On April 30, 2022, I texted myself and then my family and friends and I really pissed some of them off.
Some just expressed concern for my psyche and soul . . . or are those two things the same?
I don’t know.
Who cares?
Some gave me some Biblical advice and one friend gave me some loving but probably un-Biblical advice that may even be demonic and then asked me to never text again unless it was about business.
And one friend just recently ridiculed me in front of another friend remembering this past text to which I said, “Screw you,” and then promptly apologized to Jesus Christ, my possibly imaginary Friend, but NOT to my real live friend who doesn’t care what I think anyway or else he wouldn’t have ridiculed the honesty contained in my text.
Most people who received my text never responded at all.
Here’s what I wrote that day in my text to family and friends . . .
I woke up at 1:45 a.m. needing to get up at 2:00 a.m. to take on the mountain of work my job entails with the refrain going through my mind . . . my soul . . .
It’s OK it’s OK it’s OK it’s OK it’s OK . . . it’s . . .
I got up, checked the time, decided not to delete the 2:00 a.m. alarm and go back to bed and get up when the backup 3:00 a.m. alarm rings but just get up now, take my pills and vitamins, close the bedroom door softly so Karen doesn’t have to awake, make a single cup of coffee, sit down with my phone instead of my Bible wishing that I could talk to someone, wishing that Jesus talked back the way a real live friend does and not in a mystical still small voice in the pages of the Bible or in an impression that a Holy Spirit lays on my heart but face to Face the way the LORD spoke with Moses or the way Jesus did with His disciples and wondering if it’s OK to have doubts about it all, even Him, sometimes, and realizing that refrain was from the song sung by a woman who died but not before she named herself “Nightbirde” . . . and wishing she was here with me so that I could ask her why she put a silent “e” on Nightbirde.
THAT was it.
Who was “Nightbirde,” you ask?
I’d never heard of her myself until I read this stray line in a friend’s blog post, “Nightbirde died,” as perfunctory and fully laden with pathos as another two word line in literature, “Jesus wept.”
When I googled the name “Nightbirde” after she had died, this is what I first found:
But then my possibly imaginary Friend spoke to me in Nightbirde’s song.
I googled some more and found this.
My possibly imaginary Friend, the ghost of a woman I hope to meet one day, and friends who I text who won’t text me back . . . quite the “quiet time,” huh?
Then I got up and went about my day and the very, very hard work that I do.
I prayed, “Lord, let me be brave!”
Nightbirde said, “It’s OK.”
We love you, Sister Nightbirde . . . and The One of whom you sing.
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