In the midst of Get Nailed, my eldest brother, who ran a regional office for Primerica Financial Services, suggested I obtain my Series 6 license, which would enable me to sell life insurance and various financial products, coupled with doing fingernails. He said, “Just come over to the office, and let me show you what it’s all about, and you can make your own decision.” Once he showed me the figures in black and white, I was infuriated at how insurance companies finagle people. That fact alone was enough to make me want to get my Series 6 license.

             Facts and figures don’t lie, and the honest Abe in me wanted justice for others who get conned. I could tell my customers about insurance while doing their nails. There was no BS, lying, or conning involved, so I was in. I went to school on the weekends while still working and running Get Nailed. I was feeling very run-down, yet satisfied in my heart that I was trying to do everything I knew how to help myself so I could make a better life for Dara. For once, I could look in the mirror and be proud of who I saw looking back.  I didn’t gripe, I didn’t complain, and I started talking to God out loud about me, my life, and Dara. I felt as if someone were guiding me, even though I couldn’t see them. The feeling was truly unbelievable but in a good way.

I loved the nail shop and the people, but I couldn’t run it alone any longer. I actually thought of just shutting it down and trying to find a way to pay off the lease. I then thought better of it, knowing I had to honor the commitment I had made. I had filed bankruptcy once, so that wasn’t an option again. The pattern in my life had always been, “If it gets too tough, just quit.” Also, the part of me that had wanted to do something for God for pulling me through those shock treatments, was not going to run. I knew I had made my bed, and now I would have to lie in it until it was over, no matter what happened. I just knew I had to keep getting up and facing what was in front of me.

I finished my classes with Primerica and passed the exam. I also concluded that something was going to have to change. I had been having severe chest pains for months by this time—pains that lasted for thirty to forty-five minutes at a time. I started just calling them “attacks.” I had no clue what they were but since I had not died, I figured I hadn’t had a heart attack. More than once, the attacks caused me to break out in cold sweats and double over in pain. After they would subside, I was left feeling very weak but would push myself to be at work. I asked a couple of the nurses who were nail customers what they thought it could be. They both said it sounded like my gallbladder. They said that many people suffered with gallbladder problems for years and never had to have an operation. They told me to eat light foods only, so when I ate at all, I did as they suggested.

I never took a lunch hour, but due to the way I was feeling, I had to start putting a sign up on the door from 1:00 to 2:00 every day and go to the back to rest, so I could muster enough strength for the remainder of the day. I was determined not to quit.

I had a customer who was a proclaimed born-again Christian, and she told me to start quoting the scripture, “By his stripes, I am healed.” She explained the thirty-nine stripes Jesus bore on his back before going to the cross would actually heal my sickness today. What did I have to lose? I was going to try anything at this point that would help me overcome whatever was happening inside of me. I didn’t have any insurance and had no doctor. I had no clue how I would even pay for an operation if it came to that. Quoting scripture was my only hope, and I believed this woman. I had been quoting the scripture for several months by then, and when an exceptionally bad attack would hit me, I would quote it twice as much and twice as loud until the pain would subside. I had no other choice.

The lease was due to be renewed again, and I finally cried uncle and closed the shop. I knew positively and unquestionably that I had tried my hardest and had given everything I had to give until there was nothing left. I knew women loved to come there, and I felt I had done something good for a change by listening to them, helping them, and even praying occasionally for them. I had wanted to do something for God, but I was worn out physically. Of course, the customers balked and wanted me to stay open. I made a joke of it and said, “If you want to get together and pay me a salary, I will be more than happy to keep the shop open for you.” They just laughed, but to me, it really wasn’t funny. I had become the neighborhood counselor and friend, and my shop was the gathering place. I would miss them as much as they said they would miss me, but something was wrong. I was ill, and I was missing Dara’s life.

I had believed this shop was going to be the answer for my career and life and the way of providing support for Dara and me, but it had to be shut down. I felt like I was a failure. My sister and brother-in-law came to me out of the blue before I closed it and said they had a proposition for me. I took the time to listen before saying no right off the bat. Dara and I could come and live with them while I took the time to figure out what I was going to do. They said they had it all planned out. My daughter would share a room with her cousin, and I could use their garage as a place to manicure nails by day, letting it serve as my bedroom at night. It was closed off from the rest of the house, so it could be my own little haven.

