March 2008
Dear Friends,
This Easter Sunday has me remembering, not the marshmallow chicks and chocolate bunnies of Easter baskets past, but the story of the cross that the pagan celebrations obscure. Church yesterday was a simple dramatic reading of Mark’s account, speckled with choir songs. The angels crept in like the guests at a surprise party, unperceived but somehow sensed, until finally an explosion of joy took us all. We felt it collectively. The power of the Passion needs no cosmetic treatment, but just a simple hour of attention. We gave the story that attention, and we were blessed. We are a very diverse group with very little in common with each other, but that makes it all the more exciting when we come together simply because we all love Jesus so very much.
Since I last wrote, I have completed my Master’s degree. I carried a small contingency of clients from my internship into a private practice which I am conducting out of an office in my home. I love counseling and have seen how by the grace of God it can save souls. An ancillary to being an “official” counselor is that I have more speaking invitations than ever. Concerning this phenomenon, I theorize that people now have a slot they can slide me into comfortably. I’m a talk therapist-type, a female Dr. Phil (Dr. Jill?), come-into-my-office-and-how-long-have-you-had-this-problem-type. There, she’s slotted. Call her and see if she can come.
Death precedes birth. Something had to give way to prepare for this new role, and I admit it was the singing. Not that I never perform—most of my seminar weekends feature a concert. In the next few months I’ll be releasing a CD of 20-plus original songs—the accumulation of the last six years. But I admit that the drive to pursue music is waning. At fifty-one I’ve passed my prime vocally and the means to make a new musical statement just isn’t as strong. Instead I feel compelled to archive the material I so feverishly produced all those years, and respect it as the musical works of one more small-time singer/songwriter who has finally gotten a day job. I’m not very sad about this. It is what it is. “Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might. For there is no work or device or knowledge or wisdom in the grave where you are going,” Ecclesiastes 9:10.
In the spirit of my new role, I do phone and face-to-face counseling. I’m not licensed yet, but my fee is about half the usual. For more information, click the “counseling” link on my home page and fill out the contact form.
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Speaking of changing roles, Mike and I are empty nesters. But happy ones, because our fledglings are winging happily and safely through the skies, however distant. Kimmy is in college in Austria, intermittently traveling Europe and having the nomadic time of her life. Alison is finishing up her schooling at Andrews University, living off campus and being a great all-around girl. And that’s about the extent of it!
Jennifer
May 2007
Dear Friends,
Outside my window, the pre-dawn chorus is stirring in the throats of robins and sparrows, coaxing my suburban Philadelphia neighborhood awake. I’ve been up since before 4AM, unable to sleep due to stress-related insomnia. The cause of the stress is personal, but the fruit of the insomnia is this update, long overdue.
The biggest news I have is that you can officially call me a psychotherapist. I’m in my mental health counseling internship here in Philadelphia, actually seeing clients as a professional. Most of my course work is done, and I am now beginning the last stretch, which will hopefully end in March of next year, and result in me actually getting a real-live, bona-fide, paying job! After so many years of operating hand-to-mouth in the ministry world, it will be nice to be gainfully employed.
Not that I won’t be pursuing the touring/recording/writing/speaking thing anymore. My dream is to work half time as a therapist and devote the rest of the time to ministry. I love Michael Ministries, but there were several reasons I didn’t want to do it full time. Paramount is the amount of travel it requires. Being on the road full time might make a living, but it breaks a life. I’ve been married for almost 28 years, and I hope to stay that way for at least 28 more, if you know what I mean.
The decision to choose mental health counseling came after I realized two things. One, I wanted to get a graduate degree. I’m academically inclined and wanted to be professionally trained for something once my time freed up from the duties of parenting (my girls are 21 and 19). The second realization was that I needed to study people (psychology), even though I wanted to study God (theology). I’m not big on reporting my audible conversations with God (especially now that I’ve studied mental illness!) but I did have a dialogue going with the Almighty over this issue. It went something like this:
Jennifer: God, I love You. And I want to study about You when I go back to college.
