Humble Beginnings

I was innocent and had not been "around the block." I had not known any man intimately, including my spouse, until we married when I was thirty-one years old.

I give honor to God as the head of my life, and I thanked him for his salvation, a gift so full and free, purchased by the precious blood of Jesus on Calvary. Yes, he included me, and I'm glad his gift was free. Otherwise, with my humble beginnings, I couldn't have afforded it.

The Lord understands everything we encounter, for his situation was worse than ours. John 3:16 says that Jesus came to save us. He was even homeless for a few days when his earthly parents traveled to the small town of Bethlehem and found that there was no room at the inn. Jesus's mother, Mary, experienced a virgin birth. Spiritual conception within her gave birth to our Lord so that sinful mankind could be regenerated.

So much good came from the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem. No matter what pain we feel in life, he cares about us. Whether we live in the suburbs, on a farm, or in the hood, God sees each of us as somebody, and he will make our lives brand new with newborn souls.

In our society, some women in the church were virgins in their thirties when they married their husbands. Some even lived in the projects, and believe it or not, though they were monetarily poor, they were spiritually rich. Any children born to them were conceived naturally by men. Only Jesus Christ was ever born of a virgin.

God's Son experienced being alone, hurt, misused, misunderstood, heartbroken, beaten with numerous stripes, abandoned, disappointed, rejected, and despised by men. He was left alone to pray when the Jewish leaders put him on death row. In the end, he was crucified. Jesus Christ has felt whatever anguish you feel in life. He is able to identify with your pain, for he is acquainted with grief, heartache, misery, and abuse from society and the system. Even when people only want to be around you when it is to their benefit, or when they try to take credit for what you have done, God understands what you are dealing with. Read Hebrews 12:1–3 (KJV).

I thank God that I was reared in the small town of Warren with a close-knit family, including my biological nieces and nephews. We had a wonderful church family who demonstrated agape love, and my sisters' and brothers' children — Patricia, Kevin, and Robert Jr. — often spent the night with us and were like siblings. Many more have since come on the scene, and they are special and talented.

We all loved each other and had great times during the holidays and weekends. Sometimes we children held different perspectives on things, but we still loved one another, and I always valued my sisters' and brothers' opinions. I will always love my entire family, including my awesome sisters, Brenda, Barbara K., and Bobbie Jean Tootie, and my wonderful brothers, Willie, Joe, and Robert W., who taught school down south and resided with Grandma Ida and Baby Sister (my cousin who was like a sister). Little sister always cooked on the holidays, and she housed and brought together family and friends at her Single and Saved Embracing a Celibate Life home. During those times, everybody was somebody, and we all cared about people, from the least to the greatest. What a blessing to be connected to so many good people in town and abroad!

These were humble beginnings, but our mom, Mother W. M. Davis, loved all of her children. She instilled biblical principles in us, and she taught us about the power of prayer and the importance of living a saved, sanctified life. When embracing holiness, she always strove to attend to her own business. She had a meek, humble, and quiet spirit. I remember her taking me to the Mayes household during my childhood years for noonday prayer at their residence. My mother did not want her children to go through life's trials without being saved, and her prayers for many have come to full fruition.

The women of God who met at those prayer meetings were Spirit-filled ladies. These women sowed good teachings, and we met positive Christian children at ministry conventions, which enhanced the good values that my mother was teaching. My mentors showed me about living a quality, saved life and making God my top priority. I never forgot the folks who were good to our family when we were children.

Our church home in Warren was a place where the Spirit of God dwelled. We welcomed the power of the Holy Ghost, and sometimes healings took place. At one service, Mother Griffin collapsed. She had no pulse, but the saints prayed, and life came back into her body.

We had teenage ministers and missionaries back in the day. Young folk came in off the street and got sanctified. This was a church where we loved one another in peace and unity. When a problem occurred, we prayed at the altar, and issues were resolved.

During those days, if one church hosted a revival, people from other churches attended. The height of my ambition was to live a saved life. We had been adopted into the royal family of God and had become children of the kingdom. We carried our Bibles to school and discussed in the hallways the revivals that were being conducted.

All of this occurred during the time after I got saved, before I graduated in my senior year. I was not the type of girl who slept around, but I still had to experience being born again. I thank God that my mom had taught me to have integrity, to have fervent prayer at home, and to treat people with respect and agape love. She trusted the Lord and, to the best of her ability, taught me a reverential fear of God, never allowing gossip in her presence. When it came to holiness, she was sincere about the Lord, regardless of what anyone said or did.

