Angry Conversations with God

by Susan E. Isaacs

  Once Miss Toft was out taking care of her invalid sick sister, and we got a sub. Mr. Lund told us about Jesus’ clearing the temple. “This was the area where pagans and outcasts were free to come to pray, but religious leaders turned it into a swap meet! This was just not cool with Jesus. So he went in and gave them all the fourth-down punt!”

  Wow! I wished we had a picture of that Jesus on the wall! When I looked at the Nice Jesus again, I thought maybe he was listening intently as God instructed him on how to go to the temple and kick butt.

  My happy world changed in fourth grade. Our class was joined by a Lutheran nightmare named Kirsten Shanahan. Kirsten hated anyone who did better than she did. And I was better at everything. Once I beat her out for a choir solo. So she got the entire alto section to kick my chair for an hour. Another time I knocked her out in four square. She got everyone to leave the game. When I got A’s on tests, she taunted me throughout recess.

  “Susie thinks she’s so smart!”

  “Do not!” I shouted back.

  “Dhoo hnnotttth!” She mimicked me like I was retarded.

  “Stop it!”

  “Hhhop itth!” There was no way to make her stop, no way to win, and no way out.

  Worst of all, Kirsten got other girls to go along with her. My friends came to me in secret. “We really like you,” Lori promised.

  “Yeah,” Sandy hissed. “Kirsten’s a…female dog!”

  “Then why do you go along with her?” I protested.

  “We don’t want her to get mad at us!” Lori cried.

  “How do you think I feel?!”

  “But you’re the only one who can stand up to her!”

  It was true. No one stood up to Kirsten. Not even the teachers. Except for the overweight choir director, Mrs. Proctor. When Mrs. Proctor saw Kirsten kicking my chair, her baton froze midair, her forearms jiggled to a stop, and she glared at Kirsten. “Is that how you behave at home, Kirsten? Do you kick chairs when you don’t get your way?…Kirsten?”

  “No, Miss Porker,” Kirsten replied.

  The choir erupted in snickers. Kirsten was kicked out of choir. From then on she led a choir of her own: a chorus of snotty kids who cackled “Miss Porker!” whenever the choir director walked by. “Miss Porker” morphed into “Porky Pig,” then snort, snort! Mrs. Proctor quit midyear from stress.

  The missionary spinster teachers turned the other cheek. That’s how they had survived Maoist China, and that’s what they expected me to do. But I couldn’t turn the other cheek. My cheeks burned with anger. Why wouldn’t Jesus give Kirsten a fourth-down punt? Our pastor said God was good to you if you were good and evil to you if you were evil. But wasn’t Kirsten the evil one here? Maybe God thought I was, because I got angry. Maybe my anger wasn’t the good kind. Maybe it was the bad kind of anger like my father’s.

  So as Kirsten whispered and kicked and got my friends to go along, I prayed to the Nice Jesus picture on the wall: Please, Jesus, make her stop. Please, Jesus, make her nice. Please, Jesus, make her die.

  The Nice Jesus sat there, his Nordic forehead turned toward the Father, eyes silently pleading for someone else. What happened to the Jesus who comforted the brokenhearted, who stood up for the defenseless? Jesus loved me, that I knew. But Mom said Jesus loved Kirsten too. Which made him a traitor or a wimp, like everyone else.

  Some days I came home and lay on my bed. My cat, Tig, always jumped up to join me and buried his head in my side. At least Tig loved me. Then a thought came to me: I got Tig as a surprise two months before Kirsten came to school. Maybe Tig was God’s gift. Maybe he knew I’d need a real friend, one that Kirsten couldn’t control. Maybe Tig was his way of saying, “I’m here, I love you, and it’s going to be okay.”

  “I know you’re here,” I prayed. “I know you love me. But I also want you to do something.”

  There was no reply, only a loving presence. Well, my cat helped. Maybe that’s what the Holy Spirit was—someone who came to be with you when God couldn’t fix things. Maybe Tig was the Holy Spirit.

  “Susie?” My mother sat me down on her bed. It was right in the middle of my fifth-grade birthday party. “Susie, I hear you say that you’re angry a lot. And that’s not good because if you’re angry, people won’t like you.”

