Angry Conversations with God Read online

  Copyright © 2009 by Susan E. Isaacs

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  Scripture quotations marked NLT are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright 1996, 2004. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.

  Scripture quotations marked NKJV are from the New King James Version. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

  Scripture quotations marked KJV are from the King James Version of the Holy Bible.

  Scripture quotations marked TLB are taken from The Living Bible, copyright © 1971. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.

  I SEE JESUS. Words and Music by Charles B. Wycuff.

  Copyright © 1957 Lovely Name Music ASCAP. All rights controlled by Gaither Copyright Management. Used by permission.

  SOMETHING CHANGED. Words and Music by Sara Groves. Copyright © 2005 Sara Groves Music (admin. by Music Services). All rights reserved. ASCAP.

  Head of Christ © 1941 Warner Press, Inc., Anderson, Indiana.

  All rights reserved. Used by permission.

  Faith Words

  Hachette Book Group

  237 Park Avenue

  New York, NY 10017

  Visit our Web site at www.faithwords.com.

  First eBook Edition: March 2009

  The FaithWords name and logo are trademarks of Hachette Book Group USA.

  ISBN: 978-0-446-54469-6

  Contents

  Copyright Page

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  PREFACE

  INTRODUCTION: Don’t Skip This Just Because It’s an Introduction!

  Chapter 1: GETTING GOD ON THE COUCH

  Chapter 2: THE NICE JESUS ON EVERY WALL

  Chapter 3: MY TWO DADS

  Chapter 4: CHEATING ON JESUS

  Chapter 5: WE’VE ONLY JUST BEGUN

  Chapter 6: THE HOKEY POKEY FOR OAKIES

  Chapter 7: ROCK ’N’ ROLL SLACKERS 4 JESUS

  Chapter 8: AWAKEN THE GIANT HORMONE WITHIN

  Chapter 9: BREAKING UP OVER DENTISTRY

  Chapter 10: BOTTOMS UP

  Chapter 11: NEW LEASE, NEW LIFE, NEW YORK

  Chapter 12: MOSTLY MISTER RIGHT

  Chapter 13: A FATHER’S VALEDICTION

  Chapter 14: MY OWN PRIVATE SEPTEMBER 11

  Chapter 15: GOD’S SCORCHED-EARTH POLICY

  Chapter 16: MIDDLE-CLASS WHITE GIRL’S DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL

  Chapter 17: NOBODY’S FAULT BUT MY OWN

  Chapter 18: FOR FUN AND FOR FREE

  Chapter 19: THE BEST THING THAT EVER HAPPENED TO ME

  EPILOGUE

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  For Mother:

  you prayed for me.

  For Larry:

  you were her answer.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  GIVEN THAT THIS IS MY FIRST BOOK AND IT COVERS MOST OF MY life, I’ve got a lot of people to thank. On a personal level, first I’d like to thank my wonderful family and friends for allowing me to use our histories for comic effect. Don’t worry: I changed your names and made you thin and pretty. If I didn’t change your name, I made you even thinner and prettier. Second, I’d like to thank my mentors: Barbara Van Holt, for making the honest mistake of telling me I could do anything. So it took me thirty years. Roy Kammerman, for your fatherly love and frankness that wouldn’t accept mediocrity. I’ll see you up there, Roy. To Ron Boyer: thanks for your friendship, guidance, and sense of humor. To Terrie Silverman, whose Creative Rites workshop birthed this book: thanks for your enthusiasm, writing exercises, and Beatles Teas.

  Third, thanks to the writers and friends who encouraged me in and out of class: Mim Abbey, Andrea Askowitz, Catheryn Brockett, Jeff Cellers, Matthew Corozine, Chris Frederick, John and Charmien Fugelsang, Jordan Green, Tony Hale, Mary Mac-Donald, Donald Miller, Christopher Myers, Cade Newman, Jeannie Noth-Gaffigan, Ann Randolph, Meredith Stephenson, Cameron Tayler, and Todd “the King” Wilkerson. Lori Rooney: thanks for reading my drafts like a soap opera, one chapter at a time. You kept me writing! Dave and Heather Kopp: thanks for playing friend/editor/eleventh-hour therapist. Thanks also to Larry and Nancy Myers for the cabin.

