LEADING LADIES BEHIND THE SCENES AND ON THE FRONT LINE Welcome to my column on Leading Ladies behind the Scenes. Our column will introduce you to leading ladies who have branded their own recognition and blazed their own trails. These ladies work behind the scenes but manage the front line with high impact results. You might have heard their names or admired their work, but never met them up close and personal. Our column will give you the chance to meet these ladies so you can place a face with the name and their trendsetting work in our community, various organizations and in business. Thank you for celebrating their value with us.
Nouchelle Hastings: “Girl What Do You Bring to the Table?”
Message from Leading Ladies Columnist Nouchelle Hastings December 1999 was the 12th month of that year. It began on a Wednesday and ended 31 days later on a Friday. It was the last month of the 1990s decade. It was also the month that I would enter into what some would call the Twilight Zone. We attended at the time a church called Faith Fellowship Family Church. I was a prominent and popular member. I had status if you will. I was the WE CARE Minister and did a most excellent job with full consistency; I was also the choir director who gave it all I had every time we ministered. I was a fundraiser brought lots of money into the ministry from movers and shakers in the community. And yet people referred to me as crazy, bugged out NY’r, etc. Our church was known for having the best conferences and the most trained and developed leaders - yes! Several big names would come through to minister but two in particular I reflect on. One ministered to me about my heart (well many did) but this particular message was that the heart I had was given to me by God. “Nothing you do can change your heart because it’s not yours to change - God birthed you this way. You will do amazing things and reap divine favor because your heart is the heart of God, so please stop allowing others who don’t have the same heart to speak into your spirit.....for you are not weird, you are not crazy, you are brilliant and favored by God and you can do what others only imagine”. The next prophetic word came from Prophet Dixon in the same month of December 1999. “God says that everything and everyone that has ever come against you, He is going to come against them. You tell everyone your business because you think they are your friends. They are not your friends; they want to get to you so they can get thru you. There are many who sit here today but not many as holy as you because you understand and you love unconditionally. Your heart is pure before God. God says I’m going to take you from this place and cause you to be relocated. I’m going to break your heart and then I’m going to heal your heart. I’m going to bring you unto myself. And I’m going to bond you with hearts of those that I have chosen for you”. Those two words are the only thing I remember from 1999 to 2000 (Y2K) apart from everything else that I don’t remember but have forgotten that I don’t remember. At Christmas 1999 the unthinkable happened when I had a fatal accident on I-95 in the state of VA. With every major bone on my right side broken, head injury and spinal injury I lay mangled on a cold road. Cell phones were not the magnitude of what they are today but had that been the case it would be of no use to a mangled person. As God would have it a nurse traveling from NJ witnessed the accident and she wrapped me in a garnet and gold blanket. (My birthstone is Garnet). I have the blanket until this day. As a child when I would watch the news I would hear of families who took vacation and died in accidents. My prayer would always be for them and their families. I felt how awful to die alone. I always said within Father please don’t let me die like this.
So on this night and crest of a new day at midnight a cry was made. I can still hear my voice and feel the cold ground saying Jesus and I can feel my own breath and then I can feel the peace of death - it was the most warming and indescribable feeling. I remember meeting a man who came before me when I was in the field lying on mounds of white willow and whey. I now know him to be Father John Jackson, the Episcopalian Father on call who was beckoned to provide me my last rights and prayer. Father Jackson who was filled with the spirit was the one to inform my surgeons and hospital staff that “She shall not die but live and declare the work of the Lord” ...... Father Jackson who then stood between me and death and prayed the prayer of covering until all realized that life was still in my lifeless and non-responsive body. There is so much more to this story and several others to share about but I feel that I’m supposed to move forward to a certain point. Each December I live a life of turmoil trying to recall what happened to me, how it happened and why. Each December I sent my baby son away to enjoy the holidays with others so he (who loves to receive stuff) didn’t experience my agony. Each December I work and volunteer at many venues thinking as I always have if you overdo doing good, that I would be rewarded with memory and being accepted. My memory is affected still today and on any day without notice a migraine can wipe out events of a day or a week. And so I take pictures often and I share with people so I can always make a current memory. Each day I look in the mirror and ask myself what did you look like before? I know what people say but I cannot remember. I remember my auntie Gloria Cullum praying and rubbing my face and saying you are going to be better. I remember my son wanting to run from me because he said I was yucky. I remember my brother Terry saying baby girl you are beautiful but I can’t remember what I look like and each December I try and I try and I cry but I see only a figure that seems strange in the mirror. For years my friend Amelia Powlett protected me from many hurts. She would cook, clean and admire me. She would have notes, reminders phone numbers OMG in case it got too crazy and I would finally break down because I couldn’t remember. My mother managed her life and my life because she had to keep me going and encouraged. God bless them for their unwavering love. God in His wisdom has given me the most dapper husband who cares beyond his own life for me. He gave me a new term for my final status of facial scarring “Beauty Marks” but he gets no rest during this month. My nights are filled with dreams of events and he always makes sure that he calms my racing heart. The details, the details (five surgeries, transposing numbers are only a few but I know there is a reason that I am to share this private moment in my life during this final segment of the 2013 article. Even as I sit here with a splitting headache writing this article, I know there is a heart that this openness is speaking expressly to. No matter what the state of your current condition is if you have life you have hope. Take it from someone who has lived through what seemed like an impossible feat. Merry Christmas and Happy Holiday from a leading lady who is filled with joy, Shalom.
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