God's Will

“Mama’s got cancer,” the text blurb on my phone read.

It was from my younger sister, Grace. I tried calling her. Six rings later I was met with an automated voice, “The wireless caller you are trying to reach has not set up an inbox system. Goodbye.”

I figured she wouldn’t answer. We hadn’t spoken in five years.

My mother and Grace lived in our hometown in Arkansas. The poor small town depended on agriculture and religion, two things I had no interest in being a part of. When I graduated high school, I left for New York City where I’ve remained for fifteen years, working my way up the corporate ladder as an ad executive.

My mother and Grace, on the other hand, lived by the hand of the bible. As devout Baptists, they spent their Sundays at church and Wednesdays at bible study, and every day started and ended with prayer.

Suffice it to say, they did not exactly approve of my lifestyle in the city. As I grew away from my roots, the pair seemed to grow closer. Contact became less and less frequent. I tried to remember the last time I spoke to my mother. It had to have been six months ago.

I dialed her landline. After six rings, I was met with her voicemail, too.

I hadn’t been back to Arkansas in five years. I knew my mother would downplay her illness and insist on me staying in New York to avoid the trouble. I had accumulated weeks of PTO that I never planned on using and decided that now would be as good a time as any.

I stepped out of the taxi in front of my childhood home in Helena-West Helena, the poorest town in Arkansas. I spotted my mother’s old Lincoln and Grace’s Impala. I walked up the pebble driveway to the one-story home. The grass remained unkempt, about two weeks past due for a mow. Patches of brown, decaying leaves lined the driveway. I searched for the stone path that crossed the lawn to the front door, hidden under the grass.

As I got closer to the door, I noticed nothing had changed. Ground soot and mold still covered the home’s white vinyl shingles. Green mildew still grew out of the gutters. Even the roof was still covered in a mysterious black substance.

I approached the door and stared at the conspicuously placed cross right in the middle. Then I knocked. My mother opened the door.

“Hi Mama.”

“Oh Mary!” my mother gasped.

I reached in for a hug, assessing the frailty of her frame, running my fingers over the pronounced rivets of her ribcage.

“Oh, Mary. My beautiful baby girl. Oh, it’s been so long.”

She began to cry.

“Don’t cry, Ma.”

I hugged her tighter.

“What are you doin here, my child? How is that big city treatin ya? You still workin at that big ole office? Oh, let me bake some cookies! Or do you want pie? I can make both. Grace!”

I walked in the door. The kitchen was still frozen in an 80’s nightmare, covered in linoleum and peeling at the corners of the pantry and cabinets. The white refrigerator that I had offered to replace for years was lined with even more rust. The living room still featured the bulky CRT TV my father got us for Christmas in 2002. I couldn’t tell if the walls bore even more crosses and biblical figures or if I had just been gone for so long that the clutter overwhelmed me like an optical illusion.

“Make yourself comfortable darlin and tell me why I get the pleasure of my firstborn’s company.”

I sat down and watched my mother rummage through the kitchen to uphold her Southern hospitality. She really was frail. Much frailer than five years ago. She was already a small woman, only about 5’3, but she looked like she had shrunk an inch or two. Her yellow hair had paled into a muted blonde, almost white. You could see her scalp through the thinning strands.

Her face had changed the most, though. It was gaunt. Her cheeks were hollow, and her jowls hung low. Her under-eye bags protruded from their sockets like mini beanbags. How long has she had cancer?

“Mama, you don’t need to do all that, please.”

“I want to, baby.”

I couldn’t watch her decaying body do anything for me, let alone bake. I got up and closed the refrigerator door she was opening.

“Mama, I know you have cancer.”

She froze, her head still facing the fridge.

“When were you gonna tell me?”

“Oh baby, it’s nothin to fret over. I’m fine, really. Oh, it’s nothin, nothin at all. My God is good. I have placed my health in his hands. My faith is strong, and I know he is taking care of me.”

And there we go. The same, tired conversation. I was surprised that she waited this long to bring up religion. She must have been putting it off since we hadn’t seen each other in five years, and she didn’t want to scare me off.

“Mama…What kind of cancer is it? What stage are you in? When did you find out?”

“Oh Mary, my smart girl.”

“Please…Mama.”

My mother swallowed and dropped her head to her chest, letting out a long sigh. Then she turned to me.

“Dr. Kincaid says it’s lung cancer. Stage three he says.”

