An Everlasting Sign

My father died in 2008 on Yom Kippur. At the time I knew very little about any religion at all, and Judaism I knew practically nothing about, but I did know that Yom Kippur was the Day of Atonement, and I remember thinking at the time through the shock I was feeling, how right and perfect it was that my father had died on that day. We hadn’t been expecting him to die. He had long been in terrible health, but only because of the way he mistreated his body. A heavy smoker and drinker for years, he overate all of the least healthy foods imaginable. He’d had a stroke by the time he was 51, and at that time the doctors said he had to stop smoking and drinking or die, so he did, but he kept on eating and never lost the weight he’d gained after some point in his mid-forties.

I don’t remember my father as ever being thin, though there are photos of him when he was younger, before I was born, when he looked in great physical shape. I also have some clothing he wore – his wedding suit – and I have no idea how he ever fit into it. He’d grown up during the depression and when he was finally able to eat all the rich food and butter and mayonnaise in any quantity he desired, he went ahead and did it, and the father I knew growing up was so heavy that it was difficult for him to walk. That was what finally killed him – he’d gone in for a hip replacement operation because the doctors said either it was that or a wheel chair, but they couldn’t guarantee a good outcome because he was so heavy. He was never one to say yes to a wheel chair – he was way too independent – so he opted for the operation and then afterward when he was in the recovery hospice, he developed an infection in his chest, fluid filled his lungs, and he went into a coma. I got the call from my sister the night it happened. I hadn’t even known he was in the hospital because he hadn’t told me, and when I got home and heard the message I didn’t know what to do. I’d been out with a friend who invited me to a play he was in, and we’d gone out to dinner afterward. It was close to midnight when I got home, and I had to work in the office I was temping in the next morning, but when I got my sister’s messages – this was in the days before cell phones were a regular thing, and she’d left three messages on my home phone, each one more desperate than the last – all I could do was to try to call the hospital and then lie down to a sleepless night and wait. I went into the office in the morning, and my mother called me sometime around 11am to tell me he was dead.

I didn’t have what you would call a good relationship with my father, though it wasn’t a bad one either if you compare it with the relationship he had with the rest of his children. He was a very troubled man and very difficult to get along with, and we actually got along. He also had a very strong sense of knowing when I needed his help, and he’d show up or call me at the least expected and most needed times to invite me to dinner, to cook for me, to bring me a bouquet of roses, to wire me money out of the blue that there was no way he could have known by word of anyone’s mouth that I needed. He wasn’t consistent and he wasn’t reliable, but he tried as hard as he could and I can’t fault him for not having the ability to be the father I needed because I know enough about his past to know that his troubled soul was the product of a history of family trouble.

At some point or other over the years I found out that his father had been Jewish. His mother was Irish Catholic and they had lived in Westchester County in the days when being Irish and Jewish were both considered very low class, so they pretended to be Episcopalian and never talked about any other part of their history. I did a play once years ago that was autobiographical for the writer, and the same thing happened in the play to the author’s family only they were living in the South. It amazed me that the same story repeated itself in his life, and doing that play was cathartic for me in a way that I can’t even describe.

If you look up the word cathartic on my computer’s thesaurus, you’ll see the word purifying is the first word that comes up. Afterward it’s cleansing, liberating, releasing, intense and emotional, then therapeutic, and further down there’s healing, beneficial, energizing and invigorating. When I think of the Day of Atonement and what that means to me – not what it means specifically Biblically although that is the basis of my feelings about the day – but when I think of it’s personal meaning for me, those words are the words that fit it the best. It’s a day of forgiveness of sins, a day when God allows us to come before Him to ask for His forgiveness and when He gladly forgives if we ask and we atone, and all of those words seem to me to be part of the feeling that I feel when I know I have His forgiveness and when I have repented and atoned for my sins.

When I looked up Yom Kippur in Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yom_Kippur, I found this beautiful image, “’Heavenly Books Opened’ – According to Jewish tradition, God inscribes each person’s fate for the coming year into a book, The Book of Life, on Rosh Hashanah, and waits until Yom Kippur to ‘seal’ the verdict. During the Days of Awe, a Jewish person tries to amend his or her behavior and seek forgiveness for wrongs done against God (bein adam leMakom) and against other human beings (bein adam lechavero). The evening and day of Yom Kippur are set aside for public and private petitions and confessions of guilt (Vidui). At the end of Yom Kippur, one hopes that they have been forgiven by God.’”

