Nightbirde

Jane Marczweski - known as Nightbirde to the millions she captivated on America’s Got Talent - died on February 19, 2022. 

She was 31 years young.

Most people know her as a singer, but I connected to her writing.

She was everything I aspire to be as a writer - honest about what hurts, hopeful in the dark. She knew that sometimes in order to find God, we have to get low, as low as the bathroom floor. She wasn’t afraid to ask the questions even if silence echoed in response.

Most people know how it ended, but it started with breast cancer.

She was on the same road I was - a fellow soldier in this army. When one falls, we all feel it. Her story reminds me I have one of my own. A layer that’s as much a part of me now as my own name. 

Most people felt a moment of sadness at the news that she passed. I lost half a day to it. 

Her smiling face staring at me from my laptop screen pulled me back to those first days when it was hard to breathe and I didn’t know where to put myself. As is the case whenever there is news of someone passing from cancer, I feel guilty to be alive.

She carried the tension that cancer brings with such grace, reminding us that you can grieve and be grateful. You can be sad and still have hope.

I’ve always been as fascinated by what God doesn’t say as I am by what he does say.

In the Bible story of the king who tosses three men in the furnace because they won’t worship him, I read the details from a certain point of view - maybe from a bystander, someone on the outside. One who could smell the smoke, but never got near enough to put their hand in the fire.

But I never hear from the three men themselves. I never know the thoughts of the ones who were soaked in the flames with God walking amongst them.

I know why their voices remain silent. It’s the same reason mine does.

Bystanders and outsiders can’t understand the scorch of a fire they’ve never been consumed by.

You have to live it to know.

And because it’s there in the epicenter that God Himself whispers my name - the name He’s given me - and then comes to walk beside me. 

And no matter how much you wish you could let someone into that, you can’t. Skin seared by fire; a life branded by a touch from God. It’s an experience He means just for you. 

No writer has the words yet. 

Jane and I never knew each other, but we both had cancer. In our own ways, we’ve both met God on the bathroom floor.

All of us live in that sacred space between the now and the not yet. Jane gave us a song to sing there.

Fly high Nightbirde.