Milk in the Mashed Potatoes

Angry Conversations With God
Susan E. Isaacs
(Faith Words)
March 12, 2009

Susan Isaacs is not your average Christian comedian. She’s not even your average Christian. So don’t think for a second that Angry Conversations With God is your average Christian spiritual memoir. It’s anything but.

Exploring this “middle-class white girl’s dark night of the soul,” Isaac unpacks her warped, twisted ideas about God’s will, sex, sin and salvation in fictional accounts of actual therapy sessions where she took God to marriage counseling. To call this memoir creative would be the understatement of the year. Creative and original, yes, but it’s also chock-full of saucy language (i.e., profanity), bitterly painful memories and shockingly angry tirades at God.

While this book may not be every Christian’s cup of tea, those who have been chewed up and spit out by this world and still long for a real relationship with Jesus will identify with Isaac’s story. Isaacs’ bares all in this colorful, saucy, dysfunctional Christian version of Eat, Pray, Love, and proves that the naked truth is the only kind worth believing.

Jeff and I ate at Kobe’s Steakhouse for his birthday tonight. We don’t eat there often, but when we do, it reminds me of my first days here in Orlando. It was the fall of 2001 and I had moved down here with just my clothes, IBM laptop and a few decorative items stuffed in the backseat of my hot new car (which I had to get rid of all too soon because it was a pretty piece of junk).

I knew no one other than my boss and two people from the church I would be attending (shout out to Rich and Brooke). My boss, his girlfriend, my coworkers (shout out to Cameron, Maya, Chris and crew) and I went out to eat at Kobe’s (back then they had BOGO coupons in the phone books), and as is always the case, I took half of the gargantuan portion back “home” (to my first apartment) to eat the next day. I went back the apartment the next day for lunch, as my one and only piece of furniture was being delivered (my lovely yellow couch, which I still have, only it’s mostly brown now). I warmed up my lunch and prepared to eat it, only I owned no silverware. Not even a plastic fork. The kind couple who let me live in their house until I got an apartment (shout out to Dale and Vicki) had given me some cooking utensils, so I ate with what I had: a black plastic spatula. Japanese noodles are very difficult to eat with a black plastic spatula. I don’t recommend it. But I do remember those days fondly and I certainly appreciate all the fine and nice things I have today.

Sleeping on a blow-up mattress in a roach-y apartment is not fun either. So maybe I don’t remember those days that fondly …