I remember the Church of God in Christ (COGIC). We had older women in the church who sowed good seed and mentored us in shaping our lives. Years ago, saints would tell young women to make something out of their lives, saying, "Hold yourself up. That means to wait until marriage before you have sex." They knew that a girl who didn't wait could end up pregnant. Romans 12:1–2 (KJV) tells us how to live holy lives. Without this holy influence, many young ladies have fallen into traps and pitfalls today.

All the Mothers of Zion were mentors from Little Tabernacle Church of God in Christ and in Warren. They included Mother E. Cade, Mother Douglas Bennett, Mother P. Shaw, Mother R. Thomas, Mother Blackwell, Mother M. Patterson, Mother E. Johnson, and Mother Weatherspoon, as well as evangelist mothers from Akron and Mansfield, Ohio, and Mother L. Kirkland, who taught the youth about living holy lives. Our pastor then was Elder E. Holman; and the first lady, Mrs. T. Holman, was a great inspiration to the people at our church. She taught and prepared young ladies and men how to live saved and sanctified lives in this world. Mrs. Gwen Morgan, and Lion's family was a blessing to us, as were Mrs. O. McBride and her church. Those young folks at the church — our Hawthorn cousins and family — attended in Mansfield, Ohio, where saints danced, preached, and praised God. I was inspired to become saved because of them. I took the advice they gave to me, because the Word of God substantiated everything they said. I learned that God calls the young because they are strong, but he calls the old because they know the way. When we walk with the wise, we also will become wise.

My desire was to wait until marriage to have children, and I wanted be a role model for young ladies in the church. After graduating from high school, I secured a good job at General Electric. I attended business college for a while, traveled to church conventions in various towns, and purchased clothes, cars, furs, and whatever else I chose to buy. Back in the day, church mothers taught that girls should not take money or clothing from fellows. The old saints said that women should not obligate themselves. I'm not saying I was perfect, but I had good values and lived a saved life.

A decade or so later, I contemplated marriage and began pray to God for a husband. I started having visions and dreams — clean ones — of a man who came to visit me in a nice, three-piece suit, who appeared to be a man of God. In another dream, I lay on my stomach, crying, and a young lady from PA, Sister Diane, came into the room, laid her hands on my back, and started praying. It was neither vulgar nor homosexual in nature and the entire room and atmosphere was filled with the joy and presence of God.

A young man contacted me, a man I'd met at a convention several years earlier, and asked me out to dinner. We dined, and later, when he returned to town, he proposed marriage.

Both of us decided to pray about matrimony. He shared with his church members and coworkers that the Lord had given me to him. He also stated that folks who never went to church would still go to weddings and home-goings, so the ceremony should be an opportunity to witness, because that was what God had given him to do.

Navigating through the Hard Places in Life

At my wedding, I agreed to include a skit and an altar appeal during the ceremony, inasmuch as I always put God first. My fiancé also wanted his drill team to perform at the wedding.

The man I married had embraced the ministry, was a schoolteacher in his town, owned a small business, and was trying to correct errors in his life and keep up a good image.

His old girlfriend called my residence when she heard about the engagement. She wanted to know why I would marry him, for she felt that he loved her. I told her that he had asked me to marry him and that I had not asked him. I said that she should have more pride in herself than to contact me. She was mad and said, "We'll see."

I thank God for my church upbringing, which taught me that marriage is honorable and that the bed is undefiled (Hebrews 13:4). I was determined not to defile the bed, and we waited until we were married before being intimate.

As the story goes, we were joined in holy matrimony and had a honeymoon in the Pocono Mountains. But trouble began immediately afterward.

The woman my now ex-husband had dated for six years called my husband and wanted his child to come over and visit him. When I got home from work, the boy was there. I have always loved children, so we began to play ball outside. When a person loves a man, she has no problem loving what is part of that man.

The boy's mother called the child at our house, thinking that there would be chaos, but the little boy was enjoying our game of bouncing the ball, and he cut the conversation short, hanging up the phone. Her heart's desire was to move with her two children into our beautiful house.

Well, that plan did not work. So the next thing she did was to move out of state, saying that she could not bear the thought of her man marrying someone else and moving with her into a large, beautiful home. The next month, I came home from work and found that the two-year-old boy was there again. He stayed with us from June until December.

