes of lightning, loud clapping thunder, and winds so strong that trees were uprooted. The storm went on for a long time. When the storm was finally over, Gemmy said, Well, I wonder who won the fight. Either Possum has overthrown the devil and has taken over hell and turned Satan loose on the earth or Satan won and Possum is loose on the earth. Either way, we are in a heap of trouble.

From that day forward, until she drew her last breath, when anything bad happened, she alternately blamed Satan or Possum. Today, with all the evil and crazy things happening in the world, I don't know whether to blame Satan or Possum. I believe there are a lot of Possums loose in this world that are either Satan's demons or advocates of the devil. There will be evil people until the end of time. I believe that God still has control over the world and over evil people. The only power that I have over evil is through prayer and faith in God. He is my strength, my safety, and my protection.

I was reminded of Possum and Satan at my youngest sister's funeral. At the cemetery, the funeral directors cut Peggy's interment service short because of an approaching thunder storm. It was an uncomfortable sultry July day. We hurriedly said our goodbyes to everyone there. My husband and I headed home.

We were traveling north on Interstate 95. Suddenly, we were hit with strong winds and driving rain. There were sharp streaks of lightning and loud claps of thunder. The rain became so heavy that we were unable to see the road in front of us. We could not see the signs on the interstate. We hoped to find an exit so we could get off the interstate to a safe place to wait out the storm. It was raining so hard that the only thing we could see were the taillights of our daughter's car. She and her husband were traveling in front of us.

I whispered a prayer and stated, All we can do is follow their taillights. I'll bet they are looking for an exit too. Maybe their younger eyes are better than ours. We are following them blindly. If they drive off the road and crash, we will be right behind them!

Driving in this storm also brought back the memory of my father driving through Hurricane Hazel on Highway 70 East on October 15, 1954. My Granddaddy Ben had died early that morning. We knew nothing about the hurricane making landfall on our coast at approximately eleven o'clock that morning. Back in those days, weather forecasters did not have the technology for tracking storms that they have today. We were headed to New Bern so my father could make my grandfather's funeral arrangements.

My mother was a very high-strung woman. She was all to pieces. She was shouting to my father, Cleo, you need to get off the highway. The clouds are so thick that it's as black as pitch out here. It's raining so hard that you can't see where we are going. I'm afraid that you are going to run into someone or run into a ditch. Someone might run into the back of us. Get off the highway before we all are killed!

My mother's anxiety and excitement caused Peggy, my four-year-old baby sister, to start wailing and crying. She was sitting in the front seat between my father and my mother. I was in the back seat with my other three siblings. My father's sister, Mary, was with us in the back seat. We had picked her up in Kinston to take her to our grandfather's funeral. I watched my Aunt Mary take a big gulp from her giant bottle of cough syrup that she always carried with her in her large black handbag. We were used to my mother's anxiety and excitement and to Peggy's wailing and crying. We had learned not to get worked up over it.

I watched my father clench his jaw and calmly say, Please calm down. You are working yourself into a tizzy and scaring the children. Do you think I don't know that I need to get off the highway? Just as you stated, I cannot see through this driving rain and darkness. I cannot see well enough to see a safe place to pull off the road. As soon as I see a safe place, I intend to get off the highway.

Right on cue, just as my father finished speaking, a sharp flash of lightning lit up the darkness enough that my father saw a driveway off to the right side of the highway. He carefully maneuvered his big green Nash automobile into the driveway. We sat in the driveway and listened to the trees cracking, breaking, and crashing to the ground. We could feel the wind rocking the car. We watched the sky light up with exploding electrical transformers and sharp flashes of lightning. The exploding transformers and loud thunder were deafening.

I started singing the hymn, How Great Thou Art. My sisters, Theresa and Patricia, and brother, Doodle, joined in the singing. We sang to the top of our lungs. We sang other religious hymns. The hymns seemed to calm my mother and Peggy. Our Aunt Mary's cough syrup had calmed her.

The sky was becoming lighter, the wind was calmer, and the rain was not as heavy. Suddenly, a large tree limb brushed against the passenger side of our car followed by a loud thudding sound that shook the earth. My mother screamed, and Peggy started wailing and crying.

My father got out of the car to walk around and to see if there was any damage to the car. When he got back into the car, he said, Praises to the good Lord! God was with us. God's angels must have laid that tree down. That tree limb that brushed against our car did no damage. If it had fallen a foot or two closer to the car, we would all have been creamed.

I was relieved on that October day in 1954 and again on that July day in 2019 when God carried us safely through the storms. At the end of both of these storms, we were safe and undamaged. I do not believe for one second that the storm on either day was because the gates of hell were swung wide open. I did not know my Granddaddy Ben very well. I know that the preacher spoke well of him at his funeral. I do know that my sister, Peggy, had a strong faith in God. She read her Bible and prayed every day. I believe that my sister is in heaven. I hope that Granddaddy Ben made it to heaven also. When Peggy visits me in my dreams, we share happy times in that magical house of my dreams. She is always at peace and free from the pain that she suffered in the last years of her life on earth.

I cannot speak for Possum or Satan. I do not know which one of them is creating all the havoc on earth. I never met either of them and hope and pray that I never do.

God is our refuge and strength,

always ready to help in times of trouble.

So we will not fear when earthquakes come

and the mountains crumble into the sea.

Let the oceans roar and foam.

—Psalm 46:1–3

God's Messengers

My mother, Gemmy, told us that God sends us messengers in the images of our deceased loved ones. She warned us that Satan also uses the images of our deceased loved ones to trick us into doing his evil work. Mama told us the way to distinguish whether the messenger was from God or from Satan was to ask the apparition, What in the name of God do you want? If the apparition is from Satan, it will disappear when it hears the word God spoken. If it is God's messenger, the apparition will give you the message from God.

I believe that both good and evil spirits surround us. The good spirits constantly fight the evil spirits to prevent them from wreaking havoc in our lives. God has armies of guardian angels that protect his people from the evils of the world. If we have faith in God and trust and obey him, his angels will protect us and deliver us from evil.

I do not know why, but my sister, Patricia, and I experienced several encounters with apparitions. Other than my mother, we were the only two members of our immediate family that had these experiences. Patricia and I shared many adventures and experiences in our childhood. We were not only sisters, but we were also best friends.

Our first encounter with a ghost occurred when we were quarantined with German measles. It was in the early summer of 1949. Being quarantined with my older sister, Patricia, is one of my earliest memories. I was two years old, and Patricia was four. We were very sick. Children were dying from the German measles outbreak. The health department posted quarantine signs on our front and back doors. My mother was pregnant with my baby sister and was not allowed to care for us. My father had to work, so he was off-limits to us.

Our neighbor, Miss Estelle, came each day to feed us, bathe us, and take care of our needs. Miss Estelle told us Bible stories, sang with us, and prayed for us. She