Angry Conversations with God

by Susan E. Isaacs

  I had sworn to myself I’d never end up like my mother, living her spiritual life alone. But what was worse? Being spiritually alone or being totally alone?

  In February Mark was having his fortieth-birthday-party bash. Jack didn’t want to go. “Do you like him?” Jack eyed me.

  “Mark is gay, Jack.”

  “But do you like him?”

  “Mark is one of my oldest friends!”

  “Why do you have to go outside our relationship for friendship with guys? What does Mark give you that I don’t?”

  “Parties.”

  Jack went; he even had a good time. The evening was closing on a positive note until we got onto the subway. There in our empty car sat Really Nice Guy. You know, the only guy in New York who ever asked me out, but whom I could not like because he was just so nice? That Really Nice Guy.

  I introduced them. Jack nodded and said nothing. So I talked to Really Nice Guy. We both tried to act like it wasn’t awkward that here he was, Really Nice Jilted Guy in a virtually empty subway car, and who walks in but Jilter Girl with Hot Boyfriend? (Of course Really Nice Guy had no idea that On-the-Surface Hot Boyfriend was in fact Argumentative-Captain-Bringdown Boyfriend; and I, Codependent Girlfriend, was wondering what was relationship so wrong with being treated really nicely. Especially now that my life was spent watching downer DVDs in a crappy apartment with Captain Bringdown Boyfriend.)

  Finally, Really Nice Guy got off at his stop. Jack glared at me. “Who was that?”

  “A friend from church.”

  “You talked to him the entire time. You didn’t talk to me.”

  “No, Jack, you refused to participate in the conversation. Am I not allowed to talk to someone I knew before I met you?”

  Jack’s eyes narrowed. “Do you have a history with him?”

  Ugh! I might as well tell Jack the whole story. Maybe he’d get an ego boost out of the fact that he won out over Really Nice Guy. Only he didn’t get that kind of boost.

  “You mean he liked you?” Jack simmered. “Did you like him?”

  I refused to speak with him the rest of the ride. When we reached his stop, I did not get up to go with him.

  “Now you’re making me feel bad.”

  “No, Jack, your crappy behavior is making you feel bad.”

  “I’m sorry, Susan. I just feel like you’re not completely here, with me, in this relationship.”

  “Do you think I want to date someone else? I don’t want to date Mark or that guy or anyone else.”

  “Then why do I feel like your heart is somewhere else?”

  “Because it is, Jack. Not with another guy, but my heart needs to go to God first. And you don’t want to go there with me.”

  Jack looked crushed. “You act as if I don’t know God. I just don’t know him your way.”

  Maybe that’s why Jack was so possessive. He knew my heart was pulling toward Someone else. And I was stuck in limbo between the two of them.

  A month later, at his apartment, I was bending over to untie my shoe. When I stood up, Jack was frowning at my butt. “You gain weight when you’re on your period, right?”

  “That’s it, Jack. We’re done.” I grabbed my coat to leave.

  “I’m sorry! You’re breaking up with me over one comment?”

  “No, I’m breaking up for everything else.”

  For the next two months, I was a free woman. I was free to attend all the church services and Bible studies and parties I wanted. I caught up on friendships I had neglected. I loved hanging out and speaking the language of God. I felt like a dry, shriveled sponge, soaking up water and coming back to life. But eventually the service was over, the study ended, the lunch eaten, the party fizzled out, and we all went home. Alone. While I was with Jack, I felt lonely for God. I felt a different loneliness now, a loneliness for Jack. I missed his sincerity, his hardworking spirit. I missed his laugh. I missed how he’d whisper, “You’re mine,” with a sense of wonder, as if he’d just figured it out. I missed mattering to someone.

  And then Jack called to wish me a happy birthday. He also wished that he could have another chance to love me better.

  “I know he loves you,” Gwen encouraged me from across the country.

  “But does he love Jesus?” I replied.

  “Not everyone talks like we do, Susan. Not everyone expresses faith the way we do. Maybe Jack will grow into it.”

  “And maybe he won’t,” I replied.

