Rain in the Promised Land

by Vanessa Miller

  RAIN

  In the Promised Land

  Book 8

  Rain Series

  RAIN

  In the Promised Land

  Vanessa

  Miller

  Book 8

  Rain Series

  Publisher’s Note:

  This short story is a work of fiction. References to real events, organizations, or places are used in a fictional context. Any resemblances to actual persons, living or dead are entirely coincidental.

  Vanessa Miller

  www.vanessamiller.com

  Printed in the United States of America

  © 2015 by Vanessa Miller

  Praise Unlimited Enterprises

  Charlotte, NC

  No part of this ebook may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical—including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system—without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Other Books by Vanessa Miller

  Rain in the Promised Land

  Heaven Sent

  After the Rain

  How Sweet The Sound

  Heirs of Rebellion

  Feels Like Heaven

  Heaven on Earth

  The Best of All

  Better for Us

  Her Good Thing

  Long Time Coming

  A Promise of Forever Love

  A Love for Tomorrow

  Yesterday’s Promise

  Forgotten

  Forgiven

  Forsaken

  Rain for Christmas (Novella)

  Through the Storm

  Rain Storm

  Latter Rain

  Abundant Rain

  Former Rain

  Anthologies (Editor)

  Keeping the Faith

  Have A Little Faith

  This Far by Faith

  EBOOKS

  Love Isn’t Enough

  A Mighty Love

  The Blessed One (Blessed and Highly Favored series)

  The Wild One (Blessed and Highly Favored Series)

  The Preacher’s Choice (Blessed and Highly Favored Series)

  The Politician’s Wife (Blessed and Highly Favored Series)

  The Playboy’s Redemption (Blessed and Highly Favored Series)

  Tears Fall at Night (Praise Him Anyhow Series)

  Joy Comes in the Morning (Praise Him Anyhow Series)

  A Forever Kind of Love (Praise Him Anyhow Series)

  Ramsey’s Praise (Praise Him Anyhow Series)

  Escape to Love (Praise Him Anyhow Series)

  Praise For Christmas (Praise Him Anyhow Series)

  His Love Walk (Praise Him Anyhow Series)

  Could This Be Love (Praise Him Anyhow Series)

  Song of Praise (Praise Him Anyhow Series)

  Prologue

  The game was on, and Isaac Walker was at his plush 4,200 square foot suburban home relaxing as he watched the Charlotte Hornets play the Detroit Pistons. His sons, Donavan and Ikee, were in the media room with him. Before his wife, Nina, left for the movies with her daughter-in-law, she had made all their usual game day fare—Buffalo wings, popcorn, pizza, and spinach dip.

  “I wish the food could just float over here to us,” Donavan said. “These recliners feel so good I don’t want to get up.”

  “Well, you’ll starve if you don’t get up. Because I don’t care how comfortable these recliners are, they don’t have special feeding powers.” Isaac laughed at his son and then jumped out of his seat as his favorite basketball player did a lay-up over the head of another player.

  “Since you’re up, why don’t you pass those chicken wings over here,” Ikee said as he winked at Donavan.

  “And hand me a slice of that deluxe pizza,” Donavan added.

  “You boys better be glad that I have mad love for you.” Isaac walked over to the buffet table and made plates for his sons. He passed the plates over to them, and then made a plate for himself. As he was about to sit down, he heard a loud knock on the door. “Y’all hear that?”

  Donavan shook his head as Ikee said, “I didn’t hear anything.”

  “Someone is about to put a hole in the door with how hard they’re banging.”

  As he made his way out of the basement, Isaac hollered, “I’m coming!”, hoping that the banging would then stop. It did, but by the time he opened the front door he was surprised to see that no one was there. But the game was on so he wasn’t going to waste precious time worrying about it.

  He rushed back down to the basement and got comfortable in his recliner as he asked, “What did I miss?”

  “Only some fancy foot work and the dunk of the year,” Ikee told him.

  “Wonderful!” Isaac was really ticked about the door incident now. Some impatient person, who couldn’t wait the extra minute it took him to come upstairs to answer the door, made him miss what was sure to be an NBA highlight moment.

  The Hornets had hot hands tonight. Everything they shot seemed to find its way to the basket. Threes, jumpers, lay-ups… no problem. The game was all good until the fourth quarter when the Hornets went to sleep and lost the game.

  “What just happened?” Ikee asked as he stood up and threw his plate in the trash.

  “I don’t know, but if these guys want to make the playoffs, they are going to have to stop throwing the game away in the fourth quarter.” Isaac shook his head.

  “You need help cleaning up?” Donavan asked as he rose from his seat.

  “Nah, I just might leave this stuff until morning, I hear my pillow calling me.”

  “Okay, but you know mama said that if she fixed the snacks she expected us to clean up behind ourselves.”

  “You let me worry about your mama.” Isaac puffed out his chest like he was the man of the house and made the rules. It helped that he knew the housekeeper was scheduled to clean the house tomorrow morning.

