Praise Him Anyhow - Volume 1

by Vanessa Miller

  As always, she began the alert, which went out to Ramsey and their seven children, with her favorite scripture in Psalm 150: Praise ye the Lord. Praise God in His sanctuary: praise Him in the firmament of His power. Praise Him for His mighty acts: praise Him according to His excellent greatness. Let everything that hath breath praise the Lord. Praise ye the Lord.

  Today she noticed something in those scriptures that she’d never paid much attention to before. The verse didn’t say praise God because everything was wonderful in her life, or because God had answered all her prayers and she had need of nothing. No, this verse simply admonished her to praise God just because of who He is... and that’s what she intended to do. “Thank you, Jesus,” she whispered as her fingers danced in praise over her computer keys.

  She began writing: ‘I normally send out praise reports that other people have written. But today I want to share with you some things that have been on my heart. First off, my prayer is that none of you ever have to deal with anything in life that causes you to lose your ability to praise God. In my fifty-plus years on this earth, I have dealt with two issues that almost stole the praise from my lips: The divorce from my first husband and the molestation of my son. I couldn’t understand how people in this world could be so evil and how things like this could happen. But these last few days I have spent most of my time studying the Bible. And as I was reading the twenty-fourth chapter of Matthew, it all became clear to me.

  In the beginning of that chapter, one of the disciples asked Jesus to tell them what signs to look for so they could tell when the end of the world was near. The answer that Jesus gave sounded a lot like the world we are living in now. He said,

  Ye shall hear of wars and rumors of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet. For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, and divers places. All these are the beginning of sorrows.

  Then shall they deliver you up to be afflicted, and shall kill you: and ye shall be hated of all nations for my name’s sake. And then shall many be offended, and shall betray one another, and shall hate one another. And many false prophets shall rise, and shall deceive many. And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold. But he that shall endure to the end, the same shall be saved.

  And the gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come.

  After writing those verses, Carmella grabbed a tissue and dabbed her eyes a few times. She then continued her email to her children...

  I’m in tears as I am writing this to you all because I see it so clearly now. Evil is running rampant in this world because the devil knows his time is short... he knows that God is about to sound the trumpet and all those who have endured the hardships of this wicked generation and kept the faith will one day see the glory of God revealed. So I’m asking all of you, the Marshalls and the Thomases, to keep the faith and never lose your praise.

  As for me and Ramsey, we will always praise and thank the Lord for the seven beautiful children we now share. You all are so precious to us and we continually pray blessings over your lives, even knowing that the evil one will try to block your blessings. But be of good cheer, because the God Ramsey and I serve has overcome the world and the evil one. But Ramsey and I will not always be here to pray over you or to praise the Lord for you. These are things that every one of you must learn to do for yourselves.

  So from this day forward, I am challenging each one of you to find your praise. I will email you praise reports from time to time, but I will also be looking for your individual praise reports. Time is short and no one knows when the end will be. But one thing I do know... I intend to make it to heaven, and I want to see all of you there with me.

  And remember, if God never does anything else for you, He’s already done enough’.

  ***

  Holding hands as they strolled down the streets of a strip mall, Dontae and Jewel seemed at ease with each other after a night of dinner and a movie. “I like this.”

  “Like what?” Jewel asked with a raised brow.

  “Us... you and me.” He stopped walking, turned to her and while gazing in her eyes, trying to communicate all the love he felt, he said. “I want us to be together, Jewel. I feel as if a part of me is missing, with the way things stand between us.”

  Jewel put her hand on Dontae’s face as she told him as gently as possible, “And I want you to fight for our love.”

  That comment angered Dontae. He stepped away from her and lifted his hands heavenward as he tried to rein himself in. He’d been doing everything he knew to do for months now, trying to get back into her good graces. If that wasn’t fighting for their love, then what was it? Turning back towards her, Dontae demanded, “What do you think I’ve been doing?”

  “Oh, you’ve got a lot of fight in you right now.” She crossed her arms and stared at him for a long moment. “But what about five, ten or even twenty years from now? What happens when we’ve been married so long that we can’t even remember how it felt to be young and in love anymore... will you fight for our love then?”

  Dontae really wanted to say yes to five years from now, yes to ten years from now and even yes to twenty years from this very day. But it was always in the back of his mind that his mother and father divorced after twenty-three years. His parents didn’t have a prenup and therefore his father found himself being raked over hot coals in the divorce proceedings... not that he didn’t deserve it, but dang.

  They got back in the car. Dontae turned to her and said, “Real talk?”

  Jewel nodded.

  As they sat beside each other, in the parking lot of one of their favorite shopping centers, Dontae felt it was time to say what truly troubled him. “I love you with all my heart. But I don’t know what the future holds. Who’s to say that I won’t turn out to be just like my father and decide that twenty years is enough with one woman and then want a divorce so I can marry someone else?”

  “Real talk?” she asked of him.

  It was Dontae’s turn to nod.

