Contrite: Me, Myself, and God?

By Carlene Steadford

Me, Myself, and God is a narrative essay written about daydreams. The author describes it as 50% fiction, 30% memoir, 20% wishful thinking, and 100% worth the read. Steadford describes the ups and downs of her life and her struggles and triumphs with her faith. She explores how to walk the line and keep praying that everything will work out. This inspiring story of self-discovery is sometimes funny, sometimes sassy, and always comforting. Steadford writes her book inspired by the saying: “Everything will be okay in the end. If it’s not okay, then it’s not the end.”

About the Author
Carlene Steadford was born in Kingston, Jamaica. She currently resides in Chicago, Illinois. She enjoys singing in her church choir, helping with food drives, writing songs, trying local restaurants, and shopping with her mother. She has a beautiful singing voice that she hopes to share with the world someday. She is from a large family; her mother is one of thirteen children, Carlene is one of six children, and she has eighteen nieces/nephews and eight great-nieces and nephews.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dorrance Publishing Company
• Release date: Apr 11, 2024
• ISBN: 9798890276759

Book preview

Steadford_Title_Page.eps

The contents of this work, including, but not limited to, the accuracy of events, people, and places depicted; opinions expressed; permission to use previously published materials included; and any advice given or actions advocated are solely the responsibility of the author, who assumes all liability for said work and indemnifies the publisher against any claims stemming from publication of the work.

All Rights Reserved

Copyright © 2024 by Carlene Steadford

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted, downloaded, distributed, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, including photocopying and recording, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented without permission in writing from the publisher.

Dorrance Publishing Co

585 Alpha Drive

Suite 103

Pittsburgh, PA 15238

Visit our website at www.dorrancebookstore.com 

ISBN: 979-8-89027-177-8

eISBN: 979-8-89027-675-9

Lessons learned: Everyone is in your life for a reason and a season to teach you a lesson good or bad.

The lessons you receive are up to you. The lesson I have been learning is once you stopped participating in small little pettiness, your whole world becomes bigger.

I would like to thank my mother Sadie McPherson for being my cheerleader in this part of my life, she does not understand the process but she didn't need to, she was there. I would like to thank my friends and acquaintances who allowed me to use Snip of Their Life for this book.

images_203_Copy203.png

N ow I know that hate is an extraordinarily strong word, but I Hate! …...... HATE! …........these FUCKING … parties! My GOD! A bunch of cantankerous, rich, slothful, self-absorbed, spoiled, nauseating, distasteful, awful, single-minded, brats, bored in their day-to-day life, uninspired retches with nothing better to do than to get together and fricking waste time, energy, resources, and money! In my opinion. After Nettie’s divorce, she became a hugely, vastly different person. She went back to her ancestor’s roots; and somehow, she drags/ropes and hogtied me into these parties every three months or so; in return, she must go with me to church not complaining at least once a month. I have one foot knocking on hell’s door, and the other knock, …... knock, ….... knocking on heaven’s door.

I only remember a handful of my birthdays from the past and I hope the rest will be very memorable. There must be something major to mark them. Like my twenty-eighth birthday was the first I started dating, the first time I had drunk alcohol and the first I gave myself away. It was to a guy out of Indiana. I met him on a dating site (back then, a dating site was in the form of the back page of a newspaper). And lost the guy close to my twenty-ninth birthday; then I was told the quickest way to get over one guy was to get under another. So, I got under another. It did not do what I thought it would, it did not fill the void, and I thought there should be more. A lot more. I wasn’t as broken up about the relationship, there was a black hole. I discovered Jesus, and start going to church off and on, at the end of age twenty-nine is where my internal fight begins. I dated another guy when I was thirty-five that ended a couple of years later too. It was not bad mind you, but something was for sure missing. I just could not put my finger on what was. On my fortieth birthday, I said I was done. The Bible said no sex without marriage, I wanted sex, not marriage. Therefore, on my fortieth birthday, I divorced lover’s lane and ‘Fredrick of Hollywood’ toys department. Then the fight with lust became very real. I have heard it all before; You are so beautiful why are you not dating? …... I have seen ugly female get a man. What’s wrong with you? Are you a lesbian? Yad, yad, Yaya …...

