Penelope

 

PENELOPE
Written, Composed & Arranged by Michael Woodhead
Copyright © 1965, 2024 by Michael Woodhead

A Fantasy Folk song

From My Autobiography : 1974 : Age 27 : Part 1

 Christianity : 1974-1989

6 JANUARY
Sunday
During the evening service at Immanuel Church, I meet Olivia, an attractive young woman who invites me back to her room in a motel.
    We have a couple of drinks, and then she asks me if I would like to have sex with her.
    I reply, “Sure! I’d love to!”
    After we have sex, she asks me if I’d like to go to her parents’ place with her to meet them.
    I tell her I’d like to do that, too.
    However, once we’re on our way [she drives], I soon find out that they apparently live on an acreage outside the city of Calgary.
    Once there, I sleep overnight with her.
    In the morning, her parents wake me early and tell me that Olivia is schizophrenic and that, for my own safety, I should probably leave.
    As soon as possible.
    Like, right now.
    So, they give me an extra pair of socks to keep my feet warm. I get the rest of my winter clothes on, and then I leave and plod through the snow to the highway.
    I begin to hitchhike back to Calgary.
    First a car picks me up and takes me only a few miles. When I get out, I pray and ask God to have someone give me a ride who can take me all the way home.
    It isn’t long before a truck stops and the driver says he can give me a ride all the way to Calgary if I want, but that I’ll have to sit in the cargo bed. I tell him I don’t mind.
    So, with the freezing wind blowing around me,  I thank God for answering my prayer, and huddle down under a truck blanket until I eventually arrive back at my parents’ house in the Bridgeland district.

Looking back on my experience with Olivia, I can see now that I obviously didn’t gain any sort of immediate self-control over the ‘temptation’ to have and enjoy sex. And soon, the gender confusion I faced as a teenager and young adult would follow me into my life as a Christian. Frankly, I still have reservations about the whole relationship between Christianity and sexuality, perhaps a conundrum that I may never be able to fully resolve in this life.


Some well-meaning [but misguided, I realize, now] Christians advise me to throw away any creative works I produced before getting saved because they were ‘of the devil’.

Although I did get rid of many of my earlier stories and artwork [much to my current regret], I just couldn't throw away my songs, and I held on to them [much to my current delight].


Those early months as a ‘Jesus People’ Christian were interesting ones for me.
    ■  I had no fear. I sensed a love for everyone, as evidenced by the fact that I boldly witnessed to a Hell’s Angel on a motorbike when he stopped to let me cross the road.
    ■  Another time, I went to a nightclub [I can’t remember why, but I might have been having supper with someone I knew] and the people I saw on the dance floor seemed like writhing snakes to me. That was a very strange experience.


I receive a card in the mail from DeDe  to let me know that she’s going in the hospital, and that she has a bit of trepidation about moving back home.

I feel terrible, now, because I don’t remember why DeDe was going in the hospital, or why she was nervous about moving back with her mother. I never heard anything further, but I do hope everything went well.


8 MARCH
Friday
11:30 p.m.
While I’m having coffee at the White Spot restaurant, Charlotte, one of the waitresses, notices that I’m reading my Bible.
    After she learns that I’m a Christian, she tells me she is, too, and wonders if I might be interested in coming with her to meet her roommate, also a Christian.
    She calls, first, to make sure it’s all right. It is.
    A little later, while waiting for Charlotte to finish her shift, the roommate telephones.
    “She wants to know if we’re coming yet,” Charlotte says to me after she answers.
    I raise my voice so the roommate can hear me over Charlotte’s phone: “Tell her to keep her beating heart still, we’ll be right over!”
    A short time later, once we’re at their apartment, I meet Lana Charlotte Schneeberger.

I still remember walking into their apartment, looking to my left, and seeing this beautiful woman with dark black hair sitting there and smiling at me. Lana always likes to tell me that her hair wasn’t that black, but at the time, it’s the way it looked to me.

Later, I sing Keep Your Eyes on Jesus, Trust in Jesus, and With God All Things Are Possible  to them.


On another day, while dining at Denny’s restaurant, I tell Lana quite a bit about my past life. She replies that whoever marries me will have a lot to forgive!
 

It isn’t long before we fall in love.


 

I don’t want to say it was ‘love at first sight’ with Lana, but I did fall hard for her and she for me very early on after we met.


25 MARCH
Monday
I write a short poem to Lana:
    “You’re the inspiration of my life and,
    quite possibly, you may become my wife
    If the good Lord up above
    Will let grow this heart-felt love for you”

At the time, we had aspirations of a singing ministry together, but that never happened because, for several reasons, Life interfered. However, except for a few rough spots, we have been married and happy together now for forty-eight years as of this writing [2022]. We’ve faced a lot of challenges as a family, as well as personally, physically, spiritually, emotionally, and financially, and we’ve survived. Somehow, despite our failures at times, our faith in Jesus has always helped us through so much.

This year was also a time  that I saw the Northern Lights directly over the city. I was walking to Lana’s apartment one night and looked up to see curtains of blue and green light shimmering across the sky. It was a beautiful, yet eerie, display of colour.

 

Since all my other Christian friends from the downtown Full Gospel Church seem to be doing it, I apply to the Full Gospel Bible Institute in Eston, Saskatchewan, in hopes that I can take some courses to further my Christian life and knowledge.


23 APRIL
Tuesday
I receive a letter that F.G.B.I. is considering my application.

 

28 APRIL
Sunday
I sing and speak at Marlborough Pentecostal Church which Lana helped to establish in 1973. My sermon topic is As It Was in the Days of Noah.

Still in search of my identity, I spell my first name ‘Micaal’.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I buy an engagement ring for Lana.