You’ve Been Given Enough

“You’ve been given all that you need. You’re on your own now. Stand on your own two feet.”

Those words resounded as clearly in my head as though the speaker had been standing in my room right next to me. But there was no one here with me – at least no one I could see. As I looked out over the galvanized rooftops, past the pastel-colored houses to the pink-colored clouds heralding the morning sun, I became aware of a mantle of responsibility falling softly on my shoulders.

I was reacting to the news that my mother had just broken to me on the telephone. “Laurel,” she said, “I have some sad news for you. Rex is dead. He died this morning of a heart attack. The funeral is Thursday. You have to come home.”

Rex has been a substitute father for me ever since my biological father died eighteen years previously. He had been a spiritual guide. He had been the first one to identify gifts and graces that had been developing in me, and had said to me over the years that there was a special call on my life – a debt that I owed to God and to my people that I could not escape.

Periodically he would say to me: “Aren’t you ready yet? It’s time for ordination. Let me know when you’re ready.” I would shrug and say, “I’m not so sure…” He never saw my gender. That I was a woman did not matter to him. He simply knew there were talents that I had to share with God’s people.

The answer to my unspoken question which drove me to the window of my second floor apartment in the south eastern corner of the beautiful island in the Caribbean where I was born, had come in response to a question I had asked myself, “What do I do now?”

“You’re on your own. You’ve been given enough.” That’s something Rex might say. Short. Pithy. Profound. True.

I made plans to return to New York, breathing deeply the fresh salty air that drifted over the seaside village where I vacation with my cousins. Okay. One day earlier than I had planned – that’s not too much to sacrifice, I reasoned. Rex was always reasonable. God was reasonable too!

It was also the last time that I would see my paternal grandmother alive. When I returned to Barbados just seven weeks later, at the end of January, it would be to eulogize her, and to confirm what was now becoming very clear to me. It was time for me to answer the call to ministry. It was time for me to assume the mantle, take on a special responsibility, carry the torch to the next generation. One generation was passing. It was now my time. Like Jonah the reluctant prophet, I tenuously approached the necessary changes that I had to make, as conditions around me became increasingly troublesome. Even though I was reluctant to admit it, I was ready. I had been prepared. I had been given enough.

Laurel E. Scott