One Sunday after the service, I prayed with Fiona, the keyboardist. Because she was an artist, she liked to pray with her eyes closed and wait for a word or image from God. Like a séance in the Lord. “I see one of those moving walkways at the airport. You’re on it, running to Jesus; he’s at the other end calling you, arms open wide.”
I teared up, thinking of Jesus with his arms open wide.
Fiona frowned. “You’re running toward him, but the walkway’s moving in the opposite direction.”
I started to cry.
“What’s up?” she asked.
“Why doesn’t Jesus flip the switch?!”
Fiona thought for a moment. “Do you have a father wound?”
“What’s that?”
“Did your father hurt you?”
“Whose father didn’t?”
“Well, it’s probably keeping you from moving forward in life. What do you do?”
“I’m an actor. And a lot of what I do feels like running in place.”
“You should check out our Healing the Father Wound class. You need to get that healed.”
“How long is that going to take?”
“What else are you on the planet for? To do commercials?”
Fiona was right. Auditioning for Pampers commercials was not playing my note. Yes, I was grateful to be making a living as an actor. But moments like working on PT&A and Scrooged were oases amid a desert of schlepping all over town to audition for “Woman #5” on some tedious sitcom that might never air, plus getting rejected, and, well, running the wrong way on a moving walkway. And it didn’t fill the hole in my donut.
Maybe it was time to stop running. It was time to get healed. And it was the 1990s. People were reading Healing the Shame That Binds You, Codependent No More, and anything with “inner child” in the title. I was right on schedule.
Cheryl suggested I try a 12-step program for people with eating disorders. People sat around whining: “I’m an overeater; I’m a bulimic; I’m anorexic.” I hated it. But I was one so I gritted my teeth and kept going. And whaddya know? I stopped throwing up. Ironically, the program used the same tools Georgina did. I wrote down what I ate and told a sponsor. I made a list of things I’d done wrong or felt resentful over and had to forgive. But there was a difference: my sponsor was a peer, not a dictator. She didn’t scold me; she nodded in recognition. “Yeah, I did that too.” I felt a lot less shameful and a lot more human.
I also plunged into anything the church had to offer: classes and retreats and conferences on healing, like Healing the Father Wound, Filling the Mother Void.…If it had “healing” in the title, I went. They ran a ministry to heal gays of their gaiety. Over time they decided that people with codependency issues or addictions—like, hello, eating disorders!—had the same root issue: the freakin’ father wound. So they opened the program to anyone who wanted healing. I said, “Yes, please.”
I made some great friends in that program: Jill, a seminary student who’d felt like a lesbian her entire life; Mark, the actor with an abusive father, molested by a neighbor boy at eleven and identified as gay ever since. We went to class, we prayed, we worshipped, we brought our wounds to the foot of the cross, and we let God heal them.
I confided to my gaiety group about my two main problems: eating and anger.
“I totally eat over my feelings,” Mark said. “Feelings. Feelings. Nothing more than feelings.”
“What’s the eating about?” Jill asked.
“Food is comfort. It’s our earliest need.”
“It’s the Mother Void, ding, ding!” Mark crowed.
“What’s the anger about?” Jill pressed.
“Not getting enough to eat?” I quipped. “All I know is: if I’m angry, no one will like me.”
“I love your anger,” Mark said afterward. “If I were straight I’d date you.”
“Do you think you’ll ever get there?” I wondered.
Mark sighed. “You just have to stop throwing up. I’m supposed to change who I’m attracted to.”
“I’ve got to eat food three times a day,” I protested. “You don’t have to have sex three times a day.”
“You don’t know me.”
Mark became one of my best friends.
Our group leader said anger is the first defense a child learns to protect herself from pain or abuse or neglect. “But you don’t have to stay angry. God can heal you. There’s no place so dark he can’t go. You just have to let him into your dark places.”
In film school I watched others churn their dark cesspool dreams into horrible, gothic beauty. I had not been ready to look at my dark places…until now. As the psalmist wrote, “If I say, ‘Surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me,’ even the darkness will not be dark to you; the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to you” (Ps. 139:11-12).