“How long have you known?”

“Ohh I don’t know. Bout a year or so.”

I gasped and clutched at the counter for stability. I wanted to scream at her- and Grace.

“Oh my—,” I caught myself before saying the lord’s name in vain in front of her, “and you didn’t tell me? Why?”

“Mary, I didn’t wanna—”

“She didn’t wanna burden you with her problems,” Grace interjected, sweeping around from the hallway.

“She didn’t want to bother you up in the big city, with your big, perfect life. She didn’t wanna bring you down anymore with all her problems that ruined your childhood,” Grace continued, mocking me with words from past arguments.

I stared at Grace and listened to her scathing words, the resentment of fifteen years of estrangement slicing my soul with each syllable. I couldn’t argue with her when she had been the one to notify me about Mama’s condition.

“Grace, you told her?” my mother asked.

“Yeah, I did. You’ve gotten so pale Mama, it was weighin on me that she didn’t know. I was prayin on it and God told me to tell her. We could use her extra prayers, Mama. It’s worth a shot.”

“I want to know what the doctor’s saying. What’s your course of treatment? Have you been doing chemo?” I asked.

Grace and Mama paused, looking down at the big, white linoleum tiles.

“God is taking care of me, Mary.”

“What the hell do you mean by that, Mama?” I asked.

“My faith is unwavering. I know God will grant me a miracle if I remain steadfast, loyal, and devoted, as I have been all these years. We’ve still been goin to church every Sunday, we go to bible study five days a week.”

I wasn’t sure if I was understanding her correctly. Was she saying that she was foregoing medical treatment in lieu of prayer? My mother was always devout, but never to that extent. She brought me to the doctor when I got pneumonia in sixth grade. She took my father to the hospital and stayed by his side the entire time that he was dying from cirrhosis. She drove Grace to the emergency room at midnight when she had her miscarriage. She believed in modern medicine for all of that, but not for her cancer?

“Mama, what about your doctor? You don’t just heal from cancer. I don’t understand, why aren’t you getting treated?” I asked.

Grace responded, “Mary, the only reason I even told you about this was so you could get on board and pray for Mama. We need all hands on deck. She needs to be surrounded by faith. I was a fool for thinking you would help. I clearly made a mistake. You should just leave!”

“Have you lost your mind, too?” I asked Grace.

“You’ve always had that nasty mouth and ever since you went to the city your tongue has grown even more wicked. You know what, Mary? You’re the reason Mama isn’t healin! You and all your sin! You don’t believe and your lack of faith is overpowering all the tithes we’ve sent for prayers!”

“I’m the reason? I am the reason our mother isn’t healing from cancer? From the cancer that she has had for a year that I never knew about. Really?”

Mama stepped between us.

“Girls! Stop it now! Please,” she coughed out, “Grace, please go, let me talk to your sister.”

Hearing my mother’s coughs and wheezes for oxygen shut us both up. We grabbed her arms and sat her on the couch. Grace handed Mama a water and we both stood, arms on hips, watching her guzzle.

“Grace, please go,” Mama whispered.

Grace looked at Mama and then turned to me. The angry squinting in her eyes softened to slow blinks of disappointment. Then she turned and left the living room.

Mama laid down on the couch, slowly catching her breath. When she recovered enough to sit up, I turned to her.

“Mama… What did Grace mean about all the tithes you’ve sent for prayers?”

“Barron Baker is a successful faith healer, Mary. He can restore my health if I send my tithes to his ministry. I will be rewarded tenfold for what I put in. We send in letters requesting prayer for my condition with every tithe. Pastor Barron prays over each letter. If I keep enough faith, God will grant me a miracle. But I know you don’t believe in those…”

Barron Baker was an infamous televangelist that my mother had been watching since I was a kid. He preached the prosperity gospel, taking every chance he got to request money from his congregation in the form of tithes. He would claim that donations one made to God would be repaid to them in the form of blessings. He was a certified scam artist, praying on poor, desperate, uneducated people like my mother who had dropped out of school at sixteen to start working and supporting her family.