  Well, that really pissed me off. The reason I was righteously angry was because Kirsten was being evil to me, at my birthday party, in my house! Mom had invited Kirsten because we had to “be like Jesus and love everyone.” We were playing Pin the Tail on the Donkey. When it was my turn to be blindfolded, Kirsten kicked me. So I ripped off the blindfold and went after her, but Mom caught me and took me to her room.

  And there we had the same conversation we’d been having ever since Kirsten came to my school. I said I didn’t do anything; Mom said there were two sides to every story. I begged Mom to talk to Kirsten’s mom; Mom said Kirsten’s mom was just as bad as Kirsten.

  “Then talk to Principal Bergen!” I cried.

  “Susie”—Mom’s voice wavered—“you have to learn to solve arguments yourself.”

  “But I wasn’t arguing! I had a blindfold on!“

  “I can’t do the work of two parents!” Mother cried, and ran out of the room.

  I sat thinking about what Mom had said: how I had to learn to solve arguments myself. But from whom? Mom never solved arguments; she just ran away. Then I thought of the other thing she’d said: people wouldn’t like me if I was angry. I knew it was true because nobody liked my dad.

  Olivet Lutheran School went through sixth grade. On the first day of my final year, I walked into class to discover that Jenny, the only girl who’d ever stood by me, had left for TeWinkle, the public junior high. Kirsten sat in the chair behind mine, ready for one last year of Lutheran-school tyranny.

  That afternoon I found my mother in the backyard. “Mom, I want to go to TeWinkle.”

  Mom kept her back to me as she watered her roses. The water spilled into her strawberry troughs and on into her nasturtiums. Mom put a lot of work into her garden. It was her outlet for being ignored by my father. Like she was ignoring me now.

  “Why do you want to leave Olivet?” Mom’s voice cracked.

  She was acting like I wanted to leave Jesus. I didn’t want to leave Jesus; I loved Jesus. I just didn’t want to be bullied anymore!

  Mom began to cry. I went inside. Nothing more was said.

  Three weeks later I was in Principal Bergen’s office, waiting to get paddled. As I looked up at the Nice Jesus on the wall, I thought of how much he reminded me of my mother. Maybe because they were both brown-haired, Norwegian, and depressed.

  Principal Bergen came out and sat next to me on the hard wooden bench. Miss Bergen spoke in a calm, Lutheranmissionary voice. She had lived in Madagascar with pygmies. She had eaten monkey meat and intestines and shrunken heads. Nothing frightened Miss Bergen.

  “Susie, do you know why you’re here?”

  That afternoon, Kirsten had gotten me out in a game of dodge ball—and she was on my team. Kirsten had been knocked out first. And every play that I stayed in, she got more jealous. She whispered to our teammates, and they stopped passing me the ball. She whispered to the opposing team, and they aimed only at me. But I was fast, agile, and pissed. I dodged; I jumped. I caught the ball. I hurled it back. I hit boys out. Hard.

  Finally, our team whittled down to two players: me and Edith Knapp, a slow girl who never got the ball because the boys didn’t want cooties on it. Kirsten walked over and handed the ball to afat guy on the other team. He slammed it at my thigh, and the ball fell to the ground. I was out. And Kirsten danced in triumph.

  I ran at her, face pulsing, grabbed her thick, red ponytail like a lasso, and spun her around. Then I let go. Kirsten flew outward. She skidded across the blacktop, scraping knees and elbows, the pebbles ripping into her powder-blue pantsuit. The crowd gasped. Kirsten stared at me. Then she started bawling. The boys whooped. My secret friends ran to high-five me, but I shoved their fickle hand
s away and waited for the PE teacher to haul me off to Principal Bergen.

  “Susie,” Miss Bergen repeated, “do you know why you’re here?”

  “Because I hurt Kirsten?”

  “No. You’re here because your mother said you aren’t happy here. Is that true?”

  “Miss Bergen! I don’t want to leave Jesus. I love Jesus.”

  “I know that, Susie. But after what happened today…” Miss Bergen paused to consider. “I think you’ll be a lot happier.” She winked, handed me a coupon for an ice-cream cone, and sent me on my way. In true Lutheran fashion, Miss Bergen had turned the other cheek.

  As I walked out, I looked up at the Nice Jesus on the wall. Yes, his eyes were pleading for me: “Come on, Dad. She had to do it. She went into that temple and gave Kirsten the fourth-down punt.”