  “If you could do me like that after I spent all those years loving you and making a home for the family I hope to have with you... then you deserve to lose your money.”

  “You would take all of my money?” Dontae asked incredulously.

  “If you could cheat on me and then trade me in for some teenager, I certainly would take all—” she paused, then corrected herself, “half your money. I think that’s a fair price to pay for breaking my heart, don’t you?”

  Dontae didn’t know what to say to that. Jewel hadn’t gotten herself injured on the football field and she didn’t go in to his office every day and bust her butt for his clients. He did all the work and he really didn’t think it fair that he’d have to split the spoils if their marriage should come to an end. But he also knew that Jewel wasn’t a gold digger. She wasn’t looking for an easy paycheck. She truly believed that not having a prenup would make Dontae want to stay and work things out. Whether that was true or not, Dontae couldn’t say.

  He drove Jewel home, walked her to the door and when he tried to kiss her good night, she stopped him. “I think we first need to figure out what we are going to do before we cloud the issue any further.”

  Dontae nodded, then asked, “Do you still want me to pick you up for church in the morning?”

  “I would like that very much,” Jewel told him.

  “Okay, well I’ll be here at eight in the morning, so we can do breakfast before church.” With that said, Jewel went into the house leaving Dontae standing on the porch looking lost and alone.

  12

  When Dontae arrived home Ramsey Jr. and Ronny wanted to know how he felt about the email his mother had sent out that night. Since he’d been busy pouring out his heart to Jewel, he hadn’t seen the email yet. His brothers seemed to really want to
get his feedback, so Dontae went to his room and turned on his computer. His mother hadn’t sent them a Praise Alert in a few weeks, so even though Dontae wouldn’t admit it to his brothers, he was kind of excited about reading what his mom had to say.

  As he opened the email and read the first few paragraphs, Dontae didn’t know whether he should be angry with his mother for putting his business out there or if he should feel sorry for how hard the knowledge of what happened to him hit her. He double checked the “sent to” area and was comforted by the fact that the email was only sent to their immediate family... since his brothers and sisters already knew the story, Dontae wasn’t upset with his mother.

  Even though he didn’t like thinking about that horrible incident, he decided to continue reading to discover what else his mother had to say. He was totally caught off guard by the statement about the end times. But ever since he was a little boy, his mom had always talked about something called the rapture, when the people of God would suddenly disappear and then God would judge the ones that had been left behind. Dontae seriously doubted that the world was about to come to an end, but the more he read from the twenty-fourth chapter of Matthew that his mother had mentioned in her email, he began to wonder if she wasn’t right. The world did seem a lot more evil these days, with people doing whatever they pleased no matter how it affected anyone else.

  When he was a kid, Dontae used to trust in God and people in general. But things happened that destroyed his trust in mankind and those things had even rocked his faith. He’d never told his mom that his faith wasn’t where it used to be, but somehow she had known. And now she was asking him to keep the faith that he’d laid down a long time ago. “How can I praise God when,” Dontae poked his forehead with his index finger, “my head is still all messed up?” Dontae was talking to the computer screen as if his mom was on Skype or doing FaceTime with him and she could answer his questions.

  Dontae’s life had been affected by a man who thought he could use and abuse young boys and never face any consequences. Dontae had tried his best to move past the pain and humiliation that night caused him. But there was another man in his life who had caused him pain that had not been so easy to sweep under the rug. The way his father left his mother after claiming for years to be so in love with his wife, had stunned him.

  To be honest Dontae wished that he could just open his mouth and praise the Lord for doing this or that for him. But right now things were so jacked up that he just wasn’t going to be able to do that. He turned off his computer and even though he knew his brothers were waiting for him to come out of his room and discuss the email with them, he just couldn’t face them right now either. So he turned off his laptop and went to bed hoping to drown out the cares of life.

  But his troubles seemed to meet him in his sleep as tossed and turned, this way and that way, trying to figure out what was going on and why he couldn’t seem to find anyone. His mother was gone, his brothers and sisters were gone. Dontae became frantic in his dream-like state of mind. He worried that something terrible might have happened to the people he loved and then his heart felt as if it was about to jump out of his body as Jewel’s face appeared before him.

  She said, “I tried to wait for you.”

  What did that mean? Had Jewel given up on him and found someone else? Not his Jewel. She wouldn’t have left him like everyone else had. He rushed over to her house and pounded on the door. He pounded on that door until his fist started to bleed. “Open the door!” he screamed.

  “She ain’t there,” Dontae heard someone behind him say.

  He turned around and saw an unkempt bearded man. “Where is she?”

  The man didn’t say anything, just looked up and pointed heavenward.

  “What do you mean?” Dontae mimicked the man by pointed heavenward. “I asked where is she... do you know or not?”

  “They’re all gone. My family, Jewel, and even old lady Maggie down the street. My wife kept warning me, but I wouldn’t listen... I wouldn’t listen,” the man said again with much sorrow in his voice as he walked away from Dontae, looking as if he was heading nowhere in particular, just out roaming the earth.