Fiona prayed for me on another Sunday. But this time it was I who saw images in my mind as we prayed. I “saw” my mother and me, arguing at my old high school. We stood yards apart. She was crying because I didn’t go to Luther League. I was crying because she never knew me or understood what I loved.
“Where is Jesus right now?” Fiona asked.
I saw Jesus standing next to me. He put his hand in mine, and then he led me over to my mother. I saw that she was one of those Russian matryoshka dolls, hollow inside. But she wasn’t even a smaller doll within a smaller doll. She was the completely hollow, tiniest of dolls at the very bottom.
“She’s just a frightened little girl,” I said to Fiona. Jesus put his arms around me, and I cried. It gave me a lot more compassion for my mother. This healing prayer worked.
I also gained compassion for Dad. I reached out and visited him and sometimes he opened up. But all stories led back to the same ones he’d been telling for years: the stag film he never should have seen, the house we never sold, the med school he never should have forced on my brother. He was doomed to relive those moments, like Lady Macbeth washing her hands. Dad was reciting a monologue, and I was the audience. Maybe he didn’t know I was there. Maybe it didn’t matter. I couldn’t save someone who didn’t want to be saved.
I got a call from my favorite casting director—the man who cast me in Scrooged and other films. “I’m casting a small role in The War of the Roses. Can you meet the director?” I drove onto the lot and went into an office. It was just the director sitting in a chair. He smiled broadly and had me sit. I remember little about the conversation except that I brought an appointment calendar with impressionist paintings to the meeting with me and I just had to show him one image of some boys playing in an alley. “Oh, forget it.” I stopped myself. “I’m here for an audition. Do you have pages for me to read?”
“Nah.” He smiled. “The role is yours.”
I spent a couple of days on the set, playing an auctioneer’s assistant. I had a couple of small scenes. I was mostly there to react as the two stars fought to outbid each other for an art piece. Little was left of me when the film came out, but the payoff was just being there. The day after I finished I got a call from the casting director. “They watched the dailies from yesterday. You had everyone in the viewing room on the floor laughing. A director has never called me to say that. You should feel encouraged.”
I saw the director at the wrap party. “Just keep doing what you’re doing, Susan. It’s only a matter of time.”
Okay, so I wasn’t on the planet to do Pampers commercials. But I also wasn’t on the planet just to get healed. Healing led somewhere. It was leading me back out into life, to play my note.
After so much inner healing—going deep into prayer and dreams, interpreting each symbol and image as a pointer to some grand super-reality—the whole world began to look like one big cryptic sign from God. Life wasn’t just random chaos; God was speaking. Everywhere, all the time. I needed to listen!
I had a dream that I was onstage doing vaudeville buck-naked. “Hey, it’s just comedy,” I told myself. “It doe
sn’t count as nudity if you’re joking.” A friend offstage wanted to introduce me to a group of producers. Finally, my big break! Just as I took her arm, she whipped around and became the Grim Reaper. Cape, skeleton, scythe. The reaper drew back its scythe to decapitate me. That’s when I shot up in bed. I couldn’t go back to sleep for an hour.
The very next day my favorite casting director called. He’d given my demo tape to a director; now the director was offering me a small role in his new movie, The Addams Family. No audition!
I stood by the fax machine and watched the pages roll in. The first line that caught my eye said something about “enslaving a pastor.” I pulled the page out. “Wednesday wants to be a witch like her grandmother, who ran in the streets naked and enslaved a pastor.”
Before I could think, an intangible grief bubbled up and I burst into tears. Was it the Holy Spirit? Witches, slavery, pastor. I thought about the dream the night before: me naked, acting, the Grim Reaper, head chopped off.
I told Pastor Craig about the dream and the role. “I don’t think I can do it.”
“God’s speaking, Susan,” he confirmed. “Don’t get decapitated.”
