Nightbirde

I started balling as I watched the episode of “America’s Got Talent”. This was so unlike me – I never even cry at movies, let alone reality shows. But this somewhat fragile looking girl from Ohio at the age of 30, captivated me, and not just me, the entire US audience.

She had very short hair and was wearing a simple black t-shirt and ripped white jeans. She seemed tentative when she got on stage. “What’s your name?” The judges asked her. “Jane” she said, “but when I sing, I go by the name Nightbirde.” She then added she was going to sing an original song called “It’s ok” which tells the story of the last year of her life. It is not until the judges asked what she did for a living that she revealed she had not been working for the last few years as she was dealing with cancer. “So you are not OK?” the judges started to connect the dots. “Well not ok in every way,” she corrected the judges. “I have cancer in my lungs, spine and liver. But it’s important for everyone to know that I’m much more than all the bad things that happened to me.” Then she went onto sing the most poignant and the most beautiful song I ever heard:

“I moved to California in the summer time

I changed my name thinking that it would change my mind

I thought that all my problems they would stay behind

I was a stick of dynamite and it was just a matter of time, yeah

All day, all night, now I can't hide

Said I knew myself but I guess I lied

It's okay, it's okay, it's okay, it's okay

If you're lost, we're all a little lost and it's alright

It's okay, it's okay, it's okay, it's okay

If you're lost, we're all a little lost and it's alright

It's alright, it's alright, it's alright, it's alright

I wrote a hundred pages but I burned them all

(Yeah, I burned them all)

I drove through yellow lights and don't look back at all

I don't look back at all

Yeah, you can call me reckless, I'm a cannonball (uh, I'm a cannonball)

Don't know why I take the tightrope and cry when I fall

All day, all night, now I can't hide

Said I knew what I wanted but I guess I lied

It's okay, it's okay, it's okay, it's okay

If you're lost, we're all a little lost and it's alright

It's okay, it's okay, it's okay, it's okay

If you're lost, we're all a little lost and it's alright

It's alright, it's alright, it's alright, it's alright

It's alright, it's alright, it's alright, it's alright

Oh-oh-oh-oh, it's alright

Oh-oh-oh-oh, it's alright

Oh-oh-oh-oh, it's alright

Oh-oh-oh-oh, it's alright

To be lost sometimes

It's okay, it's okay, it's okay, it's okay

If you're lost, we're all a little lost and it's alright

It's okay, it's okay, it's okay, it's okay

If you're lost, we're all a little lost and it's alright

It's okay, it's okay, it's okay, it's okay

If you're lost, we're all a little lost and it's alright

It's okay, it's okay, it's okay, it's okay

If you're lost, we're all a little lost and it's alright

It's okay, it's okay, it's okay, it's okay

If you're lost, we're all a little lost and it's alright”

She sang with such ease, such joy, and such a sweet, natural, almost casual smile that you would never have known this is a girl suffering from cancer, not once, but three times, had she not revealed it. Even Simon Cowell, the man known for his biting tongue only had one word for her as she finished: “wow”. The audience erupted into a standing ovation as she stood on stage, still fragile, still somewhat tentative, taking several deep breaths while her radiant smile remained. And she topped it with: “You can’t wait until life isn’t hard anymore before you decide to be happy.”

I was completely blown away, overwhelmed, deeply moved… but above all, I was amazed by and curious about how this delicate girl at such a young age was able to find the strength to deal with such tragedy and emerge from it with such joy and happiness. Where did she find her strength?

Despite her instant fame, there was not a whole lot of information about Jane on the internet. The best I could find is her own blog site (nightbirde.co). It  had only four blog posts, but four beautifully written essays that tell her life story. On New Year’s Eve, 2019, Jane was diagnosed with terminal cancer with only six months to live and two percent chance of survival. Her husband at the time, whom she called “My One Great Love” told her their marriage was over, as she whispered “but I still love you.” With the support of her family -- her parents and her big brother -- she went to California for treatment. In her struggles, she was the “bald girl in the dark” who prayed “Oh, Great Writer of Stories, do you have space somewhere for a girl like me?”, who turned the bathroom floor into a place to hide, where she “could scream and be ugly”, where she “could sob and spit and eventually doze off, happy to be asleep”, where she found God.

Yes, it was her faith in God that sustained her, or more precisely her struggle with her faith. “I have called Him a cheat and a liar, and I meant it.” She wrote. “There’s mercy here somewhere—but what is it? What is it? What is it?” she questioned. Then in the next paragraph she added “It’s not the mercy that I asked for, but it is mercy nonetheless. And I learn a new prayer: thank you. It’s a prayer I don’t mean yet, but will repeat until I do. Call me cursed, call me lost, call me scorned. But that’s not all. Call me chosen, blessed, sought-after. Call me the one who God whispers his secrets to. I am the one whose belly is filled with loaves of mercy that were hidden for me.”

As an atheist, I find it impossible to believe that God, the one told by the Bible, the one who created Adam and then Eve as his companion, the one who put human evils into his grand design and then sent his own son to atone for those sins, made a special plan for Jane which deliberately inflicted pain onto her just so she could find Him on the bathroom floor. It is beyond any logical reasoning or rational thoughts. However, what struck me was this dialogue that Jane was having with God – this praying, this questioning, this human desire to inject meaning, this human need to believe that there is something bigger than ourselves, is in fact Jane having an internal dialogue with herself, with her inner voice. God never responded to her. It was her inner voice that she was talking to, the voice that represented all the good that still remained in her life despite the bad, the desire for life and love in the face of death and tragedy, the desire to find answers to all the questions that we do not have answers for, the desire to make sense of everything that does not make sense to us. That voice which carries with it not just what we are conscious of, but the hidden wisdom of our subconsciousness, the intelligence that is beyond just us, that is encoded in our DNA from millions of years of evolution, not just from our species, but from the species before us. We don’t know how these thoughts come to us, thoughts of wonder, of darkness, of light, of strength, of inspiration…we don’t know why we feel the emotions we do, the joy in the face of adversity, the laughter that comes with tears... But we know, many times the voice that wants to survive, and not just to survive, but to live and to thrive, will conquer, however mysteriously those thoughts and emotions occur… that voice persists… and lingers. We do not have a label for that voice… God, or spirituality, or divinity, are the closet words we can think of.

So Jane found God on the bathroom floor. She realized “when it comes to pain, God isn’t often in the business of taking it away. Instead, he adds to it. He is more of a giver than a taker. He doesn’t take away my darkness, he adds light. He doesn’t spare me of thirst, he brings water. He doesn’t cure my loneliness, he comes near.” For people like Jane, a religion, a story we tell about God, is what they need. That’s why we see such peace and joy in many religious people. But regardless of religion, that inner voice is within every one of us, with our billions of neurons firing, sending us signals from our subconscious, our ancestors, from the collective wisdom of the universe, giving us instructions to not give up, to be strong, to believe in ourselves, to live and love, and to have faith.

Interestingly, Jane said she changed her name to nightbirde because she wants to be “somebody that could sing through a dark time because I was so full of hope and assurance that there would be a morning.” Indeed, her voice has now been merged into the collective inner voice that not only guided her, but will continue to guide you and me, and many many others to come.

“Have faith in God. God has faith in you.”