  On a professional level, first I must thank my lovely editor, Anne Horch, who tracked me down and championed this book. Your painful honesty and gracious demeanor forced me to write better every time. You pulled the very best out of me, Anne. Many thanks also to my classy agent, Jenny Bent, who negotiated much more than a deal. Thank you for taking on a firsttime author and walking me through the brave new world of books. And a big thanks to Lori Quinn, Jana Burson, Paige Collins, Harry Helm, and all the groovy people at Hachette Book Group USA.

  Last, I must thank my husband, Lauren Glade Wilson: for your cheerleading, your fine editorial eye, and the sacrificial love that made you get up every morning and go into an office, just so I could write this. You’re the coolest, bravest man I know.

  PREFACE

  A FEW YEARS AGO, I WROTE A COMEDY SKETCH TITLED “COUPLES Therapy,” in which I took God to counseling. God showed up in a toga, and we proceeded to have a domestic argument: he was gone too much, I didn’t give him quality time; he was seeing other people, I was the clay complaining to the potter. Then Jesus showed up in tie-dye and beads and tried to get us to chill out. It was good fun.

  Until a couple of years later, when my life actually fell apart. I went to see a Christian therapist to repair my relationship with God. The therapist you meet in this story is a composite of the many therapists I’ve consulted in my lifetime. The therapy sessions you read in this book are fictionalized conversations of factual therapy sessions.

  Which brings me to another issue. Celebrated writer/editor William Zinsser edited a classic book of essays on the craft of the memoir titled Inventing the Truth. The first word was not lost on me: truth needs to be invented—that is, it needs to be crafted into a story worthy of your time. If, as Alfred Hitchcock once said, drama is life with the boring bits cut out, I cut out the boring bits. I also changed the names of some people to protect their anonymity; I left other people’s names intact (e.g., “Mom” and “Dad”) to honor their imprint on my life. I made composites of still other people (Rudy O’Shea, Mrs. Proctor, Pastor Craig, Julianne, Doug, Veronique, Cheryl, and Geoff), not to mess with you or the truth but to keep the story under a thousand pages. I moved a few events around just to streamline the story and, well, take out the boring bits. But this is the truth as I remember it.

  As a final point of clarification, I believe that Jesus is God; he’s part of the Trinity. But for this book, Jesus will just be “Jesus.” God the Father will be “God.” (I tried calling God “Abba,” but I kept hearing “Dancing Queen” in my head.) You won’t hear much from the Holy Spirit. Jesus once said that the Spirit is like the wind—you can’t see him; you can only see what he does. He’ll just be “around.” So Jesus is “Jesus” and God the Father is “God.” Unless I’m referring to God in gener
alized terms. Don’t worry—you’ll get it as we go along.

  Introduction

  DON’T SKIP THIS JUST BECAUSE IT’S AN INTRODUCTION!

  I WAS SITTING AT A CAFÉ IN NEW YORK CITY IN JULY 2003. IT WAS A stifling hot afternoon, but I was shivering cold after a month of not eating. Heartbreak will do that to you. It hurt to eat; it hurt to breathe. I wanted to scrape off my skin just to get out of my body. I had starved down to a size 1 and I didn’t even want to live to enjoy the clothes.

  2003 was already going down as my worst year on record: my father died, my mother had a debilitating stroke, and my acting career tanked in New York (so I raced back to my native Los Angeles, only to watch it expire there as well). This happened just as my four best friends in New York got their big acting breaks—one was even cast in a hit TV show in LA, created by my very own high school sweetheart. And who says God isn’t in the details?

  The details got even worse. Those four suddenly successful friends got married that summer, just as my almost-fiancé and I broke up. For three years, Jack told me I was “The One.” A week after our breakup, Jack decided I had just been his first big relationship. You know, Trainer Girlfriend.

