I figured everyone talked to God.
All my life I knew there was a world beyond the one I could see with my eyes. I lived in a world of fantasy and had many conversations with my host of “imaginary” friends. I spent a lot of time alone and felt more comfortable in the presence of these invisible characters than I did with my friends and family.
As a child, I was happy and bright. I was always playing and always laughing. I was never sad. I never cried. I was happy all the time. I remember once overhearing my mother tell her friends, “I am worried about Lisa. She never cries.” This was my first memory that being happy all the time was not normal.
My friend’s parents were constantly commenting that I smiled and laughed all the time, as if happiness was a weird disease.
Around the 3rd grade, I started to go deaf. I could not hear much of what was being spoken around me. I could not hear bad things. Maybe I tuned them out consciously. I could not hear the cruel things children would say. I could not hear fighting. I could not hear chaos. I lived in my own happy bubble.
Because I couldn’t hear, I used to sit at the front of the classroom in school. I loved learning. I loved reading. I loved homework. I got perfect grades. I was happy. But once, one of my closest friends told me that no one liked me. She told me that I might be smart with books but that I was actually really stupid. She said I didn’t know anything. She said everyone was laughing at me. She said I was retarded about the things that really mattered: music, boys and sports.
Around this time, I started having experiences at night. I found that I had the ability to travel outside of my body. I used to travel down to the river and into the woods. It was always night time and I was never afraid.
About a year later, I moved to the downstairs bedroom where I began having terrifying experiences of being “trapped” in my body. I would expand out like a balloon, like elephantitis. My body began to grow like Alice in Wonderland and I would grow as large as the room and then be trapped by the four walls. Often I would stay in this enormous shape all night. I had lost my ability to travel outside of my body. One night my parents found me in my room, talking to a clock radio and ripping off my clothes. I wanted to know where the voices were coming from. Nothing made any sense to me during that time. I felt an intense need to know certain things. Where did I come from? Why am I here? What is Heaven? Why did grandpa die? Where did he go?
One morning I woke up and as I came up the stairs, I found my mother sitting on the couch, terrified. She asked me if I was feeling okay and I said “yes, fine.” She asked me if I remembered anything from the previous night and I said “no.” She said “you were doing some very strange things, and your father and I are very concerned.”
This conversation marked a turning point for me. The voices in my head stopped. The imaginary friends stopped. God stopped. The behaviors and dreams at night came to an abrupt halt.
I became a normal little girl. I continued to get good grades. I was loved by the teachers, but not so well liked by the kids my own age. I felt like an outcast, half the time. All I wanted to do was read, read, read. I loved studying. I loved books. I loved writing in notebooks. I loved being alone. I loved doing cartwheels on the front lawn. I loved riding my bike and feeling completely free. I wanted to be happy and childlike, but everyone was telling me to be serious and grow up. I was getting constant messages that I needed to change myself to be accepted.
In the 6th grade, I was ridiculed in front of an entire class because I didn’t know what the “bases” were. Someone went to the chalkboard to explain. Everyone was making fun of me, asking me questions. Had I ever been kissed? Do I like boys? Why was I studying all the time? Little Miss-Know-It-All. Goody-Two Shoes. Brown-Noser. Teacher’s Pet.
I made a conscious decision in that moment to be AVERAGE. I wanted to be liked. I wanted to be loved. I did not want people thinking I was a freak. I didn’t want to be better than anyone else. Mostly I wanted to blend in and be invisible. Disappear. I wanted to be accepted, or simply left alone. I did not want to stand out in bright light. I wanted to be bland gray, where no one paid attention to me.
So I let my grades slide. I played less outside and spent more time inside with other kids listening to loud music that I hated, when really I wanted to be home with a book. I went to sleep-over parties and make-out parties where I would sit in the corner, wishing I was home watching “The Love Boat” on television. It was like everyone was always waiting for something to happen. My happy world inside my own head was much more thrilling than the spin-the-bottle parties and loud music but I was too afraid of being ridiculed and singled out. It was easier to conform.So I kept being average. Those middle school years were a nightmare for me.
In the 9th grade, a miracle occurred. A girl named Danna showed up from California. She was smart and beautiful, a shining bright star, and she did not care about blending in. She could not be average if she tried. She got perfect grades. She was creative, happy and always laughing. She wore clothes that were outlandish and bright. AND SHE HAD TONS OF FRIENDS. Everyone loved her. But what I noticed is that none of that mattered to her. She didn’t care if anyone liked her. She was simply being herself. This is when the shift began to occur for me, back to my natural original happy state of BEING PERFECT AS GOD CREATED ME.
I started being myself – outgoing, funny, enthusiastic & smart – not caring about anyone’s opinion and suddenly I was truly happy again.
Then I went to college in Vermont where the drinking age was still 18. I chose my college based on drinking laws. I got into a lot of trouble those years, searching desperately to have a meaningful experience. Life seemed pointless to me. I was studying so I could get a good job and make good money, so that I could keep working for the rest of my life, with two weeks vacation every year, until retirement, only to then get old and die? This was life? I knew something was fundamentally wrong with this picture.
I tried to look at things logically but nothing made any sense, and so I drank. I wanted to be loved and appreciated and liked but everything seemed transitory and fleeting. I wanted stability and purpose and I kept thinking maybe those things came with the adult job, which would come later after graduation. In the meantime, I stayed out all night drinking, dancing and sleeping with strangers. I was a train wreck waiting to happen but I didn’t know what else to do.
One day during the fall of 1988, I knew something had to change in me. I was a total mess. I was in a completely impossible situation and the only thing I could think of to do was to get on my knees and ask God for help. I needed a miracle and I knew that on my own I was incapable of effecting change. By January 1989 I was in Florida, in a whole new environment. It was a fresh new start. I got accepted into a university in Boca Raton. I stopped drinking, stopped smoking and joined a gym. I lost weight. I reconnected with my family. I fell in love. I felt a new appreciation for myself. I studied hard and got good grades. I was counting my blessings every day and communicating with God again. I was happy.