The mother was gone a long time, but she sent cards to her two-year-old with messages that depicted, through intimate expressions, her past romantic rendezvous with my husband at that time, knowing that he would read them. She returned every month to see the child and my husband, and then she took off again. It became her monthly routine and a point of contact for them.

Church ladies can sometimes be extremely naïve. We must remember to be "wise as a serpent but harmless as a dove." Married women understand what it means to guide the house always, even though the man is the head of the house. Both of them had the audacity to ask that the child stay with us again all summer. It was time for the child to join his mother.

My husband did not want to have more children, but that was not what he had told me prior to our marriage. When I refused to let the child stay with us all summer again, my husband was upset, and he visited the little boy out of town for a few days. On the day he returned, he looked as though he was in a trance, and he asked for a divorce. Papers were served on my birthday.

Married and Separated

I was devastated that such a thing as divorce could happen to me. It's not that I thought I was better than anyone else, but because I was saved and serving God and had waited so long to marry, it came as a complete surprise.

Once I became born-again, I knew I had been good, so I thought good things would happen to me. I had been faithful to God, tithed, respected, and honored leadership. How had this catastrophe transpired, especially knowing my relationship with the God? The answer was that all things work together for the good of those who love the Lord (Romans 8:28).

If something like this has happened to you, hold on to God. Do not despair. I understand what some of you are going through. I feel your pain, hurt, and mental anguish. Even with the demise of my marriage, God was still blessing me and giving me strength to persevere. I still praised the Lord with every fiber of my being, and he let me soar above the storm with perfect peace.

When you encounter a situation like this, pray and take action. Consult an attorney at your earliest convenience. Ask the Lord for divine guidance, but take care of business.

I did not know whether to stay in that location or move back to my small hometown where the job market was not the greatest. From my perspective, when you don't know what to do, you just stand still and see the salvation of the Lord.

In a situation like this, there will be many who criticize you. Ignore them, because true Christians will be making intercession for you. The church mothers always taught us that if we just stayed in the ship, everything would be all right, no matter what problem we encountered, so that was what I did.

My ex-husband had always told me that I was dogmatic and would always take a stand. "If you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything." He was absolutely correct. While I was going through this ordeal, I looked for any church that was having a revival. I attended church sometimes every night where the power of God was moving, the Word was preached, and deliverance was prevalent.

Over at Victory Deliverance, Bishop Sanders or an evangelist conducted a fiery service with the laying on of hands, and folks got saved and received the Holy Ghost. I was not concerned about the denomination of the church I attended, for I realized that only God could take me through my pain. Being in the presence of Lord would keep me from going under. I thought I knew enough scripture not to become confused.

The Spirit of God let me know that I was not going to fall apart, that he would keep me close in the midst of stress, anguish, heartache, shock, devastation, hurt, and being talked about. I felt no guilt on my part, because I knew that I had done everything I could and had gone beyond the call of duty as a wife to try to hold my marriage together.

When you are innocent in a situation like this, take care of business and consult your lawyer when necessary. The law is for the lawless and for those who violate statues.

When a man leaves his wife and files for a divorce, that is not the fruit of a Christian. You will know the saints by their fruits, and saints do not put away their mates. You are no longer under bondage if that person is not pleased to dwell with you (1 Corinthians 7:15). God is not going to come down from heaven and call an attorney for you. If you have a phone, you can call one yourself. No matter how hurt or embarrassed you feel, do what you have to do. If your husband commits adultery, the scripture will bear you up and give you biblical rights to marry again. God will not punish you for something someone else did.

Sometimes an individual may not handle things quickly or in the way folks think they should. When following the leading of the Lord, make sure you adhere to God's way of doing things, and let freedom ring. When you are free indeed, it is a wonderful feeling to have been delivered.

We were given a court date, and while dialoguing with my attorney, I stated that divorce was against everything I stood for, because Christians are supposed to be a light to the world. I could not agree to the divorce, so I contested it. No matter what anybody thought, I felt the need to come out of the situation knowing I'd done the right thing. I did not want to feel guilty or condemned about anything.

Well, the judge then scheduled another court date, and I gave the same statement again. The judicial system scheduled yet another court date, and again I said that divorce was against my religion and that I would not agree to it. Finally, the judge decided that there were no grounds for divorce, and the case was thrown out. In order for a divorce to take place, my husband had to wait an entire year without any cohabitation. This was a blessing, because it gave me an opportunity to adjust my mind after such a shock.