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Job and Me

16 · Oct · 2002

Several years ago I found myself sitting on the side of the Rhine in Schauffhausen Switzerland. I had landed there as a stop-over point on my way to Romania. It was my first day out of the US, after having spent every dime I had to get there. My friends had gone further up the river and were planning to float down to embankment where I waited. While they were gone, I decided to begin a letter to my parents, describing my journey thus far. I lay on a blanket taking in the beauty of the place and became so overwhelmed with guilt that I began to cry.

I did not deserve to be in such a place – this I was sure. As I wrote, I thanked God for such a gift and marveled at the magnitude of that blessing.

About two months later I lay ill in my bed in Bucharest barely able to move, wondering if that was the night I would die. I was dehydrated, depressed and hungry and lonelier than I’d ever been. This, I decided, was a more suitable environment for such a materialistic person like me. I vowed that if I lived through my Romania adventure, I’d give my life over to serving others. I’d care less about fashion and more about compassion. I’d find a way to be a full time listener and problem solver for those who were the unlovely and suffering.

Last fall, I found myself at the Doubletree Hotel in Times Square, NYC. I had just come back from an incredible night on the town consisting of dinner, a musical, drinks and a cigar at the famous JR’s Cigar Bar in Manhattan. My hotel room was beautiful and when I opened my bedroom curtain, the lights of the city shone in like summer sun. I lay on my bed fully clothed and let tears roll down the sides of my cheeks. None of my fortune was my doing and I knew it. I wondered if my sister, mom or brother would ever be so lucky. I wished my friend Larry was there. I wondered how any of that would ever get me closer to a life of service to God.

Today a woman I worked with suggested I apply for food stamps, seriously explaining that I would probably qualify. I had just returned to work after finding out my car has a severe oil gush and is not safe to drive until I can gather the money for its repair. Never in my life have I been so stunned and the stark turns that can lead a person from one moment of bliss to the next moment of despair. The reason I am in such a financial predicament in the first place is that I could not accept another day of feeling forced into a life which I viewed as wasteful and superficial. The day I decided to leave my old life behind I knew what hard times might lay ahead, but it never occurred to me that the worst part would be dealing with my pride when well meaning friends offer me their financial help. At the same moment that I am amazed by their selflessness, I am overcome with feelings of inadequacy and anger. I do not want a handout! I am thinking. I want to work and be paid enough to live without this embarrassment. I want a moment of relief!

One of those days in Romania, I don’t remember exactly when, I stood in my room and listed to God all the things I would be willing to give up if He would take me in His hands and mold me into a woman who, not only did some good but the kind of woman would shake nations and change the world. On that list was every person I’d ever loved, (I named them one by one) every thing I’d ever owned (including my car, my clothes and my countless pages of writing) and all the daydreams I’d ever had about other things I could do(writer, minister, politician, artist manager). I’ve repeated this prayer more than a few times since then, always half hoping, half afraid that God would take me up on my offer. It would seem that maybe now He has.

I am less upset about losing my security than I thought I’d be. What makes me speechless on days like today is the idea that God is doing exactly what I began pleading with Him about six years ago and it has taken Him this long to believe I meant it. Not to mention the fact that He is probably just beginning and I have a lot more to lose than I thought I did. Still, in a surreal sort of way I feel optimistic that I may now actually get to see God in action. Who else can get me through this terrifying ride into the unknown where I’m without even my pride to protect me?

Posted by Penny Rene at 10:19 AM

16 · Oct · 2002

In 2001, fresh off my divorce from The Only Man Who Ever Loved Me, my beloved, unemployed, though sweetly romantic, friend from Scotland came to live with me. We decided to spend some time together to determine if we really were soul mates and should make our union permanent. After two hair-raising months, he had nearly convinced me. Two days later he looked at me and said he missed his friends and had decided to go home.

My first instinct was to tear him apart, limb-by-limb, for having made a fool of me in front of my friends. (who all had expressed that this union could never work for various reasons I was acutely aware of in the beginning) Instead, I made him promise to get his life in order when he got back to the UK and then drove him to the airport while contemplating my upcoming 30th birthday. When I walked away from his departure gate, I did not look back.

That summer I had an affair with a music theory professor. I prefer to call him by that title rather than “my next door neighbor,” which is exactly what he was. He was an athletic, sensitive type who dove into our relationship sure it would be his last. He swore I was the One and I let myself imagine us attending University Christmas parties while securing our long summer vacations in Eastern Europe.

Then 9/11 happened, I went to Romania, and Mr. Sensitive cheated on me and broke up with me on the way home from that very same aforementioned airport.

My anger was intense. I had been fooled and I couldn’t believe it. I called him a liar to his face, holding little back and vowed never to let my guard down again.