I called the casting director and declined. “It’s too spiritually dark.”
An awkward silence followed. “But, Susan, it’s a farce. It’s a high-costume comedy; it’s not meant to be real.”
“But the spiritual world is real,” I replied. “And there is such a thing as evil. I’m so sorry, but I can’t do it.”
“Okay.” He sighed. “I know they’ll be disappointed.”
I bet he thought I was nuts. Was I nuts? Was I reading into everything? What about the dream the very night before? That was God speaking to me, wasn’t it? And I needed to listen. That’s what my life was about right then: listening to God and responding.
Right?
Rudy: That was some dream.
Susan: It was kind of hard to ignore.
God: You weren’t meant to ignore it.
Susan: Rudy doesn’t know how it turned out a year later.
God: No one knows how it really turns out until a thousand years later.
Susan: There you go, pulling the eternity card on me. Where’s Jesus?
God: I wanted it to be just you and me.
Susan: I feel safer with him around.
God: But he is here. “If you’ve seen me, you’ve seen the Father.” All that kindness and trust you feel with Jesus is from me. I’d like you to grant me the same trust.
Rudy: I’m going to agree with God. You need to give him the benefit of the doubt. And I think we should concentrate on the two of you for now.
Susan: Why do I have to do all the work?
God: Because you’re the one who has to change.
Susan: Well, you certainly aren’t changing your sarcasm.
God: Sarcasm is a viable form of communication.
Rudy: Let’s get back to the relationship. This seems like it was a positive time.
Susan: It was. I stopped and healed. I felt God’s love. I was grateful for friends like Mark. But…
God: Here comes the “But.” Ever heard that joke, “If a man speaks in a forest and his wife isn’t there to hear him, is he still wrong?”
Susan: I am thankful for everything you did. (To Rudy) But is there such a thing as too much therapy? I was starting to feel overloaded.
Rudy: It was the 1990s. That was the Golden Age of therapy.
God: And it was the Dark Ages of community service. Try getting people to volunteer at the orphanage or the shelter—forget it. They were all healing their inner children.
Susan: We certainly weren’t off dating. But that’s for the next chapter.
Rudy: Susan, what do you think that dream meant?
Susan: After all that healing and symbolic interpretation, it was obvious. God was warning me that the film was dark and I needed to turn it down. I lost that casting director’s respect. But God came first and I wanted to honor him.
God: I felt honored. I’m glad you felt like you made the right decision.
Susan: Wait, what? “Felt like I made the right decision?” It was the right decision. It was the only decision I could have made, given that dream.
God: Well, if you had taken the role, I’d have been there with you. Even the darkness is not dark to me. But you did what was right for you at the time.
Susan: No. No, no, no! I trashed a vital relationship with a casting director who got me work! He was my champion! After that, he thought I was a freak. I did not turn it down because it was “right for me at the time”; I turned it down because you told me to!
God: Did you hear me say, “Susan, don’t take that role”?
Susan: You warned me in a dream the night before. I’m naked onstage, I convince myself it’s just comedy, but then the Grim Reaper comes to decapitate me. Pastor Craig agreed: “Don’t get decapitated, dude!”
Rudy: Couldn’t the dream have represented your own fears? Or your psyche saying that you couldn’t handle it at the time?
Susan: I didn’t even know about the role until the morning after the dream.
Rudy: Oh. Wow.
God: But, Susan, what did you hear me say?
What had God said? Audibly? Nothing. I only had the dream. And the dream was mine.
Susan: This is exactly what I mean by too much counseling. We were taught to interpret dreams, look for clues in symbols and imagery, listen to God speaking to our deepest hearts. And now you’re saying there was no right or wrong answer?
God: Susan, honey. Right or wrong, you did what you needed to do to protect yourself. I am delighted you wanted to honor me. But I also wanted you to feel confident in making decisions for yourself. Like choosing your own breakfast or choosing a movie role. I would be with you no matter what you chose. You weren’t ready at the time, and that’s okay.
