I almost talked about this article because it’s hard to write about Nightbirde without mentioning God, and it gets some people confused.
But this very connection is part of the gift Jane Marczewski gave us, and on March 4 when a service was held to celebrate her life in a church across town, it was the same enduring connection that I am sure would pierce the atmosphere.
What was it about Nightbirde, Zanesville’s character for “America’s Got Talent” Golden Buzzer, that struck a chord with many? How can she rejoice, at the age of three, hoping for a 2% chance of surviving because cancer ravaged her body? Why did she hope so boldly, laughing sincerely, living without fear of tomorrow?
Jane was a wonderful person:Zanesville singer and AGT Nightbirde star dies at 31
Her family sent this statement to NBC after news of Jane’s death: “Her lasting legacy will be the gift of hope she gave to so many through her music and the strength she found in Jesus.”
I had never met her, but it was evident even on TV: Nightbirde wore the unique appearance of a person with one foot on the ground, one through Heaven’s Gate, already looking through the curtain and glimpsing what was on the other side.
Like when you’re on a long road trip and you’re nearing your destination and suddenly it doesn’t matter your tight legs, rumbling stomach, and backache because you’re so close to where you’ve been hoping so hard, everything else vanishes.
There is a story in the Bible, in the Old Testament, of a man who was adopted by a royal family at a young age but spoiled his chances of living a privileged life when he killed a man and ran away. In the story, God – the deity of Jane Marczewsky, the one who met her “on the bathroom floor”, whom she “saw … infrequently … I felt his exhale, in his shadow, immersed in his eyes to read the letter he wrote to me in plaster: “I am sad too: .” (March 9, 2021, nightbirde.co/blog) – Use this man, Moses, to do extraordinary things.
Later in the story, when Moses leads an entire people through the wilderness to the Promised Land, he meets God on a mountaintop and does not realize, when he descends, that his face is “radiant.”
radiant.
“I am there to give people a gift”:The Zanesville Nightbirde singer impresses with America’s Got Talent
“I remind myself that I pray to God who let the Israelites remain lost for decades. They begged to reach the Promised Land, but instead let them wander, answering prayers they did not pray. For forty years, their shoes did not wear out. Fire lit their way every night. Every morning, He was sending them Bread of Mercy from Heaven,” Marszowski wrote in the same blog post.
“Call me a curse, call me lost, call me scorn,” she continued. “But that is not all. Call me the chosen, the blessed, and the wanted. Call me the one whose secrets God whispers to me. I am the one whose stomach was filled with the loaves of mercy that were hidden from me.”
The 31-year-old singer from central Ohio isn’t Moses, no. But her gift to us was a bright face and life because of her encounters with God. I am sure of that.
Not the long-haired, white-haired creature that sits atop a distant mountain and beats us up on a whim. Or the one whose world is limited to stained-glass windows and polished seats.
No, Nightbirde–with her defiantly cheerful smile, and her simple reassurance that “it’s all right”–gave us a glimpse of the one who meets us on the bathroom floor in our pain and brokenness, and who changes us after these encounters in such a way that even famous celebrities frankly English talents display judges admiration:” What is different about it?”
Jen Marczewski has used her very brief moment in the spotlight to point to something bigger, and we’ve all seen that. I felt it. I miss it, even.
look back:Nightbirde is out of America’s Got Talent, and says fighting cancer takes all her energy
She was more than just a beautiful voice, although that was part of it. It was a beacon of hope. A bird sings at night because it knows that morning is near.
She was, in a word, brilliant.
Abby Roy is the mother of three girls who make every day an adventure. You write to keep it safe. You can probably reach her at [email protected], but responses are based on bedtimes and weekends.
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