Yesterday, I Cried_ Celebrating the Lessons of Living and Loving - Iyanla Vanzant [22]
Rhonda guessed that Grandma spent so much time in church because she was always so angry. Angry with Rhonda, angry with Daddy. Grandma was angry at the world. Sometimes she would even get angry at food and throw it around in the kitchen. Rhonda had seen her slamming a chicken into the sink and cursing to herself. Although church ladies weren’t supposed to curse, Grandma had a pretty impressive vocabulary when the other church ladies weren’t around. Her son, Rhonda’s daddy, seemed to evoke the greatest anger in Grandma. “You and your daddy are cut from the same bolt of cloth. Ain’t neither one of you ever gonna be s——t!” Whenever Grandma started down this path, Rhonda always knew where she would end up. “Neither one of you is worth the time it took to make you, and I am sick to death of both of you.” It was like a daily mantra. Each time she heard it, Rhonda wondered if her daddy felt the same way about her that Grandma did. She also wondered if her daddy knew that she loved him no matter what Grandma said. Loving Daddy was an act of silent defiance. The only kind Rhonda could get away with.
Grandma was what they called a prayer warrior at church. For some reason, people believed that Grandma’s prayers were stronger and got through to God quicker than their own. Whenever someone was in need of prayer, for their family, for a financial matter, a wayward husband, or any kind of illness, they would call on Grandma. She would sit with them at the kitchen window, listen to their story, and then write a “prescription” on a piece of brown paper. Even some family members who knew that Grandma was crazy would come to see her when they were desperate or in trouble. They all said that she had a gift. They also knew that she could pray for you or against you. It was the latter of which they were most afraid.
Praying was a skill that Grandma passed on to Rhonda. She put a great deal of time, energy, and effort into the prayer sessions she designed to teach Rhonda the mechanics of prayer, when to pray, what to pray for, how to pray for other people, and what to do while waiting for the evidence that a prayer had been answered. And with the same intensity she put into imparting the rigors of prayer, Grandma gave Rhonda a very good reason to pray.
There was hardly a morning that Rhonda didn’t wake up to find Grandma sitting at the window, praying. Before sunrise, Grandma would sit with the open Bible in her lap, rocking back and forth on the kitchen chair, praying and singing hymns. Rhonda’s memories of chicken frying in the pan and fresh rolls baking in the oven were colored with memories of Grandma singing “What a Friend We Have in Jesus,” “Nearer, My God, to Thee,” and “Jesus, Keep Me Near the Cross.” Those were the same songs that Rhonda used to sing to herself when Grandma was angry and giving her a “healing” bath.
Grandma was the reason Rhonda learned to pray about soap. She prayed that God, or the appropriate saint in charge, would let Grandma know that using store-bought soap was not a sin. Grandma made her own soap. It was brown, odorless, and contained a variety of sticks, leaves, and pebbles that were quite abrasive to the skin. Rhonda prayed for the day she could use a bar of the sweet-smelling soap that she would see in the supermarket. The kind that left a scent on your body that you could smell as you moved around the house. “Buying soap when you can make your own is a waste of money. Wasting money,” Grandma said, “is a sin!” Besides that, they both knew that Grandma’s soap caused a lot more pain when Grandma gave Rhonda one of her special healing baths.
Healing requires a special approach to the problem presented before you. On the days when Grandma was particularly angry, and Rhonda had done something that particularly annoyed her, Grandma would resort to what she called “a healing.” Rhonda would be stripped naked and made to stand in the tub. Grandma would take the special scrub brush from behind the bathroom