Nightbirde demonstrated an everlasting hope

She was known as Nightbirde, and she stole the hearts of Americans after her poignant performance last year on America’s Got Talent. Following a brief burst of fame after Simon Cowell presented her with the “Golden Buzzer,” Jane Marczewski succumbed to cancer on Feb. 19 at the age of 31.

It wasn’t just her beautiful voice or vivacious presence in the midst of advancing cancer that so many fell in love with. Her raw and emotive words were often marked by reckless hope, even though she had been given a 2 percent chance of survival. Viewers struggled to comprehend where the courage came from.

“I’m planning my future, not my legacy,” Marczewski, a professing Christian, told Chris Cuomo on CNN when her cancer steadily advanced. “Some people would call that blind denial, but I prefer to call it rebellious hope.”

She never allowed that optimism to hide the reality of devastatingly difficult circumstances. In a video released posthumously, Marczewski rebuked a culture of “toxic positivity,” telling viewers they needn’t feel guilty for sadness amid the pain. “It’s all real,” she said. “The joy and the pain … and you don’t have to pick one or the other.”

God calls us to gratitude, but that gratefulness is not blind to real suffering and pain. He created us with the capacity for grief and sorrow and anger. Proverbs 16:4 says, “God has made everything for its purpose” and we can be assured of this when it comes to our emotional capacities.

Marczewski showed us that, as Christians, we can reject reductionist mantras of positivity because they dismiss our humanity, which can be truly painful and must be properly grieved, lamented, and experienced.

These emotional responses are not sinful. To stew and remain rooted in singular, negative attitudes can become sinful, yes. But to push away valid feelings meant to aid in survival hinders those God-given structures designed to help us experience hardship. Like tears and sweat relieve and regulate our physical bodies, emotions can serve us mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. We can see this in the life of Jesus.

In the garden of Gethsemane, Luke describes Jesus as sweating blood, a rare but real condition that occurs when someone is “under conditions of extreme physical or emotional stress.” Jesus prayed, “Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done” (Luke 22:42). It doesn’t sound like Jesus was feeling “happy” at this particular moment. Perhaps He was filled with dread or fear of what He would soon undergo, a completely human response. But Jesus never wavered in his obedience to the Father.

Even in the darkest moments, hope remains. Hope holds a profound meaning in the Christian faith. The Bible calls this hope “everlasting,” a “glorious inheritance” and part of the future for every Christian. It’s why we can lean into difficult emotions while still thriving on a greater promise.

Jane Marczewski knew that truth. Perhaps that’s why she glowed, the light of heaven already seeping through. As the cancer grew, her body withered to 85 pounds, and yet, the spirit of hope inside of her overshadowed failing organs and weakening structures.

A year ago, she wrote about living and lamenting with cancer on her blog:

“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.’

“… 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.

“If you can’t see him, look lower. God is on the bathroom floor.”

Marczewski found hope even in her grief and anger, something she called a “holy work.” God is in the good and in the grout.

Hope is not an easy thing. It’s living in the tension between temporary pain and eternal promised joy. In freeing ourselves, as Marczewski did, from the constraints of toxic positivity based in the artificiality of a secular worldview, we can cling to our eternal hope in a way that mystifies those unacquainted with Jesus.

Many were baffled by Marczewski’s vibrant spirit in the face of her illness. But, believers—marked by the same hope as Marczewski—understand exactly how she stood in front of millions with a 98 percent chance of impending death and sang a song she titled “It’s Okay.”

When Jesus returns, Jane Marczewski’s body will be resurrected. Her reckless and rebellious hope studded with grief and pain brought her to a glorious finish line. And she will never have to deal with pain or sadness again.