I do not feel the need to explain myself to people whom I do not believe will get it; there is a song I like very much that said it best: Here in this moment to myself, I’m gonna vibe with no one else. There is a conversation I need to have with me. It’s just a moment to myself. Various parts of the song mean different things to different people. To me it means I am not going to water down my existence to have a space fill so that I can make people comfortable with me being as miserable as they are. Some ladies in my circle get and understand that. And it’s a good thing I like my own company, at least that is what I convince myself to make it make sense or bearable for not being lonely.

Yet, if I was to choose between dating and not, I would still choose not. I occupied my time with what I call ‘busy things.’ Every event around town: I am there. I took myself out to movies, dinners, festivals, concerts, comedy clubs, and stage plays, I was everywhere doing something. I have some people whom I feel free around, we have known one another for about some twenty-odd years. For me being single is not a topic, we just enjoyed each other’s company. Carole Roland is a fountain of wisdom. Patricia White is like – Switzerland. She entered the foursome about three years ago. She is an ‘I would like to hear all sides first and still not chosen a side,’ and there’s Nettie Willison. Nettie is out there. These three women are my peeps. I as a rule do not ‘generally’ trust people. Women even less so. Women friends tend to talk behind your back (Back-bitas’ they would call them in Jamaica). They would look for the slightest weaknesses or an opportunity to catch you off guard to stab you in the back. Some you can see coming and others you do not. I watched Jerry and Murry. Ain’t nobody got time for that! But I do not know, these three, only time will tell. Our spirits just get along perfectly. I remember the forty-eighth birthday because of Nettie; that was when the rug got pulled from under her. She and I met at church, we wound up becoming friends, then went on to be on the choirs, then later wind up in the same ‘women’s small group.’ I had gone away for a weekend concert in Nashville. I did not want to spend another Thanksgiving doing the same things, eating turkey, stuffings, and cornbread and then playing some games until it is time to go to our homes. The concert was incredibly good; it was on Thanksgiving Day. The following day I was planning to go sightseeing and then have ribs at this famous rib joint in the heart of town. Let us just say I got the ribs to go after Nettie’s called. Her husband ‘calls it a day!’ on their marriage which left her devastated. She did not even see it coming, she said.

WOW! …. Nettie, that’s Fucked up! was all I could have said. I don’t know how to comfort her; I don’t even know what she needs right now. Therefore, I will do the next best thing. I spent the next couple of hours listening to her.

She said, I am in a state of shock. I am numb and cannot even cry. The following day I flew back to Chicago and drove directly to her house.

When she was talking to me, she was staring into the abyss. We were just finishing dinner, all of us were here (the grandchildren, the kids, and their husbands). He was quieter than usual. I did not think anything of it for nothing out of the ordinary. It was like he was collecting memories, which led me to believe in hindsight he was collecting the memories of this family thing one more time, just not me in it. She looks so frail and tired. Nothing like the livewire I know her to be. She loves her some John. John Willison and she grew up together. He is a five-nine, pale, skinny man. He reminded me of the sinking jaws butler from the Adams family movies. She is way, way out of his league. They had influential parents; they grew up on the right side of the track (so to speak). In mansions, good money, expensive vacations to exotic places around the world, housewives, charities, balls, and more parties than anything else. The adults build a small community of fifteen, where those kids were each other’s everything so that they ‘the parents’ could do everything else except for raising their damn kids. When she had become of age, she had made herself a promise she would never be like her parents and was beyond excited that John had felt the same way. That thought had brought them grown closer to the fact that they want the simplest things in life. They realize that they have a lot in common and they are on the same track for their futures. John was her older brother’s best friend and when the brother died from a drug overdose, her world stopped. John was there to comfort her. Then in turn she was there for him when his father died of cancer; then his mother became depressed and locked herself away in her room, wasting away. John and Nettie went in to persuade her to get some sunshine, bathe, and eat. They did that for two and a half years until she passed away. His sister that had left when she was seventeen was not there to help take care of her’s and John’s mother and did not show up for the funeral, but she surely did swoop in, and anything that was not nailed down she took.