After I was born again, I spoke with the Lord about my father, because I didn’t know if his sins had been forgiven or not, and as much harm as he had caused in his life, I didn’t want him to be left in a state of unforgiveness and not have access to God. At that time, the Lord spoke to me about so many things that showed that my father had known Him, although he had not found His healing in his lifetime on earth. And the fact that my father had died on Yom Kippur, not the day before or the day after but at the beginning of that day, was a sign from God that he had been forgiven and could now finally enter into His rest.

In Isaiah 55:7-9 the Lord tells us, “Let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts; and let him return to the Lord, and He will have compassion on him, and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon. For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways,” declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts. For as the rain and snow come down from heaven, and do not return there without watering the earth and making it bear and sprout, and furnishing seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so will My word be which goes forth from My mouth; it will not return to me empty, without accomplishing what I desire, and without succeeding in the matter for which I sent it. For you will go out with joy and be led forth with peace; the mountains and the hills will break forth into shouts of joy before you, and all the trees of the field will clap their hands. Instead of the thorn bush the cypress will come up, and instead of the nettle, the myrtle will come up, and it will be a memorial to the Lord, for an everlasting sign which will not be cut off.”

Only God can know what is in another person’s heart, and sometimes we don’t even know what is in our own. But He hears those cries and He answers them, fully, abundantly and compassionately. All he asks is that we return to Him. The door is always open.

Blessings,

Jannie Susan

The Eyes Of A Child

Yesterday was a very quiet day and I was happy for that. I had to work which is something that I don’t like to do on September 11, but I had no choice because I had been scheduled for a training that I had to be at as a requirement for my job. I was a bit surprised that it was barely mentioned at all during the day – one woman at the training did mention it because she was coming from outside of the city like I was and she’d left extra early just in case there was heavy traffic or delays on the bridge she had to go over, but other than that, no one mentioned it at all. I suppose if an event had no impact on your life, even if it impacted thousands of other people around you, maybe somehow the day just becomes like any other day. I know for me, just taking the train into the city was a bit unnerving, and I could sense a quietness on the train and a relief when we got through the tunnel and into the city. The city itself was quieter than usual and the trains much less crowded during the morning rush hour, and going home again it was the same.

It is a strange thing to reflect on a day when so many lives were lost and so many people who survived lost so much. There is a feeling of gratefulness for being alive and for not having lost anyone who was near to me in any way. But there is a feeling of the sadness for all of those lives lost, a grief that is collective for everyone who is grieving. We are not promised tomorrow, and a time like this is a reminder that every day and every moment of life is a gift.

There are so many dreams and visions that the Lord has put on my heart, and I can be so impatient with waiting for them to come true that I forget to enjoy the moments that I have because I am waiting for the moments that I want to come. I have always had that kind of impatience, even before I was born again when the dreams were much smaller and the visions much simpler. I remember one summer before I was moving to New York, when I had the opportunity to be a counselor at what had been my favorite summer camp for chamber music, which meant that I had a scholarship to go for free. After that I was teaching at a private summer school, making some much needed money so that I could make the move. The summer camp was in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, one of the best vacation spots in the North East, and as a counselor I’d have much more freedom and opportunity than I ever had as a younger camper – and it would cost me nothing to be there, in a place where I loved to be, doing something I loved to do. The private school was a very wealthy one, and I was teaching language and literature, two of my favorite subjects, and I was an associate teacher so the job was not hard at all. We had all kinds of lavish faculty parties and special events with shrimp cocktail and other delicious food all the time. Both opportunities were gifts, but I couldn’t wait to go to New York, and I felt restless and impatient and dissatisfied the entire time. Now that I have dealt with some real problems in my life, I wonder how I would respond to those places were I to go back there again in time.

