Authors: Julie L. Cannon
Twang (40 page)
After we said our vows, we toasted with the sparkling nonalcoholic bubbly that the Rhinestone Wedding Chapel provided. There was also a four-layer wedding cake, and a marriage certificate created by the famous Hatch Show Prints.
The staff rang bells and tossed birdseed as Bobby Lee and I left hand-in-hand, and I heard Tonilynn’s voice crack as she hollered, “Congratulations!” and “I sure wish Aunt Gomer was here to see y’all.”
Although you choose the person you marry, you don’t choose your parents, and I remain cautious when it comes to interacting with mine. My mother is still with my father. We talk occasionally on the telephone, and it sounds as if she still carries the torch for him, hanging on to the faith that he’ll change. And though I have forgiven my father, I don’t seek a close relationship with him nor visit the old homestead.
It’s said that music is the only true barometer of a person’s soul, and I know my decision to forgive my father has changed me to my very core. Being in a happier place has certainly changed my artistic direction. The heart I bared in those earliest songs bears little resemblance to the one that has been pouring stuff out of my throat lately. There’s one place I can witness that clearly. My most recent album,
Beautiful Journey
, is proof of a significant turning point for this woman who built her career on the fallout from childhood ghosts.
I used my pain over Mr. Anglin’s passing to write a song called “Watching Me Down Here,” and whenever I sing it, I feel him smiling on me. I know faith’s the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen, but I have to say there are these little random moments—holding Bobby Lee’s hand as we stroll around the grounds of Harmony Hill, driving up to Cagle Mountain and seeing Erastus dart off through the kudzu after something, composing a new melody in my head while sitting in the Brentwood Panera, hearing Tonilynn yelling at the devil—when I feel a distinct presence, a crescendo of almost painful happiness, this glimpse into the eternal.
Think of the way a song sometimes lifts you up to a better place mentally, or illuminates your heart and mind
about a certain person or emotion. It’s like that, the movie soundtrack for my life, playing along beneath the ordinary and extraordinary moments, sometimes apparent, sometimes not, but always what holds everything together in perfect harmony.
Dear Reader:
I love country music, and I read a comment from Merle Haggard about his music that struck me as exactly how I feel about my writing. Merle said, “Music is a positive vibration that we all need. It comes through me, and I believe it comes from God. The Lord is just using me as an instrument, and I’m just doing the best I can to respond to what He wants.”
I know certain songs have pulled me up out of many a dark hole, and I believe people’s stories are positive vibrations we need as well, for escape, entertainment, and enlightenment. Sometimes when I’m in the midst of my own story, however, I don’t see a speck of redeeming beauty in it. It’s not until later that I can look back and see how an experience, an event, or an encounter with a certain person affected me. Sometimes I realize it gave me deeper insight, polished my rough edge, or birthed a certain compassion. As the Apostle Paul said, “Now we see a reflection in a mirror; then we will see face-to-face. Now I know partially, but then I will know completely in the same way that I have been completely known” (1 Corinthians 13:12 CEB).
Every single one of us has something we struggle with, hard moments, dark valleys, or challenging relationships. We may think,
How could that possibily be good?
Like Paul said, our vision here on earth is dim. The stories of our lives are like songs. When we turn them over to the great Composer, He can make something beautiful and good from our hurts and mistakes. They can become beautiful melodies that lift others up.
It’s my heartfelt hope and prayer that
Twang
will be a source of entertainment, illumination, and encouragement for folks on this terrestrial ball.
Truly,
Julie
1. Jennifer believes it’s her destiny to be a country music diva. How much of a person’s life is determined either by their individual talents/gifts or by their belief about what they’re “meant to do”?
2. Though Jennifer gets that thing she wants so badly—fame as a country music superstar—the consequences of this create yet another problem. Has there ever been anything you wanted very much but that turned out to have a hard side?
3. Jennifer believes she can repress her troubled past and it won’t affect her. Do you think people can bury their pasts with no repercussions? Why or why not?
4. Tonilynn assures Jennifer that instead of emotionally crippling her, she can pour her painful memories into art. Do you believe that expressing feelings through art can promote healing? How?
5. Tonilynn has strong spiritual beliefs and is very vocal about them. Do you believe people have supernatural “gifts of the spirit” such as the word of knowledge Tonilynn claims to have? What do you think about how Tonilynn talks back to the devil?
6. Roy Durden says some people use religion as a crutch. Do you think people use religion in harmful ways?
7. Do you think people have to come to their own decision, in their own time, when it comes to faith in God? Can faith in God be forced? Explain.
8. Does having an earthly father like Jennifer’s make it harder to relate to a loving heavenly Father? How?
9. When does Jennifer’s faith in the Cumberland River evaporate? Do you believe that natural disasters/acts of God force people to realize that they don’t control life?
10. Aunt Gomer’s two biggest fears are Satan and going into a nursing home. What are your greatest fears?
11. Jennifer feels the young girls inside Déjà Vu are victims as she was. She believes men are using them and that real gentlemen don’t visit these “gentlemen’s clubs.” How do you feel about the so-called gentlemen’s clubs and the girls who work there?
12. Jennifer blames her father for her screwed-up life. She doesn’t want to offer him forgiveness because she feels that would be like saying what he did to her didn’t matter. Do you agree or disagree? Why?
13. If a person doesn’t get rid of hate and bitterness, can it destroy them? Do you agree with the statement: “Forgiveness is such a powerful weapon for any survivor or victim of crime?” Why?
14. Forgiveness is a choice that can be very difficult. When you forgive people, you don’t get an instant case of amnesia. Jennifer says she has decided to forgive her father, but then states in the epilogue that she does not have a close relationship with him. Do you think she’ll ever be able to have a good relationship with her earthly father? Why or why not?
15. For lots of girls/women, even if their relationship with their father was a flawed one, they’re drawn to men who remind them of him. Do you think this might be why Jennifer fell for Holt Cantrell? Why did it take her so long to lose her feelings for him?
16. Jennifer despises her mother’s weakness in denying her father’s drinking problem and for turning a blind eye to the way he treats women. How does Jennifer display this contempt toward her mother?
17. Were you surprised toward the end of the book when Jennifer feels some empathy for her mother? Why do you think Jennifer changed?
18. Do you think God cares about every detail of your life? Why?
19. Can God redeem a person’s past and use the bad stuff for the glory of His kingdom? How?
20. We’re told that in Heaven we’ll understand everything clearly, that God will take his children by the hand and show them how all their heartaches and losses down here on earth were of value, that beautiful and good things came of the most difficult circumstances. Do you think this hope is enough to help you make it through the dark valleys? Why?
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