2 May 2024 A Letter

I’m typing this on the back deck of my parents’ rental house in Alabama. My home...

On the last day of this past month, April, I sat down to write a letter that I’d been anticipating writing for 10 months. I wrote to my professor from University, Josh Smith. I’ve always looked up to him in a way. In the kind of way where when he mentioned in class (all those years ago) that one of his favorite books in the art criticism genre was Air Guitar by Dave Hickey, I immediately acquired the book, enjoyed it thoroughly, and since then I’ve read everything published by Dave Hickey. It is now one of my favorite books, truly. Since I’ve graduated, he's been a reference for various job pursuits I’ve gone on, has always been quick to respond and when I reached out last July ’23 in the interest of a friend of mine’s he asked if things were working out for me and if I was sharing about them. I said I was sharing and would be excited to send an update! Now… 10 months later, I’ve done it. Wrote my 6 pages, folded ‘em, stamped ‘em and sent ‘em. Despite the fact that I was eager and excited to communicate my life to Josh Smith, the deed kept on moving from Ta-Da list to Ta-Da list. Week after week. Month after Month. Notebook after notebook. But I never forgot… in fact it was always at the top of my brain! How was I going to choose to communicate my recent past!? So many seasons had come and gone. I’d lived in Athens, GA, partied, painted, experienced demonic presences, left Jesus Christ for good & forever. I’d been the luckiest girl in the world to have found the best roommates in the best barn on the best street in the best part of Athens, and all on a Facebook Marketplace whim! I had shown paintings, sold paintings, worked on an array of projects with all kinds of people and made the best friends EVER! I had fallen in love, supported, celebrated, cried. I had moved to New York with my partner, I worked the hardest most fulfilling job ever, I lost my first real friend to death, I thought about the God of the Bible again. I partied, I cooked, I cleaned, I raised children. I did a 4 part interview for a sick ass job and got it, and then turned it down. I had thought about killing myself at the worst of it all. I had to leave New York. I had to leave New York. I broke up with my partner and I made it out alive… and now my professor has asked me if “things are working out for me”.

In the 10 months it took for me to decide how I was going to communicate my recent past, more things kept happening! Life is so sweet like that.. It keeps moving and growing. I called on the name of Jesus, God of the Bible, Holy Spirit and asked him to be real to me. I started reading the Bible and I started to pray again for the first time in years. I worked music festivals with my friend Adia & started to appreciate Metal music. I spent time in North Carolina with my friend Abby, I spent time in my Earthskills communities, I experienced grief, I thought I was in love with an old friend, I made a new friend, Hawkeye, we were lovers. Hawkeye asked me about Jesus, but I didn’t really know Jesus, I dodged the question and put it off for “next time”, there wasn’t a next time though because Hawkeye killed himself a month later. I drove back to North Carolina for my dead friend. Jesus was there for me at Hawkeye’s life celebration, afterward, Abby and Jon Delia were there for me too. I stayed up all night, I broke up with the old friend whom I thought I was in love with, I painted, I heard from God, I felt him, he was being real to me. I listened to a testimony as I was up painting all night and the power of Jesus’ name just flooded and filled my person!

John 14:6 Jesus answered, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

And then everything changed. All of the sudden I was the same, but different. It’s like there was a new dimension that was now visible, experienceable, comprehendible to me. I never believed I could or would believe in Jesus again, and now, I am in love with him. I am a Jesus Freak. I feel so alive that I could never deny Jesus again. The God of the Bible does impossible things! Nothing is impossible for him! I am a testimony to that & I will praise the Lord forever because of how he loves me and how he loves you. The purpose of our little awesome human lives is to know our creator, to know God. And Jesus is our bridge between humanity and God because he is both, and he’s already paid every cost, he jumped through every loop, so that we can have that powerful, purposeful, direct relationship with the Creator of all things! When Jesus was raised from the dead, the Holy Spirit came to be our comforter, to be God with us and in us. God is communal, he is three in one. He wants to be with us always, not to judge us, but to strengthen us, to give us true, joyful, purposeful, abundant, life! A life that doesn’t hinge on circumstance or on your own capabilities, but a life that is based on love! A love that surpasses all understanding, a love that has always been for you, and a love that will always pursue you.

2 Chronicles 16:9 For the eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to show himself strong on the behalf of those whose heart is loyal to him.

God’s desire for us is to restore us, through Jesus’ life and sacrifice, back to a right & real relationship with himself. In the beginning, God created everything and it was good. Every day man and woman would walk in the cool of the evening with God through the garden of the world, and it was good! Man and woman were created in the image of God, in the likeness of God and were to act as so over everything except for this one rule. God said don’t eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. You see, Satan is a liar and he’s been spinnin’ his same webs since his first lie to Eve, the woman. Satan told her that God was trying to hold her back from her true God like potential, and that if she ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil then she would be like God. Satan deceived Eve, and she didn’t know if she really trusted God anymore, I mean what if Satan was right! She and Adam, the man, ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and death entered into the world. Previously, they had only known of goodness and life and relation with God, but now they had this awareness of evil, of death, of shame, of suffering. They had gained the knowledge of good and evil for the price of breaking the trust in their relationship with God… and she and Adam were ashamed that they did that. They hid from God that evening in the garden, but he already knew. Adam and Eve’s new awareness brought a self-consciousness to their nakedness and they tried to cover themselves with leaves. The first of any living thing that was killed, were the animals whose skins were used by God to make clothes for Adam and Eve. He helped ease their uncomfort and self-consciousness, but at the price of death. The relationship was broken. There was too much death and darkness in between God and humanity now, humans could hardly see past their own nakedness how could they see God for who he is! And that’s why Jesus, fully God and fully man, came to be the ultimate bridge for us so that we can bypass all the death and darkness that came into the world though the deception of Satan and go right into the FULLNESS AND JOY of LIFE in real relationship with our Creator, the God of Everything!

Revelation 12:11 And they overcame him (satan) by the blood of the Lamb (Jesus), and by the word of their testimony; and they loved not their lives unto the death.

And so, I finally wrote my letter. And it held more than I could have imagined 10 month ago when Josh Smith asked me “Are things working out for you?”

-April

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