  He said goodnight to his sons. Donavan was headed home and Ikee was meeting some friends at a pizza joint to study for his SAT. The thought of Ikee studying for his college exams caused a smile to inch across Isaac’s face as he closed the door behind his kids.

  Isaac then made his way back down to the basement, deciding that he would at least throw the plates in the trash and wipe off the counter. The housekeeper could take care of the rest when she arrived in the morning. It only took a few minutes, and he was done and headed back up the stairs when somebody started banging on the back door as if he owed them money.

  Ikee must have left his key. Isaac took his time getting to the back door. If Ikee was going to be a jerk about it, then Isaac didn’t feel obligated to get his son out of the cold March wind any sooner than necessary.

  He swung the back door open. “Boy, what is wrong with you?” Isaac questioned. He then noticed that he was yelling at the wind, because there was no one at his back door. Taking a quick look outside, Isaac figure some of the neighborhood kids were messing around. But just to be on the safe side, he turned on the alarm system before going to bed. If someone was out there trying to make trouble, he wanted the police to deal with them, rather than doing it himself. Isaac prayed that those days were over for him.

  Isaac couldn’t climb into his king-sized bed fast enough. The pillow-top mattress allowed him to sink into the mattress and drift right off to sleep. However, sleep didn’t last long. A ringing in his head disturbed him. As Isaac tossed and turned he wondered if the telephone was ringing, but he couldn’t reach out to get it.

  Then he heard a sound, and knew instantly what was happening to him—he was receiving another visitation. Isaac prayed that this one was from God or one of His heavenly angels.

  “Why won’t you let Me in?” the voice ask
ed.

  Isaac told Him, “I tried, but no one was at the door.”

  “What door?”

  “The front and back door.”

  “What about the door to your heart?”

  “Huh?” Isaac was dumbfounded. He felt at peace as he conversed with whoever was invading his head tonight. He knew that this intruder was no intruder at all. It was his heavenly Father. Isaac was puzzled by the question, because God already had his heart.

  “Follow Me,” the voice commanded.

  Isaac didn’t even think to question the command. He hopped out of bed and was instantly transported from the suburbs into the heart of the ghetto. His eyes blurred with unshed tears as he witnessed murders, robberies, and drugs being sold and used while lives were being ruined in the process.

  Iron bars were affixed to the windows of many small homes as if the people had become prisoners to the place they laid their heads. As zombie-like characters roamed the streets with no apparent destination, Isaac felt bile rising from the pit of his stomach as he realized exactly where he was standing.

  “Doesn’t look too promising now, does it?”

  Isaac asked the man, “Why did you bring me here?”

  “You used to call this place The Promised Land.”

  Looking around, Isaac wondered how he could have ever thought a place like this could be anything but the desolate place it now was. But back in the day, he and his partner-in-crime and best friend, Keith, thought they ruled these streets and that everything had turned up like roses for them. They never realized the stench that their illegal operation would eventually leave behind.

  “Doesn’t look very promising, does it?” The man repeated.

  Isaac shook his head. He was too ashamed to say anything because he had played a part in the destruction of this community. What could he say? He certainly couldn’t blame the people in the community like the media does. Isaac knew firsthand that hopelessness had brought on the ills that this community now suffered through.

  As if being frozen in time, everything stopped. There was no movement on the streets; the people appeared frozen and even the wind stopped blowing. Then, Isaac heard the voice of his Lord ask, “Do you love Me?”

  Isaac fell to his knees as the sound of his Lord and Savior’s question penetrated his ears. He was confused= because he had been serving the Lord for many years. Why would his Lord need to ask such a question? Had he not shown his love for the Father time and time again? “Yes Lord, You know that I love You.”

  “Then feed My sheep.” After saying those words, the Lord disappeared.

  Isaac’s eyes popped open. He was no longer in the heart of the ghetto. He was once again lying in his comfortable bed in a part of town where crime caught its residents off-guard because no one expected anyone to do them harm. But Isaac knew firsthand that the people who lived on the street he’d just been standing on were on high alert at all times, because predators walked the streets 24/7.

  His Lord was asking him to come out of his place of comfort and do something meaningful about it. But what? He held a revival on the west side of town last year and hundreds of people gave their lives to the Lord. What else could he do that would really shake the place up and bring about a change?

  As he pondered the situation, Nina opened the bedroom door and kissed him on the mouth. “Did you and your sons enjoy the game?”

  “It was all good, until the fourth quarter. As usual,” he complained.

  “Why don’t you just choose another team?” Nina asked, while pulling a night gown out of her dresser and heading to the bathroom to take a quick shower before bed.

  “It’s not that simple, baby. You don’t just bail out on your team when they’re down. You hold on, keep rooting for them, and pray that they make the shot next time.”

  Nina gave him a raised eyebrow look as she went into the bathroom, letting him know, once again, that she didn’t understand his obsession with basketball. There was another obsession he had that Nina didn’t understand either. And he knew that it was not going to be easy to tell his woman that his journey in the Promised Land was not yet complete.

  Chapter 1

  “Girl, I don’t know what’s wrong with this man I’m married to,” Nina complained to Elizabeth Underwood, her best friend. Actually, the two women were not just best friends, they had been so close for over thirty years that they thought of themselves more as sisters than mere friends.