I suppose it’s unfair to expect the self that we used to be to have the understanding of the person we are now. A lot of water has gone under that bridge that I have walked on. There’s a Bob Dylan song, “My Back Pages,” that has a line, “Ah but I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now.” When I just looked it up, I found a blog post called Barry’s Blog, http://blog.westaf.org/2011/07/ah-but-i-was-so-much-older-then-im.html, that was written by a former Director of the California Arts Council. He uses the song in a section titled, “The Cycles of Life and the Arts in Keeping Us Young,” and writes, “Bob Dylan wrote of the phenomenon of how points at certain of the times of our lives affect how we see things. In one of my favorite of his poems (songs – but I always thought of him as the Poet Laureate of my generation) – “My Back Pages” – Dylan lamented the conceit that in the fiery brand period of our college age youth, we knew it all. The great moral questions of life were black and white to us at that juncture of our lives – and we knew, just knew, what was right, what was wrong – about virtually everything in the world.” He continues in another paragraph, “At some point early on you lose the childhood innocence and wonder and confusion – the magical place where being sure of something isn’t all that important – and you become dogmatic and intractable, and even smug in your outlook. The arrogance of youth knows no generational exclusivity – it rears its head every generation. It may simply be a part of growing up.”

As I read Barry’s blog post, I think about Jesus telling us in Mark 10:15, “Truly I tell you, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.” It is that same wide eyed innocence and wonder and even the confusion, that same magical place that Barry is writing about where we have no arrogance, where we just take the information in and accept it as we receive it with no judgment. When we can have that innocence and wide eyed wonder, we will not be looking into the future for what it is that we want that lies ahead, we will instead be looking at the wonder and magic of the world around us and enjoying each moment as the gift that it is.

I have written before that since I was born again people have told me that I look younger all the time. When I was growing up, I always looked much older than my age. It seems that maybe I am getting to that place where I can say along with Dylan, “Ah, but I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now.” I pray with all my heart this is true as I want to live my life with the kind of wonder and innocence that can wake up each morning and know that it’s a new day where miracles can happen, and that can be happy just because I'm alive.

Blessings,

Jannie Susan

Believing God

I had been thinking of having a moment of silence on this blog in honor of September 11^th. I thought that I would write a short sentence or two saying that, and leave this page as a blank one for people to take a pause and reflect, but then something happened yesterday that reminded me that we sometimes need reminders of life and encouragement to believe in miracles, and as I thought about what to write for today, the Lord spoke to me that people need encouragement more than ever. We’re living in a time when people have forgotten what faith really means, a time when even people who say they believe in the power of prayer forget to pray or just go through the motions while speaking words of death and defeat over their own and other peoples’ lives. I’ll be the first to admit that I am capable of that too – it feels more comfortable to say that so and so is a hot mess than to speak the Word of God over their lives. It makes more sense to believe that things will always be the way they always were – that nothing ever changes unless we do the changing ourselves.

There’s a saying that I’ve heard people say many times that is found nowhere in the Bible – “God helps those who help themselves.” That’s actually fundamentally untrue. Time after time we read about people who had trouble helping themselves and God stepped in and miracles happened. Time after time we read about how important it is to “wait on the Lord,” and time after time we hear that we need to be weak in order for Him to be strong. But in the natural world, in human eyes, weakness and waiting mean not getting ahead and not changing anything for the better, but sometimes that’s exactly the place where we need to be in order to see the Glory of God.

It can get a little complicated because it’s not that God doesn’t want us to do anything at all, it’s just that there are times when He will say, “Wait,” and we need to wait. There are times when we need to keep our opinions to ourselves, times when we need to just trust in what He can do and not look at our own failings and faults and weaknesses or those of anybody else. Yesterday He gave me a word that He has given to me many times over this past year, a year of waiting on His promises and standing on His word when things look like anything but what He has spoken over my life, when they look like the exact opposite of what He has spoken over the lives of people He has had me speak His word to. The word He gave me was from Isaiah 46. When I just looked it up, I found a visual, a slide from a blog post on www.mynipahut.com, http://www.mynipahut.com/tag/isaiah-469/, for Isaiah 46:9, “I am God, and there is none else; I am God and there is none like me.” That really says it all, but I will add what He gave to me yesterday morning.

The first passage He gave me was verse 4, “Even to your old age and gray hairs, I am He who will sustain you. I have made you and I will carry you; I will sustain you and I will rescue you.” That was from the Verse of the Day I receive in my email from www.BibleGateway.com. I get the verse of the day in five different translations, but I’ve listed it here from the New International Version. Then when I got on the subway to go out to Brooklyn, I read the whole chapter in my little red leather bound New King James version, and these are the verses that He spoke very clearly to me about. He took me before verse 4 to verse 3, “Listen to me, O house of Jacob, all the remnant of the house of Israel, who have been upheld by me from birth, who have been carried from the womb.” Then of course that flows right into verse 4, which reads this way in the New King James, “Even to your old age, I am He, and even to gray hairs I will carry you! I have made and I will bear; even I will carry and will deliver you.” After that comes verse 5, “To whom will you liken Me and make Me equal, and compare Me, that we should be alike?” Then He highlighted verses 9-11, “Remember the former things of old, for I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like me, declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times things that are not yet done, saying, “My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure. Calling a bird of prey from the East, the man who executes My counsel from a far country. Indeed I have spoken it; I will also bring it to pass. I have purposed it; I will also do it.”