Susan: I see now. I see why you’ve been so kind today, why you said you wanted it to be “just you and me.” You’re trying to look balanced and functional in front of Rudy. Rudy doesn’t know what happened a year later.
Rudy: Tell what happened later, later. How did you feel at the time?
Susan: (Bitter) I felt grateful!
A brittle silence hung for a moment.
God: I wasn’t trying to look good in front of Rudy, Susan. I meant it when I said I wanted it to be just you and me. Because you know what I remember about this time in our relationship? You wanted me. You loved me. Of course I was heartbroken that you were in so much pain. But you came to me. You let me in. We haven’t been that close since. And I miss that. I miss you.
Chapter 8
AWAKEN THE GIANT HORMONE WITHIN
I DON’T WANT YOU TO THINK I’M NOT GRATEFUL. I WENT FROM vomiting and not wanting to live to being abstinent and optimistic. And it was all due to the Lord. (Well, the Prozac helped.)
But…
As my 12-step sponsor said, the goal was to get out of the food and into life. And what life did I have besides hangin’ out at church with the Big J-Man?
David once suggested I take classes at the Groundlings, that famous LA improv and sketch comedy troupe. Improv was popularized on the show Whose Line Is It Anyway? Actors are given suggestions from the audience, such as an activity and a relationship, and the actors perform a scene on the spot.
I finally got up the courage and enrolled. The first class was like skydiving: terrifying, liberating, and once I had done it I had to do it again. I improvised and wrote scenes, and characters bubbled up from my imagination. I hadn’t played this note since high school. I wished I was still friends with David to thank him. But I burned that bridge under Georgina’s regime.
Taking classes was one thing; moving up the ladder and getting into the performing company was another. Classes were competitive and teachers were tough. But in nine months I went from Beginning Improv to the Sunday Company, the theater’s B string.
I was on a high. I invited my friends to come see me. I was judicious of course. A rule
of improv is “Never deny.” If someone does something onstage, you don’t ignore or deny it. So if my scene partner, say, dry-humped me, I had to find a way to say, “Yes, and” to his dry-humping, rather than “No, but,” while maneuvering him off my leg. I learned how to say “Yes, and” and keep my integrity. I also never invited my sister to the shows.
All this healing had been for something! God really did have a purpose for me. I was twenty-nine years old, but in some ways my life—the living it—had just begun.
A couple at my church was involved in a Benedictine monastery out in the desert. Every month they fasted, prayed, and met with a monk for spiritual direction, which was like therapy, only mystical and cool. “Mystical” sounded good to me. I missed the liturgy. (Nondenominational churches say they don’t have a liturgy, but they do: it’s forty-five minutes of music, forty-five minutes of preaching, and announcements.) I wanted a deeper experience. Besides, I was on the cusp of something new, and I wanted God to lead me there. In a mystical and cool way.
Thanksgiving weekend I blew off my family and went out to the desert. I didn’t even eat the monastic turkey roll; I fasted, prayed, and scheduled an appointment with a monk to talk about where God might be leading me.
That night I had a horrifying dream, far more horrifying than the cesspool or the Grim Reaper. I woke up and paced my room, afraid to fall back asleep and into the dream.
The next morning I met my monk. Father Michael had a round face and a welcoming smile. “Dear, you look as if you need to unload.” So I did.
In my dream, I was on an outdoor stage, dancing with the Beatles. The Beatles! John Lennon was singing “You Make Me Dizzy, Miss Lizzy”—very sexy, very much alive. And I was dancing with him. A group of stern religious women with dried-apple doll faces came up and forced me off the stage. They said I had to go bury a dead woman. They herded me into a churchyard. (I realized, while telling Father Michael, it was the same church where I usually attended 12-step meetings.) The dried faces told me the dead woman could not be buried in the churchyard because of her “sexual sin.” They said it like Pastor Norman: “SECK-shull,” like a sourball, but also like they relished the judgment in it. She had to be buried in the park. And I had to do it.
Angry Conversations with God Page 9