  “Danny knows the Bible better than I do. He just doesn’t like forty-five minutes of mediocre rock music when he can listen to Elvis Costello. And he doesn’t like forty-five-minute mediocre sermons when he’s got the Bible on CD read by James Earl Jones.”

  “Do you miss not going to church together?”

  “We share a spiritual life. We just don’t do it at church. Jesus didn’t go to church.”

  I spent my adolescence ignored by my parents. I spent my adult life hiding from men or begging them to love me. And now there was Jack, begging me to love him back. Pastor Norm had been right all those years ago about the cardboard. I loved the guy.

  By September 2001, we’d been together twelve months, just not twelve months in a row. So that’s why Jack booked us a vacation package to Miami the weekend before September 11. For fun! For celebration! Never buy nonrefundable vacation packages online. The hotel turned out to be a dump. Our room was decorated in pressboard and pastel and smelled of Lysol and BO. Outside it was hot and muggy until a monsoon hit. Inside there was little to do if you weren’t into disco, drugs, or gay bars. So we got cranky and fought: over the way I drove the car, over how I reloaded the camera, over me answering my cell phone. “This is a vacation,” Jack said, sulking. “If you need to talk to your friends, maybe we shouldn’t have come.”

  That was it. We rattled off our lists of everything that was wrong with the other person. He was controlling; I didn’t make him a priority. He was nitpicky; I was sloppy. He hated my friends; my friends were freaks. We argued all the way back to the hotel, through the lobby, past a low-income prom, and in to our room. Jack apologized. I didn’t. On the plane back, we tried to forget what we’d argued about. We tried to forget we’d argued at all.

  On Monday, September 10, the monsoon followed us to Manhattan. That night Jack stopped by and we went for a walk. The storm had passed; the stars came out; the breeze felt good and clean and forgiving. I asked if he wanted to meet on the subway platform the next morning.

  “I have to be at work at eight a.m. sharp. I can’t be late.”

  “Jack, have I ever made you late?”

  “No, but tomorrow I have an important meeting at the World Trade Center. I can’t risk you making me late.”

  What a jerk. I had to break up with him. We said good-bye. He walked a few paces, turned to wave, and then disappeared into the pattern of night.

  I went back to my room and thought about Miami. I thought about the entire year. I thought about how God had been so patient with me while I found out what it was like to be in a real relationship. Sharing sex and love and commitment, but not God and faith so wasn’t worth it. I got on my knees and prayed.

  “Dear Lord, please forgive me for trying to do things my way. Today I choose you, and I choose you happily. Even if I never find anyone in the amoeba-like mass of Christian singles. I would rather be alone with you than spiri-tually alone. Lord, please give me the courage to break up with Jack with grace and dignity.”

  On September 11, 2001, at 8:49 a.m., my cell phone rang. It was Jack. He’d awakened early, said his prayers, got on the subway, and headed for his 8:00 a.m. meeting at the World Trade Center. And then something happened. Jack fell asleep and missed his stop. He woke up, backtracked to the Towers, and just as he entered the elevator of Tower One, the plane hit. Jack ran out into the street, others ran down into the subway, others ran into eternity. He made it as far as a block and stopped to call me.

  What if I had ridden the train with him? Would I have pointed out his stop
? What if we hadn’t argued ourselves to exhaustion in Miami? Maybe he wouldn’t have fallen asleep on the train. What if my last image of Jack was of him turning back to wave good-bye?

  Jack ran eight miles home. I met him at his doorstep: he was hot and sweaty in his one good suit, alive. Jack asked to come with me to church that Sunday. He sat and wept.

  Rudy sat for a moment. I began to speak, but he cut me off.

  Rudy: I’d like to hear from God first.

  Susan: I don’t know what he would say. I can only think of my own skewed ideas. Jesus would look just like that picture on the wall, somber and sad. God the Father would shake his head in disappointment. But wouldn’t the real Jesus’ heart break that I’d divided my affections? Wouldn’t the true God feel disappointed that after all he’d done for me, I chose to love a man who didn’t know him?

  I had to imagine the real God there. He didn’t seem depressed or disappointed. Pained, maybe. Or tired.

  God: Susan, you presume a lot to say Jack didn’t know me.