  Rudy shook his head.

  Rudy: Girls can be so cruel.

  Susan: You know that adage, “If women ruled the world, there would be no war”? Whoever said that never rushed a sorority. If women ran the UN, it would be brutal. “That beeotch didn’t invite me to her summit. I am so vetoing her ass.”

  Rudy: You said something interesting. “God is good to you if you’re good, and evil if you’re evil.”

  Susan: It’s there in 2 Samuel: “To the pure you show yourself pure, but to the wicked you show yourself hostile.” I’ve had it drilled into my head: If you do right, your life will go well. If your life isn’t going well, you’re doing something wrong.

  Rudy: But there are plenty of verses that ask, “Why do the righteous suffer?”

  Susan: That sums up my last three years at Olivet. I learned not to trust girls, I learned not to bother Mom with my problems, and I learned that no matter how much Jesus loved me—and I knew he did—he still wasn’t getting off that wall to save me. I was on my own.

  Rudy: Well, I think we need Jesus to show up and answer for himself.

  Now I had to imagine Jesus in the room with us. Amazing, that Head of Christ. Some Midwestern painter sold a few portraits to a Bible supply shop and influenced an entire society as to what Jesus looked like. But I couldn’t help but see Jesus with those same kind, sad eyes. Now that I imagined his eyes on me, I felt stupid complaining about a bully.

  Jesus: Susan, I’m so sorry you feel like I didn’t come through for you. But you did know I was there; you did feel my love. Didn’t you?

  Susan: I did. Thank you.

  Jesus: No problem.

  Rudy: (To Susan) Wait. Is that it?!

  Susan: The guy hung on a cross for me. I got bullied for three years. Big deal.

  Rudy: But it was a big deal for you as a child. You prayed to Jesus and he didn’t answer.

  Susan: I know the answer, Rudy. Life is filled with hardship. There are bad people in the world, and I had to learn how to deal with them.

  Rudy: I know a man who was molested by a priest for years. He needs a better answer than that. So do you. It doesn’t matter how small it seems now, we’re here because of how big it felt then. You need to tell Jesus that.

  Jesus: It’s okay. You can talk to me.

  Susan: Okay. I know it wasn’t your fault—

  Rudy: And?

  Susan: Back then it was the one thing I prayed for, that you’d stop Kirsten from bullying me. But you never answered.

  Jesus: It seemed like I didn’t answer.

  Susan: No, Jesus. You didn’t answer. Nobody came. I had to fight for myself.

  Jesus: That’s how I answered. I taught you to fight for yourself.

  Susan: I was a kid! I didn’t want to fight. My mom said people wouldn’t like me!

  Jesus: What did you want me to do?

  Susan: Smite Kirsten? Drive her away like the chaff? Get my mom to do something? Or the teachers or Miss Bergen or Pastor Ingebretsen? Or anybody?

  Jesus: It took a lot for your mother to talk to Miss Bergen. She was terrified.

  Susan: But the damage was done. It made you look like the wimp, because those people represented you!

  Jesus: I don’t know if this will help. For centuries society had blamed God for being a vengeful God. When you were young, the Vietnam War was going on. Your church was trying to practice peace. They were trying to turn the other cheek.

  Susan: But they didn’t turn the other cheek; they turned the other way. They rolled over and played dead.

  Jesus: You’re right.

  Susan: Do you blame me for thinking you were a wimp?

  Jesus: No. I don’t.

  Rudy: When I was a pastor and saw weird things go on, I was told to “let the Lord take care of it.” It’s messed up.

  Jesus: You think I don’t know that? I feel it every day.

  I guess I could see Jesus’ point of view. He spent his lifetime fighting on behalf of the poor and oppressed. He died on a cross to end that oppression. Yet it was still going on. No wonder he still looked depressed.

  Chapter 3

  MY TWO DADS

  HERE'S A QUESTION PEOPLE OFTEN ASK A COUPLE: “HOW DID you two meet?” I suppose the Father would drag out some impressive Bible verse about how he knew me “before the foundation of the world” (Eph. 1:4 nkjv). However, I'd like to stick to the period of recorded history in which I was alive, aware, and able to respond.