A month or so later, I began seeing a carefree friend of mine who was a DJ at an FM Rock station in Birmingham Alabama. We talked about our concern for humanity and our quirky, granola- rock star children we’d have fun raising while we traveled the world. Needless to say, he was wonderful and the logistics of our relationship were completely unrealistic. I broke up with him to prevent us both from having a nervous breakdown or turning to alcoholism, or worse, having to spend one more night in the same house with his mother, which is where he still lives.

Then, upon returning to Nashville last spring, I did something I swore I’d never do. I began dating a former boyfriend. Eight years ago we dated briefly and broke up, only to have him tell me that he was sure I am the woman he is supposed to marry and that one day I‚d realize it. I had secretly doubted my decision off and on all these years, but I am not usually one to go back on my rejections. The reunion came as quite a surprise to both of us. I saw him as I never had before -clearly. And I loved him with a new kind of love for me: Love and hate mixed together to form an attraction and a compassion I’ve felt for no other. We would name our children Wyatt and Phoenix, live just outside Music City in a sturdy house with generous land. He would be the famous drummer, motorcycle racer and I would be the best-selling writer wife who spent as much time in Eastern Europe as he spent touring. This dream seemed not only fair; it actually made sense to me -and that was new too.

But as time had opened my heart, it was closing his. The love that took eight years for me to uncover and grow in me; it took exactly three minutes for him to throw away. I watched the digital clock on his jeep as he broke up with me, again disbelieving that I could’ve been so stupid.
As I walked the path up to my apartment after he finished talking, something inside me quit working, like I had lost a lung or a heart valve closed up.

I have twice been divorced and anyone who tells you that divorce doesn’t mean a thing in dating is lying. To a person who has been through such torture, it makes all the difference in the world in how we choose people to date, why we stop dating most people, and why we stay with others even when the relationship does not match our childhood fantasy. A divorced person, if they are lucky and get some therapy, has come out of one side of hell and been given a reward for their survival. That reward is called reality. What this bit of insight does for me is make me very sure of my decisions, not so willing to give up when faced with blatant opposition to my goals.

But they say even Jesus had his moment of breaking. “My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me?” No one ever gives good reason why the Son of God would show such despair - and publicly. But I can think of a few.

Maybe that’s exactly how he felt. Maybe something inside Him just snapped. It might be the only proof that He was human.

My friend Susan says that we should listen to what the universe is trying to tell us. If the universe does not allow us to run a successful business, for example, we should not run that business. If that is true, then the universe is telling me a few very unflattering things. Number one, I should stop writing milk memos. I’ve spent four months of serious energy trying to get a computer to set up an office for writing and have been entirely unsuccessful. Number two, I should file for bankruptcy. The main reason for this being that I am bankrupt, not even able to pay for food and rent on my meager hourly salary. And number three, I should give up on finding someone to share my life with that I truly love and settle instead for someone who loves me.

I have finally reached a point in my life when I look to God and demand that He cough up some answers. I am more than tired of pep talks by people who are merely reciting back to me answers they have heard all their lives but have no proof actually work. I’m amazed at those who speak about God’s perfection then tell me He created the very angel who brought sin to man. And even more so, I am floored by the notion that God knows exactly how I feel. God was never a woman.

Love does not lie down and die just because it’s told it’s not wanted. With every fiber in me, I still love the old boyfriend who broke up with me in his Jeep. It’s illogical, embarrassing, and infuriating, but it is reality. At this moment reality is the only thing I’m interested in.

I believe that God does love me. But I am unashamedly pissed at Him for not taking one moment in eight years to speak to me in a way that I can understand. On the tips of many fingers right now is a list of excuses for God. You will say I have not been listening, that I have not been patient, that He is active and present in my life. But you will only be saying these things because you have not been hit so hard that you come to that place where you wonder why Jesus, Himself, felt forsaken.
I want God to speak for Himself. I believe He can. And maybe He has wanted to all along.

Every Word You Said...

This is for your bad excuse
This is me more than bruised
Hold it to the light; what do you see?
You are what you choose to be
Cause I believed in you
I heard every word you said
You want what‚s true
But lies are in your head

Each time you slept through breakfast
I knew what was on your mind
You said you like my company
And I had all that time
If ever I have loved a man,
I‚m sad you were the one
Cause I believed in your desire
And now look at what it‚s done

I believed in you
I saw every word you said
You want what‚s true
But lies are in your head

All the late night guilty pleasure
You had the balls to sulk
While I put to rest my demons
You saw not me, but my ghost
When all else was confusing
Tell me, how clear was my touch?
It was nothing that you‚d known before
And still was not enough

I believed in you
I saw every word you said
You want what‚s true
But lies are in your head

This is for your bad excuse
This is me more than bruised
Hold it to the light; what do you see?
You are what you choose to be
I believed in you
I saw every word you said
You want what‚s true
But lies are in your head
Lies are in your head

Penny René

Posted by Penny Rene at 03:17 AM | TrackBack