God's "No" Was Really "Yes"

Lying on my back in a mildly lit hospital room, tubes hooked up to my chest and an IV stuck in my arm, I stared at the ceiling wondering how I got in this position. Just two weeks prior I lived in Los Angeles, my hometown, where I left my entire family and friends behind and here I was in Brooklyn, New York, alone, in a hospital bed after being admitted into the ER from a tragic and life threatening asthma attack.


I moved to New York after being led here and I don’t mean following someone, but rather following my faith and the whisper of God. Picking up and moving across the country alone was by far one of the scariest and emotional decisions I have ever made in my life. But at the age of 21 I stepped out on my faith and believed what God told me, “I need you to move to New York because there are people I need you to touch and your husband is there.” With tears in my eyes and a mother who was about to give up her only child to a jungle that could have swallowed me whole, I moved out of my apartment, gave up my car and lifestyle because God told me that this is a duty he needed for me to do. All the while I’m questioning him, even up to the moment I boarded the plane, “God are you sure? I gave up everything. Now, if this really isn’t you, I will turn around right now, I don’t care that I’ve paid for a plane ticket and gave up everything. STOP ME if this is not your will.” There was no sign from the heavens, no bumps in the road that would indicate that this move wasn’t for me, only silence, smooth sailings in the transition from the month it took me to move out of my apartment and board the gates of LAX to the moment I placed my feet on New York soil. Convinced that the next chapter in my life was New York, I exhaled and believed that God wouldn’t bring me this far to leave me.


But here I was clad in a hospital robe, a wrist band that read my name and the hospital department and the invasion of tubes running through my body, monitoring my lungs and heart to make sure that I was breathing normally. My mother was the last person I wanted to tell about this tragic mishap, especially since she was so against me moving, but I learned she found out through the family friend I was staying with and she was frantic. The hospital phone rang and there she was, true to form, as the mother she is, crying and praying with me, reassuring me that God was with me and that nothing would happen to me. She asked me something that immediately sent me into a heap of sobs, “Baby, do you want to come home?” Everything in me wanted to scream, “YES, YES! I WANT TO COME HOME!” But then I thought about all that I had given up and that if I were to come home my faith in God would be shattered because it would mean that I didn’t trust him, I hadn’t trusted him and I had no intentions of trusting him. I regained my composure and answered, “No mommy, I don’t want to come home.” She sighed heavily, searching for words, and when she couldn’t find them, prayer replaced her stammering.


After I hung up with my mother, I fell back into my initial position, head back, lying still, staring at the ceiling with tears in my eyes. I broke the silence with a very matter-of-fact tone. “I ASKED you. I asked you to give a sign if this wasn’t for me. I asked you to stop me if this wasn’t your will and look at what you let happen to me! I am 3,000 miles away from everything and everyone I love and no one is here for me! Why would you do this? Why would you set me up like this?” The more I ranted the more I cried and my voice picked up to a slight yell. I didn’t care if anyone heard me; I had a gripe with God and I needed him to answer me NOW, immediately. I didn’t need the silence he’d given me before, which in my head, indicated his Okaying me to board that plane and come to New York. I needed to hear him, just as I had heard him so clearly when he told me why I had to move here. So I asked him again, flat out, “You brought me here for this!?” There was silence and then he responded, “Yes.” I was waiting for more to be said, but all I got was a single word, one syllable, “Yes.”


That was eight years ago. And here I am living, working, studying, loving and having met true friends in New York. Everything I heard from him before I moved here has come to pass, with the exception of my husband; and everything I gave up has been replaced ten times over. The man I’m with now, God said, “That’s him.” And there are times when I feel like that angry 21 year old lying in that hospital bed, questioning his motives and why I have to endure some of the things I do in this relationship. And in my rageaholic moments, where I have the audacity to question him after all he has done for me, “Are you sure about this? YOU said this was him, not me! Are you sure this is my husband?” There is a stillness that comes before his silence and then he replies, yet again, “Yes.”

Gotta Love Fashion!

He left, but he came back

There is a man I know who is missing something, something essential to who he is and who he has become. In those quiet moments when the lights are out, the curtains are drawn and he is so close to me that I can feel his breath against my lips like the faint approach of heat, is when this man speaks to me about the missing piece to his puzzle. Even in darkness I can see his slanted eyes that blink slowly from his deep thoughts, his plump lips that curve into the shape of each word that escapes his mouth and the distant expression on his face that shows the pain he is so adamantly trying to cover.

"Baby, did I tell you I ran into my father again last night?" His memory was fogged from the drinks he downed just to cope with the unexpected meet. He had told me twice in an hour that he saw his father the night before and now, after having slept off the inebriation from the hours prior, he is unclear. Asleep in the middle of the night, I thought I was dreaming until I felt his hand stroke the side of my face in a continuous rhythm. He asks me again until he hears my response, groggy and half spoken, "Yes, baby, you did." Knowing that this was one of those rare moments when he is willing to open up to me about his pain, I sat as still as a paralyzed victim; I was so quiet I had to remind myself to breathe, not wanting to make any sudden moves that would interrupt his thoughts and jerk him back to reality; I waited for him to speak again.

"It was cool, but I don't know, it is what it is..." And what is it exactly? I'd like to know. As I wait in silence for him to continue, I think about his statement and try to figure how I can work my questions in: Is it you being happy at the chance to finally get some answers about how your deceased mother used to be in her teenage years? Is it your wanting him to embrace you like the father you've always wished for him to be? Is it that you're searching for an apology for his absence? Or at the fact that you finally get to ask why he never helped you assemble the toy train he got you one year for Christmas because he left and never came back? What does this statement, "It is what it is," mean? Because I am from the outside looking in and I see it all.

I wanted to come back with a response to "It is what it is." And if it were my time to interject I'd tell him what it truly is: It's you trying to understand why after 28 years he is proud of you, when he didn't have a hand in your upbringing; it's you having mixed emotions about accepting him into your life; it's you coming to terms with him and trying to understand who he is today; it's you realizing that if you don't deal with your pain in a healthy and mature manner it will stunt your growth and the growth of our relationship; it's you trying to figure out you.

The irony of this 35 year old man, who is so angry with his father, still waits for him to come back. The next morning he says to me, "You'll meet him. Well, no, I don't want you to meet him yet. I can see it now, you having a deep conversation with him that will bring you to tears and you'll tell him. You'll tell him that I still cry over him, how I sometimes get angry and don't know how to act, how I want to fight him and how I really want a relationship with him. You'll tell him my secret and I don't want him to know." Pondering the thought of this hypothetical meeting, I smiled to myself and in a hushed tone, so low that only I could hear, I replied, "Don't worry baby, your secret is safe with me."