  As soon as I was aware of God, I responded. I memorized the Apostles’ Creed when I was five, and when I said the words I meant them. I believed in God, the Father Almighty, the Maker of heaven and earth.

  But while Jesus was easy to picture, picturing God the Father was hard. God didn't have a body: that was the whole point of Jesus. Pastor Ingebretsen said God was a deep and powerful mystery. He had a voice of many waters. He was an all-consuming fire, a rock and a fortress, a strong tower. When he got angry, smoke blew from his nostrils. Okay, maybe God had a nose.

  When I turned seven, my birthday fell on Easter and my mom gave me a big gift. I had skipped half-day kindergarten, so while my dad said I was too young, my mom thought I was ready. She took me to the Bible bookstore to pick it up. It was a white leather Bible with a gold zipper, and there on the front was my name embossed in gold letters. I got to have my own Bible. I got to read it myself!

  We read about Jesus during devotions, but we also read the Psalms. Mom said they were written before Jesus was born, so that meant they were about God the Father Almighty. They didn't say what God looked like, but they showed what he was like. God was a refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. He made me lie down in green pastures. He forgave all my sins; he healed all my diseases; he redeemed my life from the pit and crowned me with love and compassion. Psalm 8 made me think of the times I looked through our telescope at the rings on Saturn. I wondered how God could even think about me and care about me. But the Bible said he did. What's not to love about a God like that?

  Mom's favorite psalm was Psalm 24:

  The earth is the LORD'S, and the fullness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein. For he hath founded it upon the seas, and established it upon the floods. Who shall ascend into the hill of the LORD? Or who shall stand in his holy place? He that hath clean hands, and a pure heart; who hath not lifted up his soul unto vanity, nor sworn deceitfully. He shall receive the blessing from the LORD, and righteousness from the God of his salvation. This is the generation of them that seek him, that seek thy face, O Jacob. Selah. Lift up your heads, O ye gates; and be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors; and the King of glory shall come in. Who is this King of glory? The LORD strong and mighty, the LORD mighty in battle. Lift up your heads, O ye gates; even lift them up, ye everlasting doors; and the King of glory shall come in. Who is this King of glory? The LORD of hosts, he is the King of glory. Selah. (KJV)

  Before I understood what glory or the everlasting doors were, the poetry worked its deep and powerful mystery on me. I wanted to be one of those with clean hands and a pure heart. I wanted to please God. He was more heroic than Mighty Mouse. He was the Father Almighty. He was the King of glory. Selah.

  But
God the Father scared me too. When God got angry with his enemies, he wiped them out. When the Israelites turned away, he punished them—he even killed some of them. If a high priest went into the Holy of Holies with one sin unatoned for, boom! He dropped dead. Pastor Ingebretsen said God's holiness wasn't vengeful; it was just too powerful. If you touched a power line you'd get electrocuted. God’s anger was the same way. He hated evil. And who would love a God who liked evil? I understood, sort of. God’s anger made sense, not like my dad’s. God got angry at evil; Dad got mad at anything.

  To say my earthly father shaped my image of God is kind of a therapy no-brainer. And unfortunately for God, my dad was complicated. When I was very young, Dad was loving and fun. As I grew older, Dad changed: he got mean and angry. Dad never tried to align himself with God. But when you’re a child, it’s hard not to transpose one into the other.

  To be fair, my earthly father didn’t have it easy. Dad was the third of three boys born to a dour Baptist woman who wanted a daughter. The night Dad came out of the womb, Grandma Jean yelled, “Throw him out the window!” At least, that’s the cute little story she told every year on Dad’s birthday. Try listening to that every time you blow out the candles. Dad’s father and grandfather died when Dad was nine, leaving him to a mother who disliked him and a grandmother who despised him. Dad grew up, became an optometrist, got married, and had four children. But I now suspect he never grew beyond the traumatized nine-year-old boy his dying father had left him.

  I was born in Hollywood, California, in what is now a big blue Scientology building—not the chichi Celebrity Centre where movie stars hold press conferences about their personal lives, but a prison-like facility where nameless underlings get released at noon to do tai chi on the lawn. But it was a hospital back then, which is how I came to be born there. When I was two years old, Dad moved our family to Orange County, to get away from Grandma Jean and prove her wrong—that he was not a failure.