  “What’s he done now?” Elizabeth asked jokingly.

  “What hasn’t he done?” Nina was frustrated and didn’t know what to do. “Here I am, planning Ikee’s graduation party and helping him fill out his last few college applications, when my son tells me that he’s not sure he wants to go to college right now.”

  “Did you pop him upside his head?”

  “No, but I wanted to pop his daddy a good one.” Nina shook her head.

  Elizabeth laughed. “What does Isaac have to do with Ikee’s not wanting to go to college?”

  “Ikee has been helping his father with our new street ministry. So now, Ikee has gotten it into his head that he is being called into the ministry and he doesn’t need to go to college.”

  “Did you remind him that Donavan was called into the ministry as well, but he went to college and so did Iona?”

  “Thank you,” Nina said to Elizabeth, as if she were preaching to the choir. “That boy thinks I’m boo-boo the fool or something. He’s doing more than ministry on that street team. He’s gotten himself involved with some girl and that’s why his raggedy behind wants to stay. That’s why I’m upset with Isaac. Because if he hadn’t started this street team, Ikee probably wouldn’t have met this little chicken-head girl and wouldn’t be talking so crazy now.”

  “Nina,” Elizabeth gasped. “That is so unlike you. I’m normally the one calling folks chicken-heads and rat-face or bone-head.”

  Sighing, Nina admitted, “I shouldn’t have called that young girl anything but the name her mama gave her. But I don’t even know what that is. Ikee keeps pretending that he hasn’t a clue who I’m talking about when I ask about the girl he’s dating. But he’s not fooling me; I hear how he talks when he gets certain calls on his cell phone.”

  “You sound stressed.”

  “I am,” Nina admitted. “When Ikee was born, I never thought that I would be pulling out my hair like this. But that stunt he pulled over a year ago that almost got him and his father killed still gives me chills. I’ve even had a few panic attacks when I’ve tried to help the street ministry.”

  “Did you tell Isaac about the panic attacks?”

  “No, I’ve mostly just been avoiding the events. The spring and summer months don’t last forever. I say, let them have their fun this year, and then we can go back to church inside the building that we built five years ago.”

  “Okay, but if the panic attacks don’t stop, I think you need to seriously talk to Isaac and maybe see a doctor.”

  Laughing, Nina said, “The only doctor who can help me with my panic attacks would be a shrink and you know black folks don’t go for that.”

  “What I know is that there are a bunch of crazy colored folks that need to rent space on some psychologist’s couch. Matter-of-fact, renting ain’t good enough; they need to buy the whole entire couch.”

  “Oh, so now you’re calling me crazy.”

  “You’re not crazy, but I do think you’re stressed. I’m glad you called so we could talk this out.”

  “The person I really need to talk to is Isaac. But I don’t know how to tell him to let go of a ministry he believes that God had commissioned. And for that matter, I don’t know if I even should be feeling this way.”

  “You can’t help the way you feel,” Elizabeth said, with the compassion of a person who had been there, done that and would probably do it again.

  “I know, but I feel awful for not whole-heartedly supporting my husband. I need God to move on my heart or change Isaac’s.”

  “Sounds like we
have a lot to pray about,” Elizabeth told her.

  “No doubt,” Nina agreed. “But lately, I’ve been so stressed that I haven’t been able to do much effectual, fervent praying, if you know what I mean.”

  “I got your back. Kenneth and I will be praying for your strength. But if you ask me, I think a girls’ weekend is in order.”

  “Weekend? I need an entire week,” Nina declared.

  “Then let’s plan something.”

  “Girl, I can’t think about anything until this child of mine gets that diploma in his hand.”

  “I hear you,” Elizabeth said. “But think about it. After Kenneth and I come up there for the graduation party, we are heading to Puerto Rico for a week. But after that, I’m available for any weekend, night… whatever you want to do.”

  “I don’t know, Elizabeth. There’s just so much to do around here. Isaac has big plans for the summer and he’d be disappointed if I wasn’t here to help out.”

  “How are you going to help out when you’re having panic attacks?” Elizabeth reminded her.

  “I can make the flyers and help with some of the front end stuff.”

  “Sometimes, we women have to take care of ourselves. When Danae graduated from college, Kenneth and I took ourselves on a two-week cruise. It was wonderful. We turned our cell phones off and the only thing we concentrated on was relaxing. And guess what? The house didn’t burn down while we were gone. The kids didn’t go buck wild—at least not that we knew about.”

  Smiling at the thought, Nina changed the subject. “Enough about my crazy life, any more news about you becoming the next gospel singing reality TV star?”

  “No news to give, I haven’t talked to Kenneth yet, so I can’t give the studio execs an answer one way or another.”

  “So, I’m not the only one avoiding important conversations with my husband,” Nina chided her friend.

  “I know, I know. But Kenneth is a very private man. He’s dedicated to God, his family, and his ministry at the homeless shelter, but he has no patience for anything that might negatively affect either.”