The house, money, life insurance, and such, the mother left for John. Understandably with all his loss, he started drinking, and then after several stints in rehab, Nettie stayed by his side. Then to top it all off before she even has a chance to catch her breath, John’s sister reappears after she sold all she had taken from the house to drop off her eighteen-month-old daughter for him (here goes Nettie) to raise because their mother had left for him the house, money, and nothing to her. So naturally, they get married. They were planning to anyway it just came a lot sooner than planned. Nettie is one of the naturally beautiful people. Her inward heart and her outward appearance go hand in hand. She stands about five-five and a half, Do not forget the half, she always jokingly said. If she were taller, she could have been a supermodel. She is fifty-six years old but does not look like a day past forty, and nowadays you cannot tell her she is not. She had an older brother that died from overdosing on drugs and two stepsisters. She says they try to get along for the parent’s sake. Nettie is a clinical pharmacist; she and John have three children together, plus his sister’s daughter, and now seven grandchildren. I love, love her complexion. It is a combination of an Indian father and a white mother. She loves cats, she is like the perfect bullet size most men go for. She was living her best life, she thought. The kids are all grown and out of the house, and now it was just going to be her and her husband growing old together and doing everything and anything together, having holidays and birthdays. This is what is happening right now. They were having a wonderful time and about to start cleaning up when John, without talking to her, made his announcement.

Look kids, your mother and I are getting a divorce. They will never forget that Thanksgiving, I tell you that much. She said it was like frozen in time, her brain could not form a thought. She was hearing his words and noise in the room but was having an out-of-body experience just hovering like a ghost in the room. Your mother and I love each other very much; we love you all and the grandchildren, but we are not in love with each other anymore. I know you all will have questions, and we will try our best in answering them as best as we can. We did not come to this decision easily, but after months to a year, we cannot find any good reason to stay together. This has nothing to do with you all. We did our due diligence in raising you all, now we just want different things. Your mother will have the house and I will be living close by. I will let you all know where I settle in. This is for the best, you know. Please understand.

She said he just sat there looking ahead at the others in the room and never once at her. She did not interrupt him, she just thought, Am I being pranked! Is this an April’s fool’s joke? No it can’t be its November! The thing is I do not know what to say or how to feel or what to do. Therefore, she just sat there staring at him not looking at her. Her world was moving in slow motion. He slowly got up and started clearing the dishes, the kids were asking him questions from left to right, up and down. But when the kid’s directed any of the questions at her, he answered. The man with all the answers, she thought sarcastically. She did not even know what time it was next when the house became deathly quiet. She has been running scenarios in her mind. She did not know anything was wrong; Yes, all married relationships have their wear and tear difficulties for as long as they have been together. But do those warrant divorce? No! not even a separation. The next thing she said she remembers was the smell of coffee from the auto espresso coffee maker and her eldest daughter asking her in the brightest of sunshine if she was okay. It was then she realized that she sat there the whole night. She patted the hands of her daughter, put on her ‘do not worry about me’ face, and told her she would be okay. Leaving the table, she gets to her feet to busy herself making breakfast. By the time I got from the airport, the kids and grandkids had eaten and cleaned up and had left her alone. Even though she had looked a little shaken up, she did not look all too broken up about all this. I could be wrong. She said as time went on, some things started to make sense and she missed signs. The kids eventually learned that she and he did not have a conversation or a discussion on the matter. She, like them, had learned about the separation all at the same time. In hindsight he had become distant; he spent a lot more time in the garage or at work.

And he has not touched her in months. He would say that he was not in the mood. He was not a very talkative man, to begin with, but over the last several months it was worse.