When we read these words, we have the option of believing them as truth, or thinking that they are just nice words of encouragement that may or may not be real. If we choose the second option, we are missing out on all that God can do. When we choose the first, and make a conscious decision that we are going to believe Him at His word, we know that even if the situation all around us looks exactly the opposite of what the Lord has been speaking to our hearts, He will bring to pass what He has spoken over our lives and over every situation where He has spoken a word to us. When we decide to believe God, we take the hand that He is holding out to us and say I know I can’t do it, but I know you can.

Blessings,

Jannie Susan

Pillars Of Light

I was working late last night on Staten Island, and on my way back on the Ferry, I saw the Pillars of Light that are a memorial to September 11^th. They are astonishingly beautiful – the twin towers projected up into the sky in the form of two blue lazer beams. At certain times when the cloud cover is the way it was last night, they project above the clouds and the reflection that bounces off the lower part of the clouds makes it seem as if there is a vertical beam attached to the two horizontal ones, making the image of a cross. The first time I saw that was seven years ago, when I was living all the way up at the top of Manhattan. I was living in an apartment on a hill and was on the top floor with a wall of windows that opened up with a view straight downtown. It was the first time since 2001 that I’d spent that day in any place other than downtown Manhattan, and it amazed me that I had such a perfect view. Where I live now I don’t have that same view out of my windows, but coming home at night as I did last night there is a perfect view all the way home.

At the class I’d been teaching I had a conversation with a woman as we were getting ready to leave about the time we’d both spent on that day 12 years ago. She was saying that she didn’t like to work on that day and was taking it off, and I said I didn’t either but I had to this year. I’ll be in a training all day which somehow seems very odd to me to be doing. We talked about how we both felt somehow that even though we knew it was important to go on with your life, we felt the need for some recognition that something had happened on that day. We both have our stories as everyone does of that day, and there is something that is deep within us that needs to recognize that we went through something – that so many people went through something – and that some people didn’t survive it. She used the word “respect,” and I agreed with her – there is something that on a very human level calls out that those lives that were lost and those people who went through so much need to have respect given for what happened.

The phrase people use around that day and those events is “We will never forget,” and I think that’s very true. How can you ever forget something that happened in front of your eyes, to people you know, in a place where you walk and live every day? The twin towers were visible from everywhere for miles around, and if you lived downtown or even midtown, you’d use them as a directional marker almost without even knowing you were doing it. You’d get off the subway and check to see where they were and then you’d be on your way in the right direction. There were some routes that I’d walk where I’d see them at every turn, and even still on foggy days when I can’t see them I think, wow, the fog is really thick today, before I remember that I’ll never see them again except in pictures.

For some people “We will never forget” is a battle cry, but for me it is something of deep sorrow. I will never forget those towers – I spent some memorable days on the top of them, a special gift from God I know now, in the summer of 2001. I had the opportunity to do a voice over describing the view from the roof deck, and I went up there twice I think to go over the script with the technician who was recording it. About a year before that a friend had invited me to go to the roof top lounge where there was free admission for dancing on one night of the week, I forget which one now. The restaurant was called Windows on the World, and the bar and lounge where there was free dancing was “The Greatest Bar On Earth.” And once even longer ago on a trip to New York City, I took a photograph of my first love sitting outside in the plaza. We were on a school trip for our high school youth orchestra, and they stopped there on the way to wherever it was that we were staying. I don’t know where that picture is now, but the memory of it will always be in my mind, even now that first love is long a thing of the past.

