Just Because

Years ago when I lived in an apartment in SoHo, I had a very funny situation where I was a member of the Co-Op Board. I wasn’t an owner, I was renting my apartment, but they needed someone who lived in the building to interview buyers and renters, and none of the owners lived in the building. I’m not really sure why they asked me to be that person – I hadn’t lived in the building the longest, but I was friends with the owner who was the President of the Board, so maybe that had something to do with it. For some reason they thought I was a respectable person and a good judge of people, both things I definitely wasn’t and where I still waver on the edge. But for whatever reason they asked me, and I thought it might be a good thing to do, so I was in.

Mostly my duties consisted of going to Board meetings, which were very congenial and martini-laden affairs held in some of the chicest hotspots in SoHo which at that time was just beginning to be the trendiest place anyone could possibly live. It was a miracle when I found that apartment, a miracle that only God could do, even though I wasn’t even paying attention to Him then. I had left a relationship of five years, and the man I left had done everything in his power to make me homeless. By the grace of God who I didn’t even know enough to thank at the time I was able to stay in friends' apartments for two or three months. One couple let me stay in their gorgeous loft in Greenwich Village, a few streets away from where I’d been living. I stayed with them for a few weeks, and then they went on vacation and let me have the place to myself for a month. Then I stayed with another friend for a few weeks, and then another. Thank you Jesus for providing me with such good friends, and thank you friends for being the friends you are to the likes of me.

I found the apartment by a pure chance. I know now that it was the Holy Spirit talking to me, someone I didn’t even know existed at the time, but it could only have been Him. It’s amazing how God will talk to us in whatever way He can. I was walking by a building one day in the West Village, and I saw a sign for a psychic in a big picture window. It was a very lavish set-up they had, and at the time I thought, gee I could use that, but I didn’t have the money. But then I saw a small sign on the second floor, above where the sumptuous-looking psychic was, and the small sign said, “Village Brokers.” A voice said to go up and ask if they had any available apartments, and so I did. Amazing how God would use a psychic to catch my heathen eye, and lead me to a place where I wouldn’t have even noticed otherwise.

When I walked in, it was a very small and disheveled looking room, with papers everywhere. A very New York Broker type of woman asked me what I wanted, and I asked if they had any apartments available. She looked at me kind of funny, and then her face softened somehow – the favor of God I know now – and she said that they did have something in SoHo, a seventh floor walk-up studio for $750 a month. Anyone who knows anything about real estate in New York – heck anyone who knows anything about real estate anywhere – knows that’s an impossible amount of money for anyone to be asking. Even back then studios were going for twice that much in really awful parts of town. SoHo?! You couldn’t even find a room there for that much even back then. When I told a friend of mine about it after I applied for it, he said there was no way it was going to happen because it was just too good to be true. But it was real, and I was accepted, which was a miracle in itself because I didn’t have any money in the bank, I had lots of debt, and I was temping at a place that was a short term job. There is no way any of that could have happened without the grace and mercy and love of God.

And then I ended up on the Co-Op Board, going to monthly meetings at posh restaurants, living a life that was the envy of so many people. The place where I did my laundry was on Broome Street right near where the entrance to the Holland Tunnel is, so I always had people gawking at me as I carried my basket of clothes back and forth – look, there she goes, she lives here! Tour buses would go by – after I’d lived there about a year it really kicked in as THE place to go, and so many trendy restaurants and shops opened up that it was almost overwhelming. On some summer days I didn’t even like to leave the building because the tourist traffic was so heavy. I’d drop down onto the street and get as far away as fast as I could, but secretly I loved being able to unlock the front door in front of all the people ogling my building, and brush past them on my way out to wherever they thought I was going. I’ve always worn Vuarnet sunglasses, ever since a boyfriend let me borrow his in college, their big oversized black frames cover my light sensitive eyes even on days when it’s overcast but bright. But in those days only movie stars and models and people from exotic sun-filled places wore sunglasses like that, and though I was wearing them because my eyes are really light sensitive, no one needed to know why I was wearing them to think that I must be somebody, especially as I sauntered out of my SoHo apartment.