I remembered Pastor Barron’s face on the TV screen, but I remembered his words more. They were bound in my memory, the echoes of his smooth, deep voice transfixed with conviction. The rhythm of his speech flowed through an internal metronome, alternating between accented beats, rests, and long drawls. The way he spoke was spellbinding. I can still recite his sermons, “I was a banker, transferring money from account to account, investing in stocks and bonds. Until God called upon me. He revealed to me the secret of true wealth and blessings that no earthly practice could ensure. He spoke to me of a heavenly bank account, the best deposit one can make, the only safe place one can store their money. When you invest in our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, you will always have blessings to withdraw from here on earth. When you plant your seed, He will multiply it. So, invest in your faith. An investment in God is an investment in your future! The kingdom of God is about giving. Call the 1-800 number at the bottom of the screen to sow your offering today!”

I looked around the living room and remembered playing with Barbies on the floor while my mother washed dishes and watched his program. I recounted the time she destroyed all my Barbies, cutting the heads off the dolls in front of me after Pastor Barron had preached about the sin associated with “provocative” childrens toys. I remember the way the pastor’s crystal blue eyes constricted, turning into those of a serpent as he pointed his finger at the viewer, screaming about protecting children from the demonic forces behind the toy companies. Matthew 7:15 always came to mind when I saw those eyes, Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves.

“Mother, that man is full of shit. You can’t possibly be fooled by that con artist. He’s greedy scum using the guise of religion to milk his followers dry.”

Grace was right about my mouth. I had a habit of being rather harsh and brazen. It lent itself well to my career in a cutthroat industry, but not so much with my mild-mannered family. I had to remind myself to be more tactful and lead with sensitivity if I was going to get through to her.

“You aren’t going to heal from cancer without treatment… Mama, I know you’re desperate and in a fragile situation right now, but, please, for the love of God, go see a doctor before it’s too late. Don’t go broke funding this fool…or worse, die because of him.”

My mother put her hand on mine, squeezing it tight.

“Mary, you are my smart, strong girl. Thank you for caring. I am not feeling well right now, I am going to lie down. Go make yourself comfortable. The bed is made in your old room.”

I laid on my old twin-size box spring mattress. The metal rods digging into my back prevented me from sleeping. I checked the time, midnight.

I walked to the kitchen for a snack. As I was opening the refrigerator, I saw a handwritten letter taped to the fridge. The top of the page was adorned in gold letterhead, reading Barron Baker Ministries in a dramatic cursive font.

Dear Ms. Sullivan,

I wanted to thank you for your loyalty and dedication to this congregation. Your generous tithes have certainly pleased God. I see many blessings on the horizon for you. To show my gratitude for your commitment, I have elevated your membership status to gold. Please accept the attached pin and graphic T-Shirt as recompense.

May God Bless You,

Pastor Barron Baker

What does gold membership status entail? I pulled out my phone to search Pastor Barron’s website. I pressed on the ‘membership packages’ tab and scrolled to gold. The criteria read, “Congregants reach gold status after pledging $400 or more a month in tithes consistently for a minimum of one year.”

I ripped it down. 400 dollars? She can’t be throwing away $400 a month to this piece of shit. My mother was living off a Winn-Dixie manager salary. And in the condition she was in now, she couldn’t even work at all.

I opened the refrigerator and pulled out leftover fried green tomatoes. In my frustration, I hastily opened the cabinet to retrieve a plate. The reverberation of the cabinet tipped the plate off the shelf. I attempted to catch it before it shattered on the ground, but I was too late. I shuddered at the sound of the crash.

I wasn’t worried, however, about waking the others. I knew that sound all too well. Everyone in this house did.

Sometimes when my father would come home drunk, he threw plates, cups, pots, pans- you name it. He liked to break things when he was drunk. All types of things.

By the time I had removed all the pieces of broken glass, my appetite was gone. As I was exiting the kitchen, I noticed the first new decoration. Well, it wasn’t new, but it had a new placement. A cardboard cross over a red construction paper heart was tacked above the kitchen doorway. Horizontally across, in shaky, glittered paint it read, G.S. <3 M.S. My sister’s initials and mine. At the bottom of the heart, it read, Ecclesiastes 4:10- If either of them falls down, one can help the other up. But pity anyone who falls and has no one to help them up. Grace had made it for me in Sunday School when we were little.

My sister and I used to be close. She was only three years younger than me, but she looked up to me like a second mother. I used to make her dinner when Mama was working a closing shift and our father was working on roofs or drinking. When she was struggling to learn to read because of dyslexia, I spent every night for two years with her reading books until we fell asleep. Though we technically had our own rooms, I slept with her most nights. She liked the company, and truth be told, so did I.