There are things that we must forgive in our lives or else they will haunt us and cause a bitter root to grow. But even as we forgive, there are some things that we cannot forget. And there are things that are so big that it takes us long to forgive – try as we might the pain just goes so deep that it seems to have a radioactive half-life. I didn’t lose anyone I loved that day, but I know that there were many people who did. I wasn’t in the buildings, my health wasn’t affected, and I didn’t have any visible problems except for the rats from downtown that relocated for a time in my apartment. That was awful, but it was all a part of that surreal time, and they are as long gone as that apartment and my old life is. And yet even though I did not lose anything physically that was precious to me, I still cannot forget the trauma of that day and that time. I lost something of my innocence I guess, a sense that even if my life was full of drama, the things around me would always be there to catch me if I fell. I lost a sense that daily life outside of me would go on the way it always had, in spite of what was going on in my own.

But there were so many people who lost so much more that day, and my heart and prayers are with them now. If I have not been able to forget, I don’t know how it is possible for them to forgive, and I know that forgiveness is something that we need to set us free.

Blessings,

Jannie Susan

A Perfect Gift Of Love

Someone asked me the other day if I knew any professional matchmakers. She was not really joking, at least I don’t think so, but maybe she was, or maybe she was just letting me know that if I knew anyone I could set her up with she’d be happy to hear about it. It was such a surprise to hear because she is a very beautiful woman with so much to offer to any man, very intelligent, has her own business, is very kind and supportive – but somehow even with all this going for her she hasn’t been able to find the right man yet. She looks very young, but in our conversation it seemed that she may be older than she looks, but I’m sure she’s still fairly young although she may be at that time of life when women start to wonder if they don’t get married soon they might not ever. I’ve never had that worry because I never wanted to get married before I knew the Lord, and then when I was born again He threw me into ministry so much and so fully that I didn’t really have time to think about it. But I know that for many women that is one of the hardest things – there is an age we get to when we’re still young and vibrant and full of life, but men don’t necessarily see it that way.

When this woman asked me if I knew a professional matchmaker I was taken a bit by surprise and so I asked her why she was asking. When she told me it was for herself, I told her that I did know people who loved to fix people up but that I’d found that God was the best matchmaker of all. He brings people together who are meant to be together – He knows each one of us and what our needs are, He knows us through and through, and even those things that no one else knows, He knows. When we trust Him to do the matchmaking, He’ll bring someone into our lives that we would have never imagined and someone who is just perfect for us.

After I said that to this beautiful woman, I told her that while she was waiting there were things that God might want her to be doing. She said, I know, I know, dealing with my own stuff, but that wasn’t really what I meant, though it is a part of it. I know for myself, that’s something that He’s had to work with me on, but it wasn’t a negative thing at all and I didn’t mean it that way for this woman either. I told her that He might want her to be discovering just what her gifts were that she would be bringing to this relationship – I said that she had many gifts and maybe she didn’t even know herself what they all were. She said that she thought that the real problem was that other people didn’t see her the way she really was, that there was something about the way she presented herself that made other people think she was a snob or stuck up or cold. I smiled when she said that because that had always been the way some people saw me before I was born again, and it was really just because I was very shy. I told her that there is something called discernment that God gives to us so that we can see who people really are behind whatever it is that they project, and she said, oh, I get it, He’ll make it so that the right man will see me for who I really am, and I said, yes, that’s exactly what happens.

Sometimes there are things about ourselves that we don’t even see, but God has put them there and He will show them to other people who need to know. There are other things that people see that we don’t know about – they’ll see His Spirit and either be drawn to it or it will be something that makes whatever spirits that are around them angry and hateful. A Pastor friend of mine once said that there would be people who would be drawn to me because of His Spirit and I’d have to be careful to make sure I always pointed them to Him because they might mistake the feelings they felt for His Spirit to be feelings of love for me. I’ve had that happen sometimes with men I know were not meant to be in that kind of relationship with me, and it’s very hard when it happens. You don’t want to be cruel to someone but you also know you have to say no. It was the same before I was born again, and now even though I know why it happens it isn’t any easier. I’ll tell people over and over again that it’s not me they’re feeling love for but His Spirit in me, and even when they’re Christians they still don’t believe me. Romantic love is so complex.

There was a J. Geils Band song called Love Stinks that kind of says it all in the worldly sense of love, “You love her, and she loves him, but he loves somebody else, now you just can’t win.” That’s one of the things about this thing we call love, for some reason it can get all messed up and mess us up. But there is another way to experience love, and after I was born again and I started to understand the love of God, I started to have the ability to love in a new way. God loves us with an unconditional love, a love that is complete and that fills us and nurtures us and that never ends, and when we start to accept that love, we can start to feel fulfilled in a way we have never felt before. When we know a love like that, we won’t be looking for love from anywhere else to fulfill us because we don’t need anything more than God.

