‘From Slut to Saint’ from the Pulpit – Page 1

Write this, not that

I rushed my screenplay off to the eager producer, paying the overnight charges with high hopes.

But his weird words about “a cheapy phone” haunted me.

I searched online to find out more about the person who’d soon be holding my Academy Award-winning dreams in his hands.

True, the man was a Hollywood producer who had some old TV show credits to his name, but more digging with the help of “Preditors & Editors” and other sites taught me that his main gig was sniffing out non-starving writers.

The unscrupulous has-been would target artists who could afford to overnight their starry-eyed brad-filled scripts to him, and always recommend the writers pay $500 or so to a “script doctor” cohort that no doubt gave him a kick-back — or was him, for all I know.

Suddenly the comments about the movie needing a great script and questions about the quality of my cordless phone made sense.

I stopped taking his calls.

September 11th soon followed and rocked our paradigms; I refused to return to corporate America and give my baby over to the leather-jacket clad woman who held an infant at the day care we toured.

Everything surrounding me — from the Goodnight Moon vistas to the Thomas Kincade paintings reflecting fireplace-warmed cottages in idyllic snow-covered settings — called me home to Ohio.

It was time to go back…

Before we left the Left Coast, to add hurt to harm, I received a cease-and-desist letter from folks representing Sir Andrew Lloyd-Webber, who owns the rights to Sunset Boulevard.

“Your ‘modern-day version’ is not an update at all,” was the paraphrased charge lobbed in the communiqué I disposed of in defeat.

It was time to stop pitching Coldwater Canyon and make room for the better, bolder bylines that were coming…

The “Back” Stories

After ceasing and desisting from writing the Coldwater Canyon script, I went back to Ohio in February 2002.

I begged God for screenplay success, but instead yielded to His will, and He promised, “It is yours.”

After that pre-written, power-filled day, it’s no coincidence that I began to get published in various national magazines, received a bi-monthly essay-writing job unfurling personal stuff — and joined the writing team at church.

I became adept at typing whilst breast-feeding from time to time, and as my children grew into toddlers, I occupied the pint-sized Picassos with paint brushes and whipped cream dyed with food coloring just to make a deadline.

“If You want me to go back to work, God, drop it in my lap,” I softly demanded.

Soon thereafter, my old boss emailed me with an offer to come back to my IT job as a contractor.

Therefore, in the latter half of 2004, I’d wander off on my lunch hour for solitude at Furnace Run Metro Park and fill my black and white composition journal with musings from my past that whispered to me like long-held prisoners pleading for release.

Back in the Day?

“Back in the Day” is the title I toyed around with calling my collection of ’70s and ’80s and ’90s memories, but the phrase never settled into my soul.

It reminded me of that catchy hit by Ahmad Ali Lewis that my husband and I would sing along to as it inundated the airwaves in 1994, with the then 18-year-old Ahmad waxing nostalgic about his South Central childhood days.

Loved the song, but my feelings didn’t echo those behind the main hook’s lyrics:

Back in the day I used to play

I’m not a kid anymore

But some days I sit and wish I was a kid again

I never wished “I was a kid again.”

So I needed a new title for my testimony — something more descriptive, less common. I’d know it when I heard it.

Ergo, “From Slut to Saint” was conceived out of the ether.

When I Googled the term years ago, there were very few mentions of the phrase in the SERP listings.

It was to-the-point, attention-grabbing.

Pithy.

Not churchy, not boring and flowery.

But I needed a clear sign from God to go full throttle.

I told no single soul about From Slut to Saint…until I received Gideon-like confirmation from above.

Rahab-ilitated

It was during the portion of Sunday service before the dénouement, at the climactic part where my Bishop would rile up the crowd like a movie-going audience expecting the big, satisfying explosion that gives the masses an excuse to let out the screams they’ve held like so much quiet desperation.

He interjected a thought about Rahab, the prostitute who — sight unseen — believed reports of “how the LORD dried up the water of the Red Sea” and risked her life to save herself and her family, ending up Christ’s lineage.

“She went from slut” — Bishop paused as he surveyed the reaction of the congregation to that shocking word that burst forth from him, waving his hand from one place to the other to signify the change — “to saint.”