But the difficulty, always, is maintaining a continuing relationship with something you cannot see with your eyes. I believed in God, but unfortunately, at that time in my life, I only turned to God when I needed help.
As soon as things started getting good, I would forget to pray. Before long, I was drinking again and smoking and screwing up all my relationships. I was continually worried, depressed and lonely. I’d have brief moments of happiness, followed by bitter disappointment.
Everything just seemed so confusing to me. I didn’t know what I wanted in life. I couldn’t tell heads from tails. I hurt people who loved me. I was terrified of stability. I didn’t want to settle down. I wanted unpredictability. I wanted the bad boy. I screwed up a lot of really great relationships with genuinely good guys. If someone was treating me nice, I’d inevitably do something to wreck it. I couldn’t stand the idea of constant happiness. It all seemed so bland to me: the house, the kids, the American Dream.
I felt I was destined for some larger purpose, but I had no idea what that was or meant. Then I met a someone new. We moved to Manhattan. I got a job in publishing. I started to feel like I could settle down. Things started to look up, right? Wrong. On the surface, everything appeared good. I was making money. I had an apartment. I had a boyfriend who loved me. It’s what everyone wants, right? But something was fundamentally OFF. I couldn’t place my finger on it. I thought I should be grateful but instead I was bored. On the surface, I was the picture of success: boyfriend, great job, money, apartment in upscale neighborhood, friends, movies, restaurants … but inside I felt like a fraud. I knew that my so-called “successful life” was a house of cards and that if I let down my guard for one second, the whole thing would crumble into a pile of dust.
I became vigilant to be the perfect girlfriend, the perfect employee, the perfect friend. I worked at creating a pretty image, never letting myself relax, not even for one second. I was exhausted trying to keep it all going. And then everything fell apart. My boyfriend left me. We lost the great apartment. I rented a crappy mice-infested apartment in a run-down neighborhood. In order to cope, I drank vodka-tonics every day convincing myself I was sophisticated. I took up smoking and pretended I was glamorous and chic. But the picture was not pretty: I was fat, bored, unhappy, and alcoholic.
Somewhere in this sordid mess I read Marianne Williamson’s book “A Return to Love” and that led me to “A Course in Miracles.” I didn’t understand a word it said, but deep within me I knew it was the answer to my prayers.
I wanted the message to be true. It said “Miracles are your natural inheritance.” At first I got little glimpses – small miraculous happenings. I suddenly noticed I rarely got sick anymore. I started to wake up happy on some mornings. I felt hopeful. I came to know moments of total relaxation and peace, and that was the biggest miracle of all.
But I was still drinking every day, still groping around in the dark. It was like a giant rollercoaster. Up, then down. Happy, then sad. Sunshine, followed by darkness.
Then on July 4, 2000, I declared God as my new boss. I didn’t even know what I was saying. I was simply frustrated and tired. I knew that if I could wish for anything, have anything, it would be to work for a guy like God. So I stood in my living room in Brooklyn and said: God, if you are there, I want to work for you.
Nothing happened.
I thought maybe I would still keep working in publishing and then devote my free time to God.
Six days later, on July 10, 2000, I, Lisa Natoli, the office darling, the superstar who had been working comfortably for 10 years and who could do no wrong, was fired. Oh boy. I couldn’t believe it. I was so shocked by the event that I wasn’t even upset. I was thrilled, in fact. God had hired me!
So I lost my job. I was working for God, winging it as I went along. I had no idea what I was doing. How do you work for someone you can’t see? I was living off unemployment and doing a whole lot of nothing. I figured something incredible would happen: like angels would appear in the kitchen or a dramatic male Voice would instruct me what to do next. Six months passed. Nothing happened.
The unemployment came to an end. I continued to drink every day while reading the Course, surrounded by candles and incense. I kept thinking something would arrive by e-mail or someone would call me. I was growing increasingly impatient with God. Where was He? Where were the miracles A Course in Miracles promised? Why was I still depressed? Why was I not having an experience? What was I doing wrong?
I told God to fuck off . I ripped up the Course. I told God that if he wanted me, he would have to come and get me. I was finished with waiting. I gave God a final “HA! HA!” because I figured he’d never find me as I only left my apartment for cigarettes, trips to the liquor store and my Wednesday night Course in Miracles group.
Three days later, a woman named Greta showed up in my life. From the minute she opened her mouth, I knew it was God coming to get me. I knew I would follow her wherever she went. She was joyful and certain and listening to her speak filled me with hope.
I followed her out of the room that evening asking for her e-mail, a phone number, some way I could contact her. She told me about an academy in Wisconsin for ministers.
It had never in my wildest dreams occurred to me to become a minister. I never considered myself religious or spiritual. But in that moment, it made perfect sense! Of course! A minister! I can become a minister! Of course! People working for God call themselves ministers! Of course!
It was like realizing my destiny, like finally finding the thing I’d been searching my whole life for. And that’s the best decision I’ve ever made – to be truly helpful & devote my life to God.
Facebook comments:
Wow… I’m speechless and grateful that you’re here on earth sharing this time/space continuum with the rest of us. I’d say “me,” but that’s being selfish! You write beautifully, and I’m inspired by you. I’m working on my first book, so I guess I’m searching out inspiration. Thanks for all you offer – here and in every way with who you are.
Hi Lisa,
I just started to listen to your recorded messages and learning about your life and story and you are very gifted and thank you so much for inspiring us all, I appreciate being able to listen to you when I need a lift. Thank you so much!