I could only listen. I do not know how to comfort her through this. This is bigger than me. This is my friend and I do not want to say the wrong words. The women of the church were God-sent. We all dove in to help Nettie. To be there for her going through this. Of which is going to be a tough time in her life. I talked her into turning to Mrs. Cox because we (Carole and I) do not have what it takes to help her get through her divorce and the day-to-day pain she is going to go through. Some days she is up and then down. Then other days she is, Wondering what he’s doing. . .Did he eat? Then she is agreeable, then mad, she never once cries that we saw, then it’s a Why my God why me! Her emotions were all over the place. I know she is in pain but something else is going on, something is strange. I know I am no expert! but something is off. And after about six months we told her she needed professional help. We were not qualified to give constructive advice. I personally think John is a dick, a jerk, the scum of the earth; but he is also still her children’s father and the man she had spent a better part of her whole life with loving and taking care of. A bunch of us women get together at the church once a week to share ‘Lives’ to help us in our walk and togetherness with God. It is a pleasant thing, I guess!" It is people who need people. God-minded kind a people thing. Right?! There are seven in the group. All of us have different personalities and are at different areas of walks in our lives with Christ. I keep hearing it is a ‘Beautiful thing!’ After a year I could see a difference in Nettie. For the life of me, I still can’t shake that she does not look as broken up about this as I think she should! But by the time she was to appear in court for the divorce, she was a new woman. After it was all said and done, he gave her everything. His mother’s house, spousal support, alimony, it was all very amicable. The leader of these misfits of the women’s group is Mrs. Julie Cox. She is seventy-seven years old, ‘mother’ of the group so to speak. It seems she has been a Christian all her life.

She resonates with me because at one point in our discussions (doing life together) she had mentioned she wanted to be a nun, and I wanted to have been a nun too, back in the day when the stars were aligned before innocent got lost. Mrs. Cox is married to the now bishop of our church. She and Frank (her husband) have been together for, get this, for some fifty-two years and counting. Wow! That is a beautiful thing to be with someone for that long; that is like a lifetime. Or to me a life sentence. They met after college, when Julie and her friend Mary went backpacking to see the fifty states and visit churches and Cathedrals in each state. On their adventures through North Carolina, she said, she met the love of my life. She did not tell him, and he did not tell her, that he too thought her to also be the love of his life. He was a youth leader at one of the Baptist churches she and her friend was visiting. Fast-forward three years go by.

He said, I was drawn to Chicago by my calling. But the way she tells it, he follows the address she had given him, and he comes looking for her. If you like love stories, I suppose both can be correct. Yet another couple of years later they got married and wanted to have children. After trying for a while and nothing happened, they went to get checked out, and it turns out Frank has been unable to get his swimmers to swim. Something to do with blockage of sperm movement causing a lack of sperm - Azoospermia. He attributes it to a fight he had with his then-girlfriend’s boyfriend when he was eighteen. She was cheating on him with a side piece (Mr. X), an older man with money, which Frank was not aware of until months later. The man (Mr. X) and a couple of his friends jumped on a-then eighteen-year-old Frank and beat the light out of him. He wakes up in the hospital in unbelievable excruciating pain in his undercarriage with a couple of broken ribs, cuts, and bruises. The passerby that he credited with saving his life was the pastor of the North Carolina Baptist Church. The pastor shouts out to the guys, which runs them off. He called the ambulance and practically lived at the hospital checking in on him all the two weeks while he was there.