God does want us to have relationships and marriage, He does want us to be in love relationships with people as family and friends and husbands and wives and children and parents. He is love and He wants us to experience love fully, in all of its many positive forms of expression. But it is only when we know His love in our lives that we can truly begin to love others. It is only when we know His kind of love that we can begin to give that same love to another.

The love that the J. Geils Band sang about is not really love, at least not in the way I understand it now that I have begun to receive the love of God in my own life. Loving someone in an unrequited way is pure torture, and that really isn’t love at all. God will never bring someone into your life to torture you – if they’re from Him, they’ll be a blessing of love in your life. If they’re not from Him you can know it, because that’s when the pain will come. Proverbs 10:22 says, “The blessing of the Lord makes one rich, and He adds no sorrow with it.” James 1:17 tells us, “Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.” When we know the Father of the heavenly lights, we know we can trust Him to bring the perfect gifts to us, to bless us with the right person at the right time, a perfect gift who we will be a perfect gift to also.

Blessings,

Jannie Susan

A Fish Story

Someone I know sent me a link to a video about a Penn and Teller magic trick with goldfish appearing miraculously in a fish bowl. Magic tricks amaze me all the time, and Penn and Teller are always a lot of fun. When I watched the magic trick it was really something that there is no way to figure out what they did or how they did it, and it was beautiful too, and funny and fun, all these little gold fish appearing in a fish bowl out of nowhere.

There’s a fish story I have from before the time I was born again. Mine is not as visually beautiful as Penn and Teller’s magic trick, but it’s a beautiful story all the same, and certainly miraculous and very funny and fun when you get to the end of it. Sometime in the late 80’s or early 90’s there was a very popular bar on the Upper West Side of Manhattan called Lucy’s Surfeteria. It was a real party of a bar, and they had all kinds of shots that were specialties of the house and if you drank the worm from the bottle of tequila, they’d give you a special prize. I think they gave prizes if you drank a lot too – it was one of those kinds of places where they wanted to you to drink to get drunk. All kinds of celebrities hung out there at one time or another – it had a reputation for being one of the hottest places to go.

At the time I was dating an actor who was in a play with one of the bartenders there, and he invited us to come visit him one Saturday night. It just so happened that it was the night before Easter Sunday, but that didn’t really mean a thing to me in those days. Although that’s not entirely true. Strangely enough, even before I was born again I had a love for Palm Sunday and for Easter Sunday. They were favorite days of mine and I always felt like they were very special somehow. I was planning a really special Easter Sunday dinner and had invited over a good friend – my boyfriend would be there of course and it was planned to be a very delicious and celebratory meal. But that Saturday night was just like any other Saturday night in my mind, so off we went to Lucy’s for a free night’s worth of drinking.

In those days I prided myself on the amount I could drink. I liked to act like I was one of the boys, and that I could hold my own with the men. I don’t know what time we got there, but by the time we left it was after 3 in the morning, and I had of course eaten the worm and had my prize, two rubber fish, one larger than the other, with the smaller fish inside the mouth of the larger one. I was wearing a rain coat, and I put them in the pocket and in my foggy state forgot all about them.

My boyfriend and I got into a cab, even though I didn’t want to. I never liked riding in cabs. I always get car sick in them, and if I was drinking it was of course even worse, and on top of that I think they’re a waste of money too, but my boyfriend wanted to take a cab, so that’s what we did. We started out on West 86^th Street, and by the time we got to 23^rd Street I had to get out of the cab. I told my boyfriend I had to get out and walk or I was going to be sick, and I remember the cab driver yelling, “Don’t throw up in my cab!” At the time I was living on West 10^th Street all the way over to the West Side Highway, and 23^rd Street was a bit of a hike but I’ve always been someone who liked to walk, and at that point I had to.