I felt my family thought I would start selling insurance full-time with my older brother, but I didn’t feel any inclination to make that my full-time occupation. I believed there was something more in life for me, but I didn’t know how to tap into it. Dara was excited at the proposition, and if she was happy, then I was happy.

I always thought that as long as she was happy—the exact phrase my dad used—then I could pick up, dust myself off, and keep going. At any rate, I was given an answer to my plight, and I was relieved. But this time, I was able to pay them rent so I didn’t feel guilty about moving back in with them. Wanting to make sure all was legal, I checked with the county regarding codes and regulations before opening my business in my sister’s residence.

Most of the women who had been customers at the shop followed me there. The garage served beautifully as a nail shop by day and a place of refuge by night. I felt temporarily settled again.

Within two weeks of closing the shop, I had to have emergency gallbladder surgery. I will never forget the doctor coming into the hospital room after surgery and standing over my bed. His glasses were tilted on his nose, and he was scribbling something on the clipboard he held. He said, “I don’t know what you have been doing, but your gallbladder was so gangrenous, I had to pick it out in pieces.” He was very put out with me.

The most mind-boggling thing of all was what he said next. “Something formed all the way around your gallbladder, keeping it from poisoning you to death.”

The exact—and I mean exact—moment he made that statement, I knew what had happened. He was considered one of the top surgeons in his field, and he had no idea what had formed around my gallbladder protecting me from dying, but I did. It all came flooding back.

The scripture I had learned to speak out loud while working at the shop kept me protected. I would speak that scripture aloud and then just shut up, not speaking anything negative into the atmosphere about how I felt. I didn’t tell anyone how rotten I was feeling. Whatever had formed around that sick part of my body protected me from being poisoned to death. I knew it was from heaven; I just knew it. From that moment on, I wondered how much healing power I had available to me that I did not know about. What else could have possibly kept me from dying?

I had surgery on a Thursday. I was given pain medication and sent home to recuperate. I was back working in my new nail shop the following Tuesday. I had proven to myself that I was not a quitter. I had worked harder than I ever had in my entire life, and I was going to continue to do so.

Learning I had been supernaturally protected in my body by merely speaking a scripture aloud drove me to God. I purposed to go after the God who had been knocking on the door of my heart for years now. I didn’t know if he was real or not, but something had saved me from being poisoned to death. I made a decision to go after him the way I had gone after men. If he could do this, then what else could he do?

I would tuck my daughter in bed at night, making certain she was happy. I would hear her prayers and sit on the side of her bed, rubbing her head until she fell off to sleep. I would watch her sleeping and know that she trusted me, even though I felt I had let her down. I had made so many promises to her that I never kept. I loved her more than I loved myself.

I would wait until she was sound asleep and then go downstairs into my nail shop for the evening. My custom was to pull out a TV tray, set my Bible on it, and start reading. I had no clue where or what to read, but I was now on a quest for the God who had healed me.

One evening I was led by something deep inside of me to sit on the floor of the garage. I took the NIV Bible my brother bought me in my left hand, and I raised my right arm to heaven. Then I pointed my finger at God and said, as if talking directly to God, “If you are really real, you are going to have to help me ’cause I don’t want to live down here like this anymore. I would rather that you bring me home now.” I continued, “I will be dammed to hell if my daughter’s life is going to end up like mine. Give me a hunger and thirst for your Word that I can’t satiate with anything else but you.”

From that moment on, my life started to change. If I could have the same grit and staying power of learning about God that I had in working the last several years, I could find out just who he was once and for all. Could he help someone like me get on a solid path? I would settle forever the question in my heart about him: Was he really real? He had been trying to get to me for years now, always sending someone to me with a Bible in tow to reach me, but I didn’t want to listen. Things were different this time. I thought God was a God in outer space somewhere, who I would have to deal with in the “sweet by and by,” but him saving me from being poisoned to death did something to me I wasn’t expecting. Moreover, who in the world was the Holy Spirit I kept hearing about, and how did three people get into one body anyway?

I didn’t know these answers, but nothing or no one was going to stop me, especially anyone I was around who was experiencing defeat in their own lives. I was going to shut my ears to people whose advice I had listened to for years. They didn’t appear to have any answers, so why would I continue to listen if I wanted things in my life to be different? I didn’t tell anyone what I had purposed in my heart. It was none of their business as long as I kept up my end of the bargain to pay rent.