  Susan: Well, he didn’t want to know you the way I did.

  Rudy: Susan, you’re here because the way you know God hasn’t worked for you.

  Susan: Okay, fine. But Jack didn’t want to go to my church; he didn’t want to be friends with my friends. And he didn’t seem to want to know my God.

  God: Maybe Jack didn’t know me as well as you did. But I knew him. I knew exactly where he was. You saw that yourself on September 11. Susan, my love for you didn’t begin at the moment you let me in. I loved you before you knew me; my love caused you to look for me. My love caused Jack to look for me. He’s looking. I’ve got the time to wait for him.

  Susan: Are you saying it was okay that I stayed with him?

  God: You tell me, Susan. What was it like to be bound body and soul to someone who pulled you in one direction while you pushed him in another?

  Susan: It was tiring. He held me back.

  God: And you held him back.

  Susan: How? I tried to get us to pray together. I tried to get him to come to church and be friends with my friends.

  God: Do you remember how it felt when your mother tried to get you to go to Luther League? When your sister gave you that hippie Bible instead of The White Album?

  Susan: But when I needed that Bible it was there. I was trying to help, but he fought me. He was jealous! Of my friends, of my church…Jack was jealous of you.

  God: Wouldn’t you have been jealous if your lover’s heart was somewhere else half the time?

  Susan: Yes. I see. That’s meant for me too. I know my heart was divided. But on September 10, I was ready to break up. I turned it all over to you and then September 11 happened. How could I leave him then?

  God: You’re right.

  Susan: Who could understand what he’d gone through except you?

  God: Right again.

  Susan: Now you’re confusing me. I needed to break up with Jack for my sake, but I needed to stay with Jack for his sake?

  God: That’s what it means to be unequally yoked.

  Rudy: God, I haven’t heard you say a thing about how you felt about Susan and Jack. (To Susan) Try to imagine how God felt.

  Susan: I can’t, it’s too hard.

  Rudy: I know this is hard, Susan. But I see a change in both of you. You’re not fighting God on everything. And the real God is emerging. He’s not wimpy—he loves you enough to tell you the hard truth. And it’s a hard truth meant not to shame you but to help you. He hasn’t even been sarcastic.

  Susan: That worries me. He must be too tired to be sarcastic. I’ve worn him out. I wonder if he’ll weary of me and move on.

  Rudy: You know he won’t. And if he wanted to move on he wouldn’t keep showing up every week.

  Susan: But is it God who’s showing up? Or is this all just my imagination?

  Rudy: You said it yourself: even your skewed ideas have truth in them. I wonder if there’s someone responsible for the shift in your image of God.

  Susan: The Holy Spirit. Maybe he’s here too. Maybe there’s some comfort in that.

  I left Rudy’s office, but I could not leave behind the knowledge of how God felt over what I had done. No, God did not let me get numb. I knew I had broken his heart.

  Chapter 15

  GOD’S SCORCHED-EARTH POLICY

  ON SEPTEMBER 10 I WAS READY TO DUMP JACK FOR JESUS, BUT September 11 came and Jesus dumped Jack back into my lap. Jack knew he’d been saved, and he knew it was God who had saved him. But why? Did God expect more of him now? Was there some Big Task for him to accomplish? Jack needed to know. And I didn’t have the answers. I didn’t need to invite him to church. He asked to come.

  I thought about the people in the Old Testament who made bonehead mistakes: Moses murdered an Egyptian; Jacob stole Esau’s blessing; Abraham tried to pass his wife off as his sister. But God redeemed their mistakes. Sometimes God even made it look like he had planned it: like when Joseph’s brothers sold him into slavery. Years later Joseph came to power and was able to save his brothers from starvation. “You meant evil against me; but God meant it for good,” Joseph declared (Gen. 50:20 NKJV).

  Maybe God was redeeming my mistake. Maybe Jack would open up; maybe he’d become the Jesus-loving hottie who liked my friends, went to church, and married me. What I had meant for my stupidity, God meant for redemption. Yea! Hooray!