We got out of the cab and started walking down 9^th Avenue, and at some point we got to somewhere just below the meat packing district. In those days it was really desolate at night and could be dangerous in that area, not like the trendy hot-spot it is now. There was nothing open at all at that hour except maybe one restaurant if it was open in those days. For the most part there was nothing there at all except for artists’ lofts that some people lived in but that were definitely not door men buildings. While we walked down through those dark and deserted streets, a big black car drove by and someone yelled something out the window at us. I have no idea now what they said, but whatever it was, I yelled back, “Oh go *&#* yourself!” I used to have a mouth like a truck driver, something the Lord took away, thank you Jesus. I used to think it was cool to talk like that, not understanding that bitter water and sweet water can’t flow out of the same well. (James 3:11)  The car stopped, and some of the biggest and toughest and meanest looking men got out – I’m sure they were drug dealers because the car they were driving was a kind of car, a big black one with an antenna for cable tv, that everyone knew was the kind of car drug dealers drove. I don’t know how many of them there were, but they were huge and they surrounded me, pushing aside my boyfriend who was not a big guy at all and separating us. One of the guys asked me what I’d said, and I repeated it, and then he said, “Oh, yeah? Well, do you know what I have here?” and he showed me his gun. I said, “Well, look at what I have,” and I pulled out the fish from Lucy’s. At that point, all the men cracked up laughing. They were laughing so hard they almost couldn’t stand up. Then one of them said, “She is so drunk! Let’s get out of here,” and they got back into their car and drove away.

The next day, needless to say, I was in very bad physical shape. I could barely get out of bed to make the dinner, and when I was able to do something I had to keep going back to lie down on the couch in between. But when my friend came over and I started to tell him why I was in such a state, I remembered the story and got the fish out of my coat pocket to show him. I still have those fish now, I keep them on the side of the bath tub, and every time I look at them I remember that story.

Now that I am born again, when I look at them I remember that story with more than a general feeling of thankfulness that what could have been a nightmare turned out to be very funny. I know now that there is only one way that story turned out the way that it did, and that is because of the mercy and love of the very same God who went to the cross that we remember on Easter Sunday. When I think of the disrespect I was showing to Him with my drunken carousing and foul language that night, I’m ashamed at the foolishness and wastefulness of that life I lived before. But even in the midst of that abominable behavior, He still showed up, with fish no less, the sign that He gives to believers everywhere that He is with us.

What can you say to a God who not only went to the cross for you, but who also personally forgives you of your sins? What can you say to a God who loves you even when you are doing things that are so far from loveable? What do you say when your eyes are finally opened and you can see clearly that the way you have been living your life is so far away from anything that is good or beautiful or kind or redeeming? What can you say when you understand that through it all He was still looking out for you and watching over you and waiting patiently for you to finally get sick enough of the mess you are living in to finally want to change? There are no words to say to a God like that, because thank you isn’t enough. All I can do is to say take what is left of my life, and use it to bring your healing love to others.

Blessings,

Jannie Susan

The Forest For The Trees

I was watching an inspirational video last from a website that a friend forwarded to me, and the background music reminded me of The Cure song “A Forest.” I have an ear for music, and I can hear chords – I think I may have perfect pitch or relative pitch or one of those things – I can’t pick an “a” out of the air, and I was never one for music theory – I can’t even really read music well, but I can hear it anywhere and know what song has the same chords. It can be sometimes really fun and sometimes really annoying – sometimes I’m watching an ad and I know the song behind it but I can’t pick it out or maybe I know it but can’t remember what it is, so I’ll be thinking of whatever that part of that song is until it comes back to me. But last night’s was clear as day – The Cure, “A Forest,” a song I used to listen to all the time back in the day.

It was really odd to think of that song along with that inspirational video. The Cure is not exactly what you think of as an inspirational group. But there’s something about that song. I used to listen to it loud, and I’d listen to it loud now if I could. It’s still just as good as it always was. When I first tried to find it online, all I could find was the first music video from 1980 which was really weird, and I later read that even The Cure thought it wasn’t a good video. Then I found a few live versions from later times, but those were really dark and goth which The Cure often was, but I remembered a different version and when I kept searching I found it, the re-mixed version from a 1990 album “Mixed Up.” The version is called “A Forest – Tree Mix.” On the YouTube website there are some comments and one says it’s “off the hook,” and it is.