  So on that oppressive July day, I flew my broken heart back to New York to attend those four weddings and vacate my apartment for good. (When Jack and I broke up, he got custody of New York.)

  And that’s when a friend from church called—let’s call her Martha. She figured she’d come “be Jesus” to me: coax me out of my apartment, now a tomb of memories of Jack, and get me out for a stroll in Central Park, where the sun was shining and life was still being lived.

  As Martha and I meandered those miles of summer greens and happy visitors, I actually began to feel better. I had a life before Jack tore my heart out; I could have a life again. In fact, I guessed the Lord must be in New York City. After all, children were still playing, dogs were still peeing, and lovers were still wooing. Just like that couple I saw French-kissing at the pretzel cart. Someday, that could be me.

  Wait. That used to be me.

  The guy making out at the pretzel cart was Jack. My Jack.

  They say when you die you float out of your body. I wanted to float. I wanted to rip my skin off just to escape. But I was stuck in my body, watching Jack stick his tongue down some woman’s throat as the adrenaline ripped my heart open like a dirty bomb.

  “Praise God,” Martha whispered. “The Lord is showing you that Jack’s moved on.”

  In a park six miles around, in a city of more than eight million people—a city I didn’t even live in anymore! How did God do it? And why?

  An hour later at that café, I managed to speak without sobbing. “No, Martha. God isn’t showing me Jack moved on; God’s showing me he’s moved on. I feel like God has abandoned me.”

  “And you don’t have anything to do with it?” Martha retorted.

  Be careful to whom you bare your grief, especially if it’s someone churchy, like Martha. Because the Marthas of the world can’t leave a question unanswered, a problem unsolved, or a sorrow unhealed; they have to fix it. And no matter how long you’ve been a Christian (I’d been one all my life), Martha will know a Bible verse you haven’t heard (or haven’t heard the right way), or she’ll have a book or a sermon tape or a worship CD designed to answer your questions, silence your doubts, muzzle your grief, and make Martha feel better.

  But then when your pain doesn’t go away—when it feels like your intestines are being ripped out and God has abandoned you, or worse: he’s there but he doesn’t care—when you realize that God himself has orchestrated your collapse-then Martha will wish she hadn’t come to be Jesus to you, because now she’s stuck in some crappy midtown café listening to your horrifying thoughts about God—the kind of thoughts she successfully dodges in the midst of her everyday life. But you’re not in everyday life. You’re in hell.

  “I know God is good, Martha. He’s just not good to me.“

  I should stop and identify my spiritual orientation. But first I must tell you: I hate it when people say, “I’m spiritual but not religious.” That’s like saying, “I’m emotional but not psycho.” It turns religion into a dirty word. Religion simply means religion: to reattach, to reconnect to the God you feel separated from. Yet I know we’ve all been burned by religiosity; even Jesus hated religiosity. So I just say, “I’m Lutheran.” It sounds jaunty and nonthreatening.

  And it’s true, I was raised Lutheran: Bible-believing, Jesus-loving Lutheran. But as an adult I tried everything: Pentecostals, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Rock ’n’ Roll Slackers 4 Jesus, Actors for Yahweh. Then I said, “Screw it,” and became a drunk and a slut. (Well, a Lutheran slut—I only slept with two guys.) Then I got sober and into AA, where they said I could pick whatever god I wanted. I didn’t pick God; God picked me. I’ve known him as long as I can remember.

  From the moment I could sing “Jesus Loves Me,” I knew the words were true. Maybe I was just given the gift of faith the way some people get perfect pitch. But I believed in the God of the Bible and in Jesus, his Son. Of course, I also believed in Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy. But while those childhood myths died away for lack of evidence, my belief in Jesus gained momentum. One afternoon when I was about eight, I was standing in the backyard playing catch with our dog, and I got the sense that Jesus was standing there with me. He didn’t say, “I died for you so go help your mom set the table.” I just sensed he wanted me to know he was there. And knowing he was there, I felt loved.