I sat afar off toward the back center of the Great Worship Center, with suppressed surprised and doleful acceptance as I took in the words I knew without a doubt the Holy Spirit spoke through him directly to me — because no one else knew my bargain with the Father.

That was it. That was all the sign I needed.

It was time to write.

“New York, New York, big city of dreams…”

With newfound resolve, I set about creating a concrete framework of chapters for my resolutely titled From Slut to Saint book.

For some reason, the monumental task of delving in “at the very beginning” was not a “very good place to start” in my eyes.

Instead, I crafted Chapter #3 first, a portion I titled “D&C Days” — because, unlike the “salad days” some students dub their broke college days, mine harbored ugly scenes of the four abortions I underwent.

I wrote the section according to the Polaroid-like flashes of recollections in my mind’s eye: with little back story, just a man here (ironing board above us on the floor, brilliant fire-white stars piercing a black night) and a man there (silhouette in my bedroom doorway) throughout the present-tense action.

Querying major publishers and literary representatives, I was thrilled when a New York agent requested a sample chapter from the book. She was no minor player, I believe.

But dismay and doubt crept in once again after I shipped off to her the work I’d toiled over — a stapled booklet comprised of the exquisitely rewritten-to-perfection piece — front cover, back copy and all — then heard nothing.

Doubt

“I don’t know how wise it is to tell your whole testimony,” Bishop TD Jakes said just as I walked into the large sanctuary.

It was Monday, November 28, 2005, and our semi-mega church was abuzz with the anointed speaker’s visit to Akron, Ohio.

Acting as a sort-of cub assistant to the Akron Beacon Journal reporter assigned to cover his visit, I traipsed in and out of the worship center with the photographer and writer capturing the event — but walking in on those exact words felt like another direct edict from heaven to stop writing and pitching From Slut to Saint.

After all, my dream Random House publisher wasn’t biting yet, nor were any other agents.

I pushed the concrete confirmation I’d received from the pulpit’s mouth earlier to the back of my mind, and allowed fear to press the pause button on my memoir.

Testimony Theater

But I didn’t give up listening to Bishop TD Jakes, and once as I drove into a pre-school parking lot, I soaked up a CD of Jakes at MegaFest, describing a recurring theme in his sermons.

“If my life were to play up on a movie screen,” the eloquent man paused to recall, lifting his voice into a humorous timbre to the delight of the listeners, “there are a few scenes I wouldn’t want you all to see.”

Next, as if to balance out the command I took as gospel from his mouth a year or two earlier, he posed a Spirit-searching question:

“I wonder how many people would get saved if you told your real testimony?”

There I was, ready to shift out of stalled neutral back into drive, realizing that I had to stop letting every “shifting shadow” of my own rationale throw me off the path.

Besides, a big part of me knew I was procrastinating, acting like one of those Christians pretending to be perfect on the outside, afraid to tell their not-so-pretty truths and blaming God — claiming He’s the One who wants us to keep our ladylike and “religious” privacy — even if those ugly revelations are the very things that would draw others closer to the Christ that died to cover the scarlet sins in the first place.

If it is from God…no one can stop it

False stops alternated with Spirit-led starts in chronicling my salvation story.

Whenever I couldn’t find a way to tell someone how Rabboni saved my life and could save theirs, too — without sounding preachy or like a Holy Roller — inevitably, all roads led back to finishing From Slut to Saint.

They can read my book and then they’ll see, I’d think to myself.

At last I took the steps to write what I believe He wanted, realizing that the Most High God definitely lets me know when I’m wrong, and when I’m right.

He strengthened me to the point that I understood I had nothing to brag about with my wrongdoings, but neither should I be condemned by them either, because I am now His.

No longer wasting time on what-ifs, I’m leaning on the pure facts of Acts 5:38-39, knowing that whatever He ordains can’t be stopped:

“Therefore, in the present case I advise you: Leave these men alone! Let them go!
For if their purpose or activity is of human origin, it will fail.
But if it is from God, you will not be able to stop these men; you will only find yourselves fighting against God.”