Once she learned to read, we started dreaming of our escape from Helena. We made plans to get a college scholarship in New York City and move right after graduation. By the time she would be ready for college, I would already have an apartment and she would come live with me. It was our greatest dream and the one that motivated us through adolescence. Leaving Helena was our salvation, not ascending to heaven after death.

I followed through on the plan, receiving a scholarship to Columbia after graduating first in my class while working full-time bagging groceries at Winn-Dixie.

Grace, on the other hand, reneged on her part of the deal. In her senior year, at seventeen years old, she got pregnant by her boyfriend, Tommy. Of course, it was unplanned and of course, our devout mother didn’t approve. But she was vehemently against abortion and Grace wanted to keep the child anyway. She was in love with Tommy.

Six and a half months into the pregnancy, Grace suffered a miscarriage. She was diagnosed with antiphospholipid syndrome, a rare affliction that makes your blood more likely to clot. Grace was devastated. She and my mother had already turned my old room into a nursery and held a baby shower. She even had the baby’s name picked out, Faith.

Grace fell into a deep depression after the miscarriage and became completely bedridden. I took as much time off school as I could to travel and stay with her, but Columbia is rigorous and plane tickets are expensive. Mama remained steadfast by her side, feeding her, cleaning her with washcloths, and always reading the bible. This went on for months until Grace dropped out of high school and Tommy moved to Little Rock for work.

Six and a half months later, Grace had fully assimilated back into society. I begged her to come stay with me in New York and get her GED, but she refused, citing her need for access to the church and being surrounded by holiness. She attributed her recovery to prayer and God’s love.

She and Mama grew closer than ever. She started going to church every Sunday and bible study every Wednesday with Mama. She even started working with her at Winn-Dixie.

As Grace’s faith grew, she requested my visits less. The lack of contact over the years drove us apart, replaced by a slow evolving animosity.

I had declined to accompany Grace and Mama to church on Sunday. Mama passively accepted defeat. She had given up on my religious conversion a long time before. Grace, on the other hand, was not so accepting.

“You think you’re some hotshot atheist New Yorker,” she had said, “You think you’re smarter than us because you don’t believe in God. You think you’re better than us poor, uneducated, southern folk!”

“That’s simply not true, Grace. It sounds like you’re projecting. That’s what you think of yourself,” I had replied.

“You resent my relationship with the lord!”

I laughed.

“I don’t resent your relationship with the Lord. I resent you for being weak and turning to the very thing we resented to cope with your grief over Faith.”

I had known the second the word ’weak” left my mouth, I had taken it too far. She slammed the door in my face that day and remained locked inside her room until my flight.

Looking at the old cross now, I thought about the love we had.

I walked to her room and lightly tapped the door open. I just wanted to look at her. I just wanted to look at her and think about the day she made me that cross.

Her hands lay perfectly beneath her head. I could see that she was curled up in the fetal position under the comforter. I watched her chest expand and contract, letting out a shallow breath with every exhale. In the dark, she looked the same as she did when she made me the cross.

I knocked lightly on the door. She slowly opened her eyes and looked at me.

“What’s up?” Her voice cracked.

“I broke a plate. I just wanted to make sure I didn’t wake you up.”

“Well, you sure did just now when you knocked.”

I walked over to the bed and sat down by her feet. She sat up beside me and turned on the lamp. Her hair was woven into two long braids. I clutched one and lightly fiddled with it.

“Remember when I would braid your wet hair the night before school so you could take it out in the morning and wear it curly?” I asked.

“Yes… yes, I do.”

“Remember when we would pretend to go to school until Mama left for work, and then come back to the house and I would make fried green tomatoes and we’d watch Disney movies?”

“Disney movies? More like just The Little Mermaid. You were obsessed and made us watch that every time!” Grace laughed.

“Oh my gosh, we used to practice the songs all the time too!”

“Yeah, you always got Ariel’s part and forced me to be the dang crab!”

Grace started clicking her fingers together, mimicking claws. We both erupted with giggles.

“Shh! We can’t wake Mama!” Grace said.

“Don’t forget this isn’t a school night. We’re adults now.”

She sighed and we both tightened up awkwardly, remembering the reality of our current relationship. I anxiously started poking my fingers through the quilt’s holes. I looked down and saw the distorted blob of golden cloth against a royal blue backdrop. It was the lion quilt I knitted her for her eighth birthday. Grace noticed my fingers toying with what was supposed to be the lion’s mane.