In the book “The Shack” by Wm. Paul Young, there is a character who represents God who talks about listening to music that is not Christian music and enjoying it. When I read that I was so happy. I love Christian music, something I would never have said or thought before I was born again, but I also still love some of the music I used to love. I’ve had the experience since I was born again that I hear some songs from "the world" and can hear God’s voice in them. I remember having a conversation with someone the year that I was first born again and we were talking about how God was a creative force, so all creativity really went back to Him and came from Him. The Book of Genesis begins, “In the beginning, God created . . . “ and throughout the Old Testament, there are verses that speak about God as Creator. When art is a pure expression, it comes close to the Divine, regardless of whether it is overtly religious or not. It is true that there are some works of art, some writing, some music, that are very dark, and that darkness is not something I think is healthy for us to dwell in. We were meant by God to dwell in the light, and darkness cannot comprehend the light. As we read in John 1:1-5, “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through Him all things were made; without Him nothing was made that has been made. In Him was life, and that light was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” But also in that same passage, we do read that everything that has been made has been made by Him, everything that is created is made by and through and with Him.

I had been thinking about square dancing earlier in the day – something that I used to do before the years when I was listening to The Cure. Square dancing is something that I grew up doing – someone would say hey there’s a square dance, and everyone would pile into a car or a truck or walk up the road and we’d all go into a barn somewhere and dance. There was always great music – a fiddler was key – and we’d just dance. People who knew the different passes would teach people who didn’t, and everyone danced who wanted to – no one ever sat out unless they chose to, and even then sometimes someone would just grab their hand and keep them dancing. It was fun and full of life, and was a way for people to just dance for the pure joy of it. I don’t know what made me think of square dancing, but after I thought of that I thought of the difference in something like tango – another form of dance that is beautiful, but it is not as full of joy. It is more about passion and death instead of passion for life, and as I thought about the two kinds of dances, I wondered why it is that some people choose to square dance and some choose to tango.

And then I was reminded of The Cure, and I started to wonder why it is that some people are drawn to darker sounds and some to lighter. I wondered why it was that even when I was listening to The Cure I liked the same songs that I still like now and I didn't like some songs that I really don't like now, why it is that I’ve never liked things that were dark, even when my life was darker and I had not yet seen the light.

A woman I know gave me some Christian books once, and when I tried to read them they were so depressing I understood why she was so depressed and down all the time and I could not read them. I didn’t even want to give them away to a thrift store because some poor unsuspecting soul could pick them up and read them and want to give up then and there. Yes, being a Christian is hard and it is a challenge and it is full of trials and tough times of standing on faith, but it’s also full of joy and peace and love and mercy and grace. We couldn’t keep walking every day without all of those things mixed in with a good sized dose of the love of God and His amazing sense of humor. Why anyone would write a book that would depress people and bring them down, and moreover why anyone would read a book like that and think they should share it with someone else is beyond my understanding. And why anyone would think it was honoring God to write that kind of book about Him and to pass it along to other people just simply doesn’t make sense to me.

People sometimes think it’s their job as Christians to tell people that they are sinning and they need to repent. That was John the Baptist’s role, and I don’t think that anyone alive today can fit into his shoes. The Great Commission that Jesus gave to us was very simple, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo I am with you always, even until the end of the age.”(Matthew 28:19-20) Where in there does it say that we are to tell people they are sinners? Where in there does it say that we are to pass judgment on anyone else? In fact, Jesus tells us Himself that we are not to judge others lest we be judged (Matthew 7:1), so why do people think that somehow they have the God given right to do exactly what He has told us not to do?

It amazes me that people can be so lost in the forest that they can’t see the trees. If a song is a good song, it’s a good song, if a book is depressing, it’s depressing. It’s what we feel in our spirit that counts, not what people say they are standing for, it’s what they really are standing for that comes out when we listen and watch and hear and see who they really are. 1 Thessalonians 5:21 tells us, “test everything, hold fast to what is good.” Paul, Silas and Timothy are writing here about prophesy in the church, but the idea can really hold for anything that is said or done. When we test something we are looking to see if it is something we want to hold onto, or something that is much better left alone and left behind.

In The Cure song, “The Forest,” there is a lyric line, “I hear her voice, I start to run into the trees. Suddenly I stop, but I know it’s too late, I’m lost in a forest all alone. The girl was never there, it’s always the same. I’m running towards nothing again and again and again.” If we test everything we can know what we want to hold onto, and what we need to let go, we can know that even if we feel like we’re lost in the forest, we’re never alone. We won’t run for a voice that is not there, because we’ll know the voice of the Shepherd and only follow His voice. We won’t be running towards nothing, because where He is there is always something.

Blessings,

Jannie Susan