“You can’t wait until life isn’t hard anymore to decide to be happy.” ~Nightbirdie [Jane Marczewski] (2023)

What do you do when you have cancer for the 3rd time and now you have a 2 percent chance of survival?

“You can’t wait until life isn’t hard anymore to decide to be happy.” ~Nightbirdie [Jane Marczewski]

This a stunning story and a beautiful song. She also has a great testimony.

Simon Cowell gives Nightbirde the Golden Buzzer after her beautiful performance of “It’s Okay.” Nightbirde chases her dreams and proves that she is so much more than her cancer!

Hers was the ethereal voice “America’s Got Talent” host Terry Crews said “we all need to hear this year.”

Jane Marczewski’s performance of her original song “It’s OK” won her the coveted Golden Buzzer from TV’s toughest judge, Simon Cowell, earlier this week on the NBC show, showering the singer, who performs as Nightbirde, with confetti and sending her straight through from the pre-taped auditions to the live shows later this season.

Her performance visibly moved the show’s judges and has been shared widely on social media, racking up 11 million views on YouTube alone and sending “It’s OK” to the top of Apple Music charts.

What fans of the popular show may not realize is that the song also came from a place of deep faith.

Marczewski, 30, described her song on the show as “the story of the last year of my life,” including a cancer diagnosis with a 2% chance of survival.

“I have had cancer three times now, and I have barely passed thirty,” she wrote in a recent blog post.

“There are times when I wonder what I must have done to deserve such a story. I fear sometimes that when I die and meet with God, that He will say I disappointed Him, or offended Him, or failed Him. Maybe He’ll say I just never learned the lesson, or that I wasn’t grateful enough. But one thing I know for sure is this: He can never say that He did not know me.”

Marczewski had what she describes as a “charismatic upbringing” in Zanesville, Ohio, where she attended a Christian school and church.

She began pursuing music as a student at Liberty University, the private evangelical Christian university in Lynchburg, Virginia. Before graduating in 2013, she led worship at her church, performed at venues around the Lynchburg area and was a “favorite at Liberty’s biannual Coffeehouse,”according to an articlein the school’s Liberty Journal.

“If I had not come to Liberty, I don’t think that I would be doing this. It was pounded into my head that I needed to pursue what I was passionate about,” she told the magazine.

But her dream of performing “became way too important for me,” she said on an episode of a podcast called “Then God Moved” released in March, and she set aside music for three years.

Her Testimony

After the doctor told me I was dying, and after the man I married said he didn’t love me anymore, I chased a miracle in California and sixteen weeks later, I got it. The cancer was gone. But when my brain caught up with it all, something broke. I later found out that all the tragedy at once had caused a physical head trauma, and my brain was sending false signals of excruciating pain and panic.

I spent three months propped against the wall. On nights that I could not sleep, I laid in the tub like an insect, staring at my reflection in the shower knob. I vomited until I was hollow. I rolled up under my robe on the tile. The bathroom floor became my place to hide, where I could scream and be ugly; where I could sob and spit and eventually doze off, happy to be asleep, even with my head on the toilet.

I have had cancer three times now, and I have barely passed thirty. There are times when I wonder what I must have done to deserve such a story. I fear sometimes that when I die and meet with God, that He will say I disappointed Him, or offended Him, or failed Him. Maybe He’ll say I just never learned the lesson, or that I wasn’t grateful enough. But one thing I know for sure is this: He can never say that He did not know me.

I am God’s downstairs neighbor, banging on the ceiling with a broomstick. I show up at His door every day. Sometimes with songs, sometimes with curses. Sometimes apologies, gifts, questions, demands. Sometimes I use my key under the mat to let myself in. Other times, I sulk outside until He opens the door to me Himself.

I have called Him a cheat and a liar, and I meant it. I have told Him I wanted to die, and I meant it. Tears have become the only prayer I know. Prayers roll over my nostrils and drip down my forearms. They fall to the ground as I reach for Him. These are the prayers I repeat night and day; sunrise, sunset.

Call me bitter if you want to—that’s fair. Count me among the angry, the cynical, the offended, the hardened. But count me also among the friends of God. For I have seen Him in rare form. I have felt His exhale, laid in His shadow, squinted to read the message He wrote for me in the grout: “I’m sad too.”

If an explanation would help, He would write me one—I know it. But maybe an explanation would only start an argument between us—and I don’t want to argue with God. I want to lay in a hammock with Him and trace the veins in His arms.

I remind myself that I’m praying to the God who let the Israelites stay lost for decades. They begged to arrive in the Promised Land, but instead He let them wander, answering prayers they didn’t pray. For forty years, their shoes didn’t wear out. Fire lit their path each night. Every morning, He sent them mercy-bread from heaven.

I look hard for the answers to the prayers that I didn’t pray. I look for the mercy-bread that He promised to bake fresh for me each morning. The Israelites called it manna, which means “what is it?”

That’s the same question I’m asking—again, and again. There’s mercy here somewhere—but what is it? What is it? What is it?

I see mercy in the dusty sunlight that outlines the trees, in my mother’s crooked hands, in the blanket my friend left for me, in the harmony of the wind chimes. It’s not the mercy that I asked for, but it is mercy nonetheless. And I learn a new prayer: thank you. It’s a prayer I don’t mean yet, but will repeat until I do.

Call me cursed, call me lost, call me scorned. But that’s not all. Call me chosen, blessed, sought-after. Call me the one who God whispers his secrets to. I am the one whose belly is filled with loaves of mercy that were hidden for me.

Even on days when I’m not so sick, sometimes I go lay on the mat in the afternoon light to listen for Him. I know it sounds crazy, and I can’t really explain it, but God is in there—even now. I have heard it said that some people can’t see God because they won’t look low enough, and it’s true. Look lower. God is on the bathroom floor.

Source: Nightbirde

Here are the lyrics.

I moved to California in the summertime I changed my name thinking that it would change my mind
I thought that all my problems they would stay behind

I was a stick of dynamite and it just was A matter of time, yeah

Oh, dang, oh, my,
now I can’t hide
Said I knew myself but I guess I lied
It’s okay, it’s okay
it’s okay, it’s okay
If you’re lost
We’re all a little lost
and it’s all right
It’s okay, it’s okay
it’s okay, it’s okay
If you’re lost
We’re all a little lost and it’s all right
It’s all right
it’s all right
It’s all right

I wrote a hundred pages, but I burned them all
Yeah, I burned them all
I blow through yellow lights and don’t look back at all
I don’t look back at all

Oh, dang, oh, my,
now I can’t hide
Said I knew myself but I guess I lied
It’s okay, it’s okay
it’s okay, it’s okay
If you’re lost
We’re all a little lost
and it’s all right
It’s okay, it’s okay
it’s okay, it’s okay
If you’re lost
We’re all a little lost and it’s all right
it’s all right to be lost sometimes