“Yeah, I still sleep with it. Every night. It’s lasted this whole time, you sure can’t knit a lion to save your life but you can make one durable quilt.”

She smiled, but it faded as we made eye contact. We both remembered why I made that quilt.

When our father would come home late after a night of drinking, we would hide in the closet and wrap the quilt over us, serving as a makeshift fort. It was our shield, and the lion was our protector. I’d play the disk cassette of The Little Mermaid soundtrack and place the headphones over Grace’s ears while I sang along under my breath. I tried my best to drown out the sound of smashing glass and furniture flying through the room, but I could never drown out the deep undertone of pounding that reverberated through the home when our father hit our mother.

We sat in silence for a moment, then I wrapped the quilt around our shoulders.

“You aren’t weak, Grace.”

She looked me in the eyes, just blinking.

I continued, “I was supposed to be your protector… I don’t think you’re weak. I can’t imagine what you went through. I respect your religious beliefs. I respect you. I’m sorry. I let you down. I will always be there to protect you.”

“I love you,” Grace said as she embraced me for a hug.

“I love you too.”

The next morning, I joined Mama and Grace in the kitchen for breakfast. Grace smiled at me.

“Well, good mornin’. A blessed mornin it is,” said Mama.

Mama was cooking eggs and Grace was cooking fried green tomatoes. I switched out the instant coffee for a Starbucks bag I brought from New York and poured everyone a cup. When the food was ready, we sat down and held each other’s hands for grace. My mother cleared her throat.

“First, I would like to thank you, Lord, for the blessing of food on our table. Amen.”

“Amen,” we repeated.

“Now the main attraction,” she squeezed my hand twice, “I would like to give mighty praise and thanks to you, God, for blessing me with the presence of my first-born daughter, Mary. It has been five long years since I’ve seen my baby, and I can’t think of a single thing to be more grateful for. Thank you, Lord, for you have given me the greatest blessin of all. My family is reunited, at last. Amen.”

“Amen,” we chanted.

We ate our food and chatted about my life in New York. I told them about my recent promotion to chief marketing officer at the advertising firm. They lit up when I told them I was overseeing Quaker Oats’ rebrand, developing new promotional materials and brand graphics. Mama loves oatmeal.

When we were done, Mama sat down to drink her fancy coffee, and Grace and I started cleaning the kitchen. Mama turned on the TV to none other than Pastor Barron Baker. He was standing on stage, speaking gibberish, or in tongues as my mother called it, into a microphone. A boy in a wheelchair rolled onto the stage and the pastor approached him, belting “Praise Jesus, Hallelujah.” A group of parishioners surrounded the boy, some with their arms reaching to the heavens, others gripping his shoulders and legs. An audience of hundreds were cheering in the pews.

Pastor Barron began approaching the boy, signing the cross over, and over, and over. The crowd grew louder as he walked closer to the boy. The surrounding parishioners began pleading up to the sky, some falling to their knees clasping their hands together in prayer.

Pastor Barron placed his right hand on the boy’s forehead. He pushed the boy backward, bellowing into the microphone, “In the name of Jesus, heal this child!”

The parishioners on stage all collapsed to the ground. The crowd erupted into hallelujahs, incessantly miming the cross over their chests. Pastor Barron turned to the audience, smiling, and raising a fist to the sky, “God is good all the time!”

“Turn this garbage off,” I sneered.

Grace froze above the sink, mid-plate scrub. Mama set her coffee down.

“Mary, I’ve let you live your life without God, a life I don’t agree with. The least ya could do is let us live ours!” Mama said.

“You expect me to just sit by while you sacrifice your health and your finances?” I replied.

“Well, I believe you’re sacrificin’ your soul’s afterlife! And I sit idly by! Otherwise, I’d lose ya in this lifetime! And I’m selfish and can’t bear that. Now, I don’t want to hear none of this again. I am your mother; you don’t need to tell me how to take care of my health or my finances. I know you’re all big time in the city, now, Mary, and all that sin has seeped into your mind and poisoned ya, but I won’t let you get to me!”

“How can you afford to send this crook $400 a month? You’re not even working. You’re gonna blow through your whole social security if you don’t die from the untreated cancer first!”

Grace dropped her plate into the sink, smashing it into little shards of glass.

