The Back Porch

One night, I was asleep in my bed when suddenly I heard: “Ka-boom!”

Thunder was banging against the windows and lightening lighted up my room. The rain poured down and I was very afraid.

“Aaah!”

 I screamed as I ran for my door and quickly opened it. Then, I hopped from board to board down the long, hallway that curved to the right and led to safety. As I  my stepped carefully to keep from hitting a creaky beam, I suddenly came to the shadow of the scary attic door. It crossed my path like a black hole. I knew a stairway was behind it that winded up to the top floor, filled with long dresses, hatboxes, old antiques, cobwebs and ghosts. It even had a wobbly old trunk full of who-knows-what. Probably goblins.

Anyway, another flash of lightning erased the shadow and I got the courage to leap to the threshold of the door. It opened with a loud creak into the bathroom where the night light glowed brightly through the darkness.

Quickly, I closed the door as the storm continued to rage outside. The ceramic sink was outlined in brightness, but the club-footed tub and toilet I could barely make out in the dark shadows. All our plastic cups were neatly stacked on the sink; color coded to match each family member along with matching toothbrushes. My cup was blue and so was my toothbrush.

Suddenly, the door opened.

“What’s going on in here?” asked my mom upon entering the room. “I heard some noises.”

She wrapped her fluffy robe tighter around her.

“Mom!” I exclaimed. “There’s a monster on the upstairs back porch! It tried to get into our house! I saw a shadow of it in the window as I heard the door knob moving. That’s when I ran right here to the bathroom! Can I sleep with you and Dad the rest of the night?”

“Now, now!” Mom shook her head as she grabbed me and stooped down to look me straight in the eyes.

“You know that there are no monsters on the back porch. It’s the storm and your imagination.”

“But, Mom!” I retorted, “I saw it and it looked real!”

She gave me a hug and then took my hand and led me back to my bedroom down the long curving hallway past the attic door and all the other doors, headed straight to my room.

“Why do I have to have the bedroom with the spooky back porch?” I thought to myself.

When we arrived a flash of lightning showed only my messy bed. I glanced back at the porch window. Nothing was there.

“See?” Mom stated. “No more monsters. They’re gone. Now, go to bed and try to get some sleep.”

She then gave me another tight hug. Then, I hopped into bed and she tucked me in. I held her hands for a long time, finally releasing them and closing my eyes.

Mom had come.

No more monsters.

I went back to sleep…

Rock Bottom

“Mrs Dassinger, can you pray with me?” I asked her that warm autumn day. I parked my car and walked over to the fence to stand in the shade of my live oak tree.

My neighbor was raking the leaves that had blown to the ground from her scrub oaks. There was a forest of them growing in her one acre yard.

She stopped, put down her rake and strolled to where I was standing.

“What’s th’ matta, chile’?” she asked sweetly.

She was in her early 80’s, a true pioneer who had cleared her land herself and lived in a modest single-wide mobile home. She wore a large brimmed hat on her head and had gray hair that lay long and stringy around her face. A tender softness twinkled in her ancient blue eyes and her face looked wrinkled and soft.

“Mrs, Dassinger, I feel so discouraged. I feel like I have hit rock bottom.”

“Rock bottom, chile; tha’s bad!”

“Well, remember when I had first moved to Yulee and lived in the mobile home park?”

“I recall, chile, ya tellin’ me ‘bout how rough it was.”

“Yes, I was so conflicted and miserable. I felt so bad that I had to leave my one-year-old son, Bobby, with a neighbor to become a substitute teacher.”

“Yep, I ‘member tha’ story ‘bout how ya had to hep put food on the table.”

“Then during the summer, I tried babysitting. I put an ad in the local paper.  The problem was, I had to bring my son with me. That worked until he jumped into the deep end of someone’s swimming pool and I had to jump in after him clothing and all.

Later, the second boy, Tommy, came along. When he turned three, I decided to go back to work as a special education teacher. I hardly ever saw either of them. I was gone from early in the morning until 5:00 every day. After dinner, I had to grade papers all evening and do lesson plans. At the end of the year, my contract was never renewed so I lost my job and could never find another one.

When I tried working as a director of a day-care after-school program that fell through when Bobby pulled a fire alarm.”

She chuckled a little. “Tha’ chile is always gittin’ in trouble.”

“Now, I’m working now as a cashier at a grocery store. My hands and legs hurt all the time. My boss is seldom nice and I clash with him at times. A lot of times it seems I work almost every day even though it is only part-time. Now, I only see my kids before they go to school in the morning.

And this time, it feels like the end.  Will I ever see a better tomorrow? Does God even care?”

“Now, now, chile. You know that He does care. Yep, He always cares.”

 “Please help me! I can’t take it any more. My children, my husband and especially my job are all getting to me! I feel so overwhelmed!”

“Chile, tek my hands.”

 She said this extending to me her two wrinkled ones over the chain linked fence. I took them and closed my tear-streaked eyes. I felt her arms shake a little as I felt the sting of my tears.

My mind wandered to the good times; the time when I went to her house and got her recipe to make the bread-and-butter pickles. The time I planted a vegetable garden and made the pickles from my own homegrown cucumbers. And, all the times she gave me brown eggs from her chickens and jars of vegetables from her garden.

“Now, now, God’s gonna tek care of ya. He’s tekin’ care of me all these years. I’m shure He’s gonna tek care of ya and yo’ famblee, too.”

She prayed: “Father, bless this young’un and he’p her. He’p her be strong. He’p her be the wife and mudder she oughta be. I know she can do it. And, everythin’s gonna work out. Everythin’s gonna be jes fine. Yep, according to your Word, we know it; we jes know it…In Jesus Name we pray, Amen.”

“Amen,” I whispered as I opened my eyes and released her hands. I did feel better. Something happened. The weight of my burdens lifted up to the sky. Jesus took them away. I felt so much better but it was hard to explain how it felt in words.

“Do ya feel better now, chile?” she asked sweetly, seeming to read my mind.

“Yes, I do feel better. I don’t understand, but I know God is going to take care of us. He always has….”

“And, remember, He always will. Jes remember that, chile. He always will.”

She waved good-bye and went back to her raking.

A few years later she passed away, but I’ll always remember that day. The day I trusted more in God than I ever had before; the day I realized it wasn’t me trying to make it in life, but it was Him leading me and He would always lead me no matter how dark the path.

Things get better at times; things get worse, but God is always leading.  Even when I lose faith and doubt Him again, still he is right there to see me through. He helps me with all my burdens.

Thanks, Mrs. Dassinger, for the great prayer. I miss you. I hope to see you in eternity some day.

 And, things did get better; they just did.

And I got better, too.