One day I got a call from the Co-Op Board President that a man wanted to buy an apartment. He’d been approved, and all they needed was my interview to let him move in. He called me and set up an appointment, and came by one afternoon. My apartment was really tiny, and so he offered to take me next door for a drink. In those days I’d drink any time anywhere with anyone that asked me to, so of course I said yes. We had martinis – I don’t know how many, at least two, maybe more – I always drank Beefeater straight up with olives. We laughed about it later, after we became friends – he had thought this was going to be a serious interview, and it was just a good time.

I always have a good time with that friend. He’s from Germany, and my background is German, and there is something so comforting about Germans to me. It makes me feel like I’m home wherever I am if they’re around. He didn’t move to New York, but he stayed in that apartment for a few days every few months for a few years. Every time he came for a visit he’d always take me out to a beautiful dinner, and he'd buy lobsters that we'd make together because that was a favorite of both of ours and I know a great place to buy them in Chinatown. He’s married now and has several children, and so I don’t see him much at all anymore. But those days still last in my memory long after so much of that time has faded because his heart is such a warm one. I went to visit him once in Germany, and it was such a beautiful time. It was the first time I’d ever been there, and it couldn’t have been more perfect. That was a word he used all the time, “Perfect.” We’d be doing something or eating something or something would be happening, and he’d say, “Everything is perfect.” There was one night when things got a little haywire in the building with someone who was living there, and even then, he still said, “Everything is perfect,” after things had calmed down. I wrote a short story about that night once, and the day we’d spent together before it, traveling out to Ikea to buy things for his new apartment. It was a crazy time in my life, but he was like a rock. Someone I could cling to while the world went crazy around me. Someone I could trust when there was no one else I could.

The year that I was first born again, when everything really had gone crazy in my life and I had nothing and no one to hold onto but God, I had a crisis with money that was completely unexpected. I had several jobs that had all dried up at the same time, and then someone who owed me money for a job I’d done didn’t pay me for it, and then her boyfriend who I was working for didn’t want to pay me either. They were buying a house together and they said they needed the money for that. But where did that leave me? When I looked at my bank account to try to figure out how much I could squeak out of it, I noticed that somehow or other I’d made a mistake of several hundred dollars in my math so there was nothing that I could squeak out of anywhere. My credit card bills were sky high and I couldn’t take any more cash advances – I didn’t know what to do. In desperation I called my friend in Germany, and he lent me a thousand dollars, money he knew I probably could not pay him back. I did eventually, but it took a few years, and he was patient that whole time.

There are things that happen in our lives that are not mere coincidence or luck or chance. There are people we meet who do things for us that go beyond the ordinary. There are blessings that come into our lives through people we know and people who become friends in ways that we can never forget. My friend in Germany doesn’t really know what I mean when I say I am born again. I’ve tried to explain it to him, but it’s not part of his experience and understanding. But that doesn’t matter. There are plenty of people who talk about God and being born again with all kinds of supposed experience behind it, but do they lend a desperate person a thousand dollars just because they’re desperate? There was nothing good I needed that money for except to keep on living my life. It wasn’t like I was going to give him any return on it. It was an investment in me – in helping me to keep going, but who ever sees the worth in something like that?

Proverbs 19:17 tells us, “Whoever is kind to the poor lends to the Lord, and He will reward them for what they have done.” In Luke 6:38 Jesus says, “Give and you will receive, your gift will return to you in full - pressed down, shaken together to make room for more, running over and poured into your lap. The amount you give will determine the amount you get back.” My friend didn’t just give me money when he lent me money. He gave me his hand, stretched across the Atlantic Ocean, letting me know at a time when I didn’t have anyone in the world I could count on, that I could count on him. He wasn't thinking about the blessing he'd receive in return when he did it, he did it just because I needed it.

There are times in our lives when, even if we know the Lord, we still feel the need for a hand to hold. God tells us that we should not fear because He holds us by the hand (Isaiah 41:10), but there are times when it’s hard to feel His hand even when we know it’s there. It’s at those times when He sends someone to help us, someone who may not even know they are doing His work, someone who just feels a tug in their heart and says yes when they could easily say no. It’s at those times when we can see God a little more clearly, because we’re looking at Him in a face we know.

Blessings,

Jannie Susan