“What are you talkin about, ain’t no $400 a month. I send ten percent of my monthly benefits checks. It’s usually only about $150 or so,” Mama said.

I looked up at Grace, who stared firmly down at the broken glass. I knew then that she was the one sending the money. I left the room and went to Grace’s. She followed shortly after me. I pulled the letter out of my pocket and handed it to her.

“What the hell is this, Grace?”

She crumpled it in her hand.

“I want Mama to be cured, okay? I’ll do anything for a miracle…”

Grace’s voice started to crack. She wiped her tear duct as it started to fill.

“How about convince her to see a damn doctor? You can’t be this far gone, Grace.”

“Well, what if I am?”

“$400! How many hours is that, Grace? Forty? You rearrange Campbell’s soup containers for Christ’s sake.”

I swallowed my words. I did it again. I took it too far. She pushed me out of her room, slamming the door and locking me out.

I needed fresh air, so I went for a walk. A few blocks turned into a few miles. I had reached Helena’s dilapidated version of a downtown. As I walked past an office building, I saw a big sign for Dr. Kincaid on the directory. I vaguely remembered the building. Kincaid was one of the only primary physicians in town and had been for the past thirty years. He had taken care of my pneumonia and a few strep throats when I was a kid.

I approached the front desk and asked if Dr. Kincaid was available. The receptionist walked into the back. Shortly after, Dr. Kincaid emerged, opening the door and signaling me to come into his office.

“Well, hello old friend, to what do I owe the pleasure?” Dr. Kincaid asked.

“I’m in town for my mother. As you know, she has cancer.”

Kincaid nodded his head in acknowledgement, but then slowly changed to shaking it solemnly and pursing his lips.

“She’s stubborn. She refuses treatment. She thinks God will perform a miracle if her faith is strong enough. She’s become totally brainwashed by the crook televangelists, Doctor. What can I do?”

“Mary, I tried everything I could to persuade her to seek treatment. She has an excuse for everything, whether it’s God’s will or Medicare not funding the treatment.”

“Wait, Medicare won’t fund her treatment?” I asked.

“At her age, the aggressiveness of the cancer, and its advanced status, it would take a miracle for her to receive full coverage.”

I sat in bewilderment. Mama never mentioned an insurance issue. My mother claimed she wasn’t seeking treatment because she believed faith alone would heal her. In reality, she didn’t have the money for treatment.

“Why wouldn’t she tell me that?” I asked into the void. I knew why.

My mother knew I had the money to cover her treatment. I had worked my way up to a hefty salary on my corporate journey. But… she would never accept my money. She wouldn’t want to burden me.

Dr. Kincaid didn’t respond to my rhetorical question, instead, he waited for me to come to my own conclusion.

“Doctor, can you put me in touch with the best oncologist in Arkansas?”

Back at home the next day, Grace ran into the home raving about a letter she found in the mailbox.

“Mama! Come here, come here! It’s a letter from Barron Baker Ministries!”

We gathered around the table and Mama opened the letter. The top of the page was adorned in gold letterhead, reading Barron Barker Ministries in a dramatic cursive font.

Dear Ms. Sullivan,

I wanted to thank you for being such a devout and loyal member of my congregation. I have been reading over all your letters and praying for your full recovery from cancer. While I was praying over your last tithe, I received a message from God. He told me to send you to an oncologist, Dr. Maya Kuzza, in Little Rock. He bestowed upon our congregation the duty of paying your treatment in full. We are more than obliged to carry out God’s will. See the attached documents for your upcoming appointment. Get well soon.

May God Bless You,

Pastor Barron Baker

A week later, the three of us gathered at the Little Rock Hospital. My mother lay on a hospital bed hooked up to her first treatment of chemotherapy. I stood on the left of the bed, Grace on the right. We each held one of her hands.

“I have so much to be grateful for. God has blessed me beyond my wildest dreams,” my mother said. She looked at me and continued, “You have brought these blessings, Mary. Your presence has summoned God’s love and charity.”

“Mama, what are you talking about? You’re loopy from the medications.”

Grace interjected, “She’s right, Mary. Pastor Barron only got God’s message when you came around. We had been praying for a year, but as soon as you arrive, he answers our prayers. This all happened because of you.”

Grace reached for my right hand across the bed. With all of us now connected, I said, “Glory to God.”

I reminded myself, I’ve gotta give the graphic design guy at the firm a raise. His replica of Barron Baker Ministries letterhead was impeccable.