  Then other people came down the street looking as if they were aimlessly roaming the earth also, but they were all headed in the same direction. As Dontae stood there watching, hundreds, then thousands, then tens of thousands of zombie-like people walked past him. Curious, Dontae began following them.

  The walk was long and hard. Several people got in fights. Dontae witnessed one stabbing after the next, but the zombie-like people would just get back up after bleeding out and start walking again. “Where are we going?” Dontae screamed. The world had gone mad, and he needed answers.

  The next thing Dontae saw was his dad and Coach Linden in front of him. His dad took out a gun and Dontae shouted, “Don’t do it, Dad. You’ll just end up back in prison.”

  But Nelson didn’t seem to care about prison or about the fact that it was broad daylight. He lifted his gun and unloaded it into Coach Linden’s body. Dontae watched the man fall to the ground. Even though Dontae knew that Coach Linden had to be dead after being shot so many times, he was still tempted to kick the man. But as he approached, his dad reached out a hand to stop him.

  “You’re a better man than me, son. Let the Lord fight your battles, just like your mama taught you.” After saying that Nelson drifted into the crowd. Then Coach Linden got back up and continued roaming the streets with the rest of the zombies.

  Dontae was so confused by everything he was witnessing. All types of evil and degradation was going on. People were being murdered left and right, but none of them were able to stay dead. What in the world was going on?

  All of a sudden everyone seemed to stop and lift their heads, staring into the sky as the heavens seemed to open up and a booming voice said, “Why do you seek Me now? Why do you long for what you cannot have?”

  At those words the people around Dontae began weeping. Then they started clawing as if trying to reach the sky.

  The booming voice said, “Depart from me. I never knew you.”

  Suddenly Dontae realized who was speaking. It was God and Dontae didn’t like the fact that he was being included in the same boat with all these zombies. Dontae lifted his eyes to the Lord and asked, “What about me, Lord? Don’t you know me?”

  “I once knew you. But you refused to trust Me.”

  That’s not fair, Dontae wanted to shout and scream at the Lord. Of course he didn’t trust God... he didn’t trust anyone. How could he be held accountable for that? “Don’t You know what happened to me?”

  God simply said, “Don’t you know who I am? I am the God who wanted to heal you. But you chose not to come to Me. And now I will not come to you.”

  “No!” Dontae reached out a hand, hoping and praying that he could stretch that hand long enough to reach heaven. But the heavens had closed up and darkness descended upon the earth. And everyone he loved was gone; he couldn’t even find his father anymore, since he had taken off running after shooting Coach Linden. Dontae was alone, but he didn’t want to be alone. He wanted to live, love and laugh. But his mom’s words kept coming back to him... the end of days... the end of days.

  Dontae turned from one side to the next, watching all of the horror and confusion that was unfolding right before his eyes. His mother had told him that after God pulled his chosen people out of the earth and the ones that had been left behind realized that there was no longer any hope for them—that they were doomed to die without Christ— the people would cry out to God, but would not be heard. He was witnessing that now. As the heavens had shut up to them and no one was able to get an answer from the Lord, the people’s eyes grew hard with hatred and they began shaking their fists toward heaven.

  But Dontae didn’t blame God for his fate. As he stood there in the midst of the lost, knowing that he was one of them, he remembered his mother telling him that he didn’t know God for himself, that
he only knew about her God. And he realized that he needed to spend the rest of his life, no matter how miserable it would be, getting to know God for himself.

  Tears drifted down Dontae’s face as he got on his knees, steepled his hands and began praying to a God that wasn’t interested in hearing from him anymore. But at that moment, Dontae had nowhere else to turn and since he knew that God was merciful, he figured he’d give it a shot.

  But as he was praying, the angry mob all around him noticed and they didn’t like what they saw. One of them hollered at Dontae, “Get up! Don’t you know that prayer is for fools? There is no God.”

  Another proclaimed, “Can’t you see all the destruction around us? Doesn’t that tell you that God is just some mythical being? Stop wasting your time, get up and help us find the families we have lost.”

  But Dontae ignored them and just kept praying, telling God that he didn’t want to live in a world without Him. That he would hold on to his faith and trust and believe that God would one day come back for him. As Dontae continued praying and continued to believe that he would one day be rejoined with his family, he felt a kick to his back and a blow to the head. He unsteepled his hands and opened his eyes, wondering what the devil was going on.

  The mob had turned on him. From every which way he looked, people were picking up sticks and coming at him with knives. They were foaming at the mouth, as one blow and then another assaulted his body. Dontae tried to get up and run, but the assault was too brutal; he couldn’t get away. He felt helpless, just as he had that night Coach Linden had entered his bedroom. But this time, instead of throwing up all over himself, he called on the name of the Lord to free him from the attack... and the funny thing was, now that God had left the earth to its own kind, Dontae actually trusted that God would and could deliver him.