A Walking Talking Miracle

I Googled myself last night, something I do on occasion to see what’s online. There are times that people post things that I didn’t know they posted and it’s always fun to find them. I was an actress and writer for many years in NYC, and it’s always fun to see what shows up. Last night I found a short story I’d written that was published in 2004, and along with that was an interview. I hadn’t even remembered the interview and the short story I hadn’t read in years. It was a real blast from the past because my life is so much different now, and it was fun to read them and to see who I was and who I’ve become and to recognize the miracle of what God has done in my life.

There are all kinds of things that I used to do that I just don’t do any more. It amazes me because I know I’m still basically the same person. I still have fun, I still enjoy theater and film and fashion, but they are not the focus of my life the way they used to be, even though the Lord has been taking me thrift store shopping and making me a fashionista again, actually more of one than I was before because I could never have afforded what He’s been finding me at the thrift stores these days. But when I think of the life I lived and the things that used to take my time and energy, it seems like I was a completely different person, and I know that in some ways I was, because there was something missing from my life, a purpose, a reason for living, and even though I don’t understand how or when the change happened, suddenly I find myself reading this story I wrote a year before I was born again and wondering who that person was.

It’s also something that is surprising because the gift of writing was something that I had back then. I’ve written before that God gives us our gifts without repentance (Romans 11:29), and I had a gift and His help in writing even when I was writing about things that were from a life that was unredeemed. I used to always say that when I started to write it was as if something else took over, and it’s true. Sometimes the stories I’d write were true stories, but many times they weren’t, and people would always think they were because they seemed to flow so effortlessly. The story I read last night was beautiful, and it had never happened. It was a story about a relationship that I had never had and that no one I knew had either. It came entirely from my imagination – or from someone or something else that took over when I wrote it. An angel maybe, the Holy Spirit of course, the power of God in all its fullness.

It puzzles me why God would bother to give us our gifts without repentance. I don’t understand why He would bother. If our gifts aren’t doing anything to further the Kingdom of God, if they’re not helping anyone to know Him more then why would He give them to us to waste on our own pursuits. But that’s just the wonder of God – He is overflowing with creativity and He shares it with us so that we can share it with others, and He also knows that eventually we’ll start to use our gifts in ways that really are fruitful. While He is waiting for us to get into His groove, He lets us do things the way that we understand best at that time, and then later on when we figure it out, we’re even more ready to do the work that He has for us to do. It’s as if all that time that I was writing and acting was preparing me for the real work He had for me to do, it was a rehearsal, undergraduate and graduate school, preparation for the day that would come when I’d truly let Him lead the way so that everything that I did would lead the way to Him.

That’s really always the message of Christ. He wants us to show others the way to find Him, and to show them how good He is, how loving, how kind and how much help in every area of our lives. He wants our message to be clear, and one of the ways He can do that is to show us so that we can show others. I know what He’s done in my life, and the writing I did before is proof. It is there in black and white to let people know the person that I was so there is no way I can pretend that I was all holy and perfect. Jesus didn’t save me because I was a good person, He saved me because He wants to save everyone. He is not willing that even one should perish (2 Peter 3:9). As he says, He came to save the lost (Luke 19:10), and I was certainly lost.

We do others a disservice when we don’t tell them what God has done in our lives. When we try to pretend that we were always the way that we are after He comes into our lives other people can’t know what He can do for them. When we show them the before and after pictures, it’s better than any beauty treatment ad, because it’s really real and it’s not just retouched photos. I know who I was, and I know who I am now, and the only difference is Jesus.

Blessings,

Jannie Susan