He later hired him. Shortly after the accident Frank sought out the Lord and became a Christian and a mentor for young boys with egos like he had and heading in the wrong direction like he was. When Frank told his testimonial story to the church, he said he was so far from anything that had to do with God and the church. In his testimony, he said he was so lost, mad, and afraid after his mother died of breast cancer when he was ten. He lived with his grandmother, but he said he practically raised himself. He had a chip on his shoulder and wanted to take on the entire world in all fights. He had blamed God for taking her away from him. But he had a praying grandmother! Anyway, some years later God answered their prayers for wanting to become parents by sending them two beautiful little girls; they were sisters named Izzie and Jo who they adopted from China. But God does not do things ‘half-assed,’ he went on even further and add a lot more joy on top of their already cup ‘runneth’ over and add more joy on top of that joy with abundance by giving them four grandchildren from Izzie and Jo years later. I mean nobody is perfect, but they are damn near in my book. They are wonderful people; they are friends and, in a God, blessed relationship. I mean WOW! In the middle are Lisa and Mary, they are single mothers that need a little moral support. Lisa is a nurse. Her ex-husband, the father of her 16 years old twin girls, works at the fire department. Mary is a supervisor at a grocery store, she has a 14-year-old son who is like father-like son following in his father’s footsteps in favor of jail. She also has another kid, a 10-year-old daughter with a guy from the church. They are trying to make it work. The last two to round off the group are two in the group that for some reasons, God put in my path (way) for me to do life with. I do not agree with his decision, but then again, He did not ask me. I do not like Koko and Patty. The mere existence of them, the first rather than the latter, rubs me the wrong way - I mean her devil and my spirit do not get along. Koko is the mischievous one. She has a complex with herself for being short. I called it ‘the Napoleon syndrome or complex’ and annoying as fuck! …... engage again - for what seems like the fifteenth time. And fuck no! I am not jealous.

I am mad at Patty for she has no spine. She is just along for the ride; she has two college-aged sons and a man (not the father) whom she has been dealing with for years who is very much worthless. She is pretty enough – must be afraid to venture out to do better, she just cannot seem to let him go. I know! I know! I am going to burn in hell, but I am still in transition. God isn’t done with me yet. Praise God for grace. Nettie did not skip a beat though; she went full-on to handling her divorce. She went into therapy to get perspective. We let her know we are here for whatever she needs. We did not know then that, Sometimes you must be very careful with your offers. The transformation gives me mixed feelings. Still to me, she did not look like a grieving woman, more like a relieved one. So, Carole and I went about building her a kind of schedule. Carole has a family; therefore, she has birthday parties, graduations, office parties, christenings, and anniversaries. And on my ‘to do list’ are the weekends away from home, those are mine. Lucky me! We went to classes, bible studies, and every spa there was across the world it seems: the crying spa, the connecting with your feeling and your inner self spa, mind-body-soul, and spirit, getting to know other religions, retreats after retreats, the discovery of oneself, sweat lodges, mediations, getting back the ME within, healing after a loss. She got new hair dos, new looks, new attitude, shopping sprees, new clothes, then new boobs, a little nip there and little tuck there. We went on trips and out to dinner. The list of the healings of Nettie goes on and on. Of them, I must say I do not mind one bit. Dare I should go as far as to say, I even really enjoy a couple of them. And I would have gone to a MILLION more if she had had more in mind, but out of all those self-help gimmicks the one that pissed me off the most was. ‘What A Man Wants!’ WHO! .......THE! ….. FUCK! …......CARES! hah. Who cares! Hell, he does not even know what the fuck he wants. You got a woman who stuck by you through thick and thin, difficulties, was there for you when your father died and mother needed to be taken care of and then she died, helped you raise your sister’s kid when she was nowhere to be found, and who was there through and throughout your repeated stints in and out of rehab.

She fucked up her body to give you children, made your house a home, cooked for you, cleaned and washed his dirty drawers, listened to his uninteresting conversations, catered all your sporting events. Your cook, your maid, your scratching post when you have an itch you want to scratch, and a motherfucker could not have the decency- No!-No! - courtesy to talk to me first before annoying and ruining Thanksgivings for everyone that surrounds this woman. …..... MAN! …..... BYE! ….... Why cannot a woman exist without one? I have gone years without them and have survived, no worse for the wear. I have been told there is something wrong with me or that I am gay, damn I started to believe that at one point. I keep looking at the female sex with flat stomachs and round ass shapes. Then it dawns on me, I am just jealous I do not have a shape like them. Before you know it, I fell in love with myself; but I digress. If I had known in advance that this was on my part of the list, I would not have shown up to this class; I would have given this to Carole. She and I are gonna have some conversations about this class. Something told me she knew. I remember my fiftieth birthday very well. It was when it seemed I finally just let