  Later I watched my mother take Communion. Her face became weightless and bright. And I realized she knew it too: what it was like to feel Jesus standing next to you.

  Back then, our family had a telescope, and through it I could see the rings on Saturn and the moons on Jupiter. When my father explained that the stars were millions of lightyears away, I began to understand how big the universe was, and how majestic the God who made it. I also realized how far Jesus had come to stand next to me in the backyard.

  I began to understand that sin was like a sickness. It was why we had the Vietnam War and poverty and why I hated my brothers. I knew I had the sickness. Then I began to comprehend how much God the Father loved me to send Jesus all that way through time and space to stand next to me, to heal my sickness, and to be my friend.

  As I stood at the edge of adulthood, I saw Jesus there at the top of the road, calling me into the grand adventure of life. So I went.

  It was a grand adventure at first. I could sit for hours praying, writing to God in my journal, and listening to his response. I didn’t hear him audibly, but I learned to hear with things other than my ears. We had amazing conversations, God and I. I told him how I loved him; he showed me those Scriptures about his plans to prosper me and give me a future and a hope, plans where my life mattered.

  But then there were rules to follow and programs to attend, sins to eradicate and special blessings to earn, all to get that big life or keep it big. I did all of it. I’ve been washed in the blood, slain in the Spirit, I walked through the Bible, I’ve been baptizedt—wice. I’ve done outward cleansing and inner healing. I even went through a therapy program for ex-gays, and I was never gay. Through that insanity, even if pastors hurt me or friends let me down or entire denominations went Shiite on my ass, I still believed God was good—I just needed to find out where God went. Maybe it was a corner of a cathedral or a monastery in the desert or a bench on the beach. But I could go there and be with the God who was good and the Jesus who loved me, this I knew.

  That is, until that moment in Central Park.

  From that point on, my thoughts about God began to unravel. (My heartbreak starvation diet didn’t help my critical thinking either.) Maybe God hated me. Maybe he felt nothing at all, for me or anyone. Who was at the helm of the universe? A distant, unfeeling God? Maybe God wasn’t even personal. And if he wasn’t personal, then my entire life—how I saw the world, how I’d tried to know his will and please him—had all been a lie. The ground und
er my feet split open into a Grand Canyon a mile down, and there was nothing but thin air between me and the bottom.

  It would have been easier to imagine God was not involved. But how else could I explain the cruel synchronicity of Central Park? Or the beauty I saw at the end of the telescope? No. When I stood in that backyard, I knew Jesus was with me. Once I was watching my brother fly kites in a March sky. The clouds were so high they embraced the curvature of the earth. Suddenly God felt so big, and yet so close. I knew at that moment I was loved, and I knew I was loved by a Person. Ever since then I had run toward—or away from—that knowing. But I couldn’t stop knowing it.

  Let’s be honest: this wasn’t Darfur. I hadn’t witnessed my family getting slaughtered; I hadn’t grown up in a gang war zone or been forced into a polygamous marriage at age thirteen. So what if my lifelong dream died and my relationship tanked? These were nothing but middleclass white girl’s tragedies. But I was a middle-class white girl, with a middleclass white girl’s faith. In fact, my middleclass white girl’s tragedies ceased to be the tragedy at all: the tragedy was God’s responsetotal silence. I couldn’t hear God or see God or sense God anywhere or in anything. Some people call this the Dark Night of the Soul. It was dark, all right. And silent. And I was alone.

  Martha e-mailed me sometime later to check in, see if I was still “skinny and sad,” and tell me about the latest book that would solve my problems. “Have you read The Sacred Romance?” she asked. The book, Martha said, claimed our relationship with God was a love story. You know, because God pursued us, promised to love us forever, and called us to a life filled with purpose and meaning. “Susan,” Martha declared, “our relationship with God is nothing short of a marriage.”

  “Well, in that case,” I replied, “God and I need to go to couples counseling. Because we’re not getting along.”