God: But, Jennifer, I love people, so if you love Me, you should study how to help them.
Jennifer: (reluctantly) Okay, God.
Two years later, here I am diagnosing, assessing and applying interventions in a clinical setting. How will I fare in the professional world? I’m not sure. Deep in the inner recesses of my soul lies a conviction that God, not the mental health system, holds the key to psychological health. Yet I know that God can use the mental health system. At this point, I’m asking Him to use me within that system, as flawed as it is. Pray for me! I’m not supposed to preach to people, but last week a session with a couple got so heated I blurted out, “Do you guys ever pray?” Since the agency I work for is friendly toward Christianity, I wouldn’t get fired for that, but if the American Counseling Association people ever found out they might hang me by my thumbs.
One more thing. I have a name for the artist sponsorship program we’ve recently started. It’s A.S.K.--Artist Sponsorship Kinesis. I had the “artist sponsorship” part, but needed a word that started with “K.” A quick perusal through the dictionary (fascinating fact #54847- there aren’t many words that start with “k”—can you think of any? Know. Knob. That’s about it.) yielded a perfect selection—kinesis. It literally means, “A movement dependent upon the force of its stimulus.” Since I envision A.S.K. as a cooperative community of artists working for a common goal, synergistically empowering one another, then it must be fueled by the Holy Spirit. There is no more “force” in any “stimulus” than the force found in the moving of the Spirit upon human hearts. Cool, huh? And all because I’m nerdy enough to read the dictionary.
More on that later. For now, I need to greet the birds.
September 2006
Dear Friends,
My name is Alison Brook Schwirzer, and I am Jennifer’s twenty-year-old daughter. I currently study music at Andrews University and this will be my third year there. I never thought I would be writing a letter like this, or doing a lot of things I am doing now. Life often takes you on unexpected adventures.
I will begin this story with my childhood. Growing up, my mother was constantly touring, singing, speaking, and of course parenting. I knew first hand what a life of music ministry and travel would be like. Hard. I vowed I would never follow in her footsteps and instead would become a doctor, get rich, and buy her a car that wouldn’t break down. Yet, there was always music inside of me. I sang in church, in choirs, at school, recorded many small solos on my mom’s CDs. Could I really divorce my musical soul?
Then there was high school, a memorable four years of my life. It was great, but I was always a shy girl. When I finally reached the top so to speak, my senior year, I had finally begun to come out of my shell. I also had a music teacher who really allowed me to blossom musically. Eventually I had to do what every senior does; choose a college. I had no idea where I wanted to go, or what I wanted to study. The desire to do music that had been hidden in my heart for so long was, by then, just starting to surface. I visited a few colleges, and at one particular college I sang for a music professor who encouraged me to pursue music. All I needed was that little push to help me decide I wanted to study music. After this I visited Andrews and was pleasantly surprised by the music department there and chose to attend the following year. From then on I have been really enjoying my studies. However, deciding your major is really only half the battle. New questions started to plague me.
As many of you know, music is a saturated field. There are plenty of young people looking to get famous or be on TV. At Andrews I am able to study all types of music, and there are many career options in music for me. I could be a teacher, a music therapist, or with my training, maybe even sing opera. It is just like when I was a kid deciding what I wanted to be when I “grew up.” However, there’s something called passion for music ministry that has always been on my heart. My mother gave me a taste of it, and I have fed off of it ever since childhood. As I grew, so did my burden for music ministry.