  Except that’s not what happened. Yes, Jack’s heart was open, but he was also an open wound. He was burdened with survivor’s guilt, yet didn’t think anyone else had the right to grieve. Except him. I cried on the anniversary of my father’s death. “At least you had your father most of your life,” he sulked.

  Work also changed after September 11: it went away. (If you were a production company and you could shoot in [a] New York, or [b] Minneapolis, which looks like New York but isn’t a terrorist target, which would you choose? Exactly.)

  I still had King Baby, the sketch comedy group. But by the summer of 2002, we were worn out. We got cast in an über-low-budget TV pilot, but the show ran out of money. Bill and Todd booked commercials (in Minneapolis). Jeannie got engaged to a stand-up comedian. Cade had other film projects, and Chris had other shows to produce. Everyone had something else. I just had Jack: volatile and exhausting but trying to make it work.

  One evening in June, Jack and I rode our bikes around my neighborhood. The air was warm; the old trees formed a canopy above us. I coasted along, grasping the sense of peace like a life preserver: Here’s a moment of happiness with Jack. It’s not all lost. I came home to a series of urgent phone calls. My mother had had a stroke.

  I flew back to California to help my mother recover. She couldn’t remember words. She called my nephew “Truck” and knew it was wrong even as she said it. My mother once critiqued a movie with, “It lacked verisimilitude.” What I would’ve given to hear her say that now. She couldn’t remember my name; she couldn’t count change; she couldn’t turn off the stove. She couldn’t live alone.

  “Mom needs to sell the house,” my sister said. “She can live with Phil and me.”

  “Are you sure you’re up for it?” I asked her.

  “We need to help her. But I can’t stay down here until the house sells. Jim is nearby. Rob says he’ll come every other week.”

  “I’ll move back.”

  “Are you sure you’re up for it?” Nancy wondered. “What about New York?”

  “What about Mom? I need to help too, Nancy. I want to.”

  I stayed in California through the summer. I visited Gwen and Sophie. They urged me to move back. I contacted my agents and booked two commercials and two TV shows in eight weeks. The decision seemed obvious.

  I thought a lot about what I really wanted. I wanted Jesus. Yes, God had saved Jack. Yes, we had walked through a year of trauma together. But if Jack couldn’t love Jesus, I had to choose. I’d rather have Jesus and be physically alone than be with Jack and be spiritually alone. Give me Jesus.

  I returned to New York
in October, and something had happened to Jack. He was relaxed and upbeat; he came back to church; he even lingered to chat with my friends.

  “What happened to Jack?” Jeannie gaped.

  “A miracle maybe?”

  “I have to move back to LA,” I told Jack one evening. “I have to help my mother move. And I have to get back to the work I’m trained to do. I can’t stay in New York.”

  “I could try life in LA,” Jack said.

  “I don’t want you to move out there just to date me.”

  “We could get married.” Jack smiled. “You’re the one for me.”

  “But Jack, Jesus is the one for me before you are. You don’t find God in church. And I don’t always either. But (and I couldn’t believe I was saying it) where I’m going is with Jesus. Unless you want to go with me, we can’t go together.”

  “I could try. I don’t know that I’m going to connect with God the same way you do. But I’ll go to church when I can. And I’ll support you when I can’t. Can you trust me for that? Can you trust God for that?”

  “I guess I can try.”

  He smiled. “Come on, Susan. You’re the one.”

  That night I went home and got on my knees. “I don’t know anymore, Lord! I keep laying out the fleece, and Jack keeps picking it up. I’m laying out this move as a fleece. If Jack and I are never going to be right, then help us end it. For your sake. And ours.” A calm came over me. Maybe it was the calm you feel when God cobbles your mistakes into something beautiful, when he turns your bonehead Plan B into his perfect Plan A. Or maybe it was one big crapshoot.

  Mark and I had dinner before I left. He had been dating a man for six months, a devout Catholic. “Suze, if God put up with slavery and polygamy for thousands of years, he can put up with me being gay for thirty.”

  I had coffee with Bill. Bill was the first person I’d met in New York. He invited me to Thanksgiving dinner when everything had gone wrong, including my hair. “Ever thought about going to LA for pilot season?” I asked him.