I have invested hours of time into developing my voice. I’m always singing! There’s a standing joke in my family that my mother has to remind me to stop singing every night before she goes to bed, lest I wake her up. Singing is easy and mindless for me. I have always avoided doing hard things like learning to play piano or other instruments because there was never a real reason to learn. That all changed about a year ago when I got tired of singing other people’s songs and looking for accompanists. I picked up a hand-me-down guitar that I had discarded years before because it was “too hard to play” and my “hands were too small” and decided with firm resolve that I would learn to play. Ever since then I’ve been truly been developing my music. I think this gave me a needed outlet for the music that was inside me waiting to come out. I had meddled in song writing before, but with this new outlet I had something to make sense of melodies, rhythms, and musical concepts I always wanted to explore. My need to share music has been growing stronger. I can’t brag about my song writing or guitar skills, but I know that they will snowball exponentially as I apply myself in the coming years. Until I am up to par I can always sing, although I can be insecure about that too. Oh the fragile waters of ego. My mother has been writing some songs for me as well. Although I am a very weak vessel as this point, I have this feeling that God knows my heart and will use me anyway. He knows all about the seeds he planted within me—He knows how they grew and how they are finally breaking ground, and how they will grow full and strong someday. He knows.
It’s very easy, as an idealistic young lady, to think, “Someone will discover me someday.” I’d love to think that I’ll be doing special music one day and by chance someone in the crowd is the owner of a radio station. They love my music and then air it all over the world and I make enough money to fund my projects. Those are easy thoughts, just like saying my hands are too small to play guitar is easy. I don’t want to wimp out of doing music ministry just because it’s hard or because I might not make it. I can’t rely on the radio station owners to discover me. God gives us gifts, but without cultivation of these gifts and a strong willingness to work we inevitably bury our talents in the dirt of “maybe this is not what God wants because it’s hard.” So here I am choosing today to discard complaint and do something with my small talent. I offer this undeveloped vessel to the Lord.
Again, since I always avoided becoming like my mom (which didn’t work because I’m practically a clone minus a few of the idiosyncrasies and plus a few of my own) I avoided her help. I’m not necessarily looking to get signed by some big record company, but I always thought that maybe things would just happen by themselves and I could avoid working with my dorky mother. However, when God puts opportunities right in front of your face you better not ignore them. My mom told me that she was sponsoring a young lady, Katie Millea, in producing her first CD. I got to thinking, why couldn’t she do that for me? I need to start somewhere. I decided to ask my mom for help with my first CD. Of course she was thrilled, and since then we have been touring raising money for a CD of my own.
This is where you come in. I need your help raising the money for this project that will launch my ministry. Maybe you remember what it’s like to be a struggling college student. Unless you were an Olsen twin, you were probably poor. And that’s exactly why I’m writing you this letter. I know I might be foolishly young, studying music, trying to break into a saturated field, but I am only following the mandate from God that says I should spread the gospel to the world. I really have a burden to reach the young people my age, my peers, my friends. I don’t know where God will take this CD or my baby music ministry, but all I can do is try. I will develop my talents and I know God will bless pure motives. If God says down the road “Alison go back to school and become a Doctor” I will. As for now I am following my passion.
Thanks for listing to my story and bearing with my pleading. God bless you immensely in all you do.
Here are two clips from a concert at Arise Institute in Troy, Michigan.
Listen to
Alison sing Only Jesus
Listen to
Jennifer sing The Buyer
and the Bought
To hear more from Alison about her dreams for music ministry, click here.
February 12, 2006:
Welcome to my website world! Do you like the new look? When my former webmaster disappeared (probably because of the money he owed me), I went in search of the webmaster of webmasters. Several inquiries led to the right woman. Michelle Fontaine (www.michellefontaine.com) had the perfect artsy-but-elegant style, her price was more than fair, and she has a heart for ministries. She has done an outstanding job, don’t you think?Recent months have found me taking classes toward my Masters in Counseling and homeschooling my youngest daughter, Kimmy, a senior in high school. When at fourteen she shipped off to academy, I suffered my share of empty nest syndrome, feeling robbed and cheated by circumstances that made that move the best, but still disappointing, option. I prayed and struggled through the loss, finally coming to terms with it and surrendering them to God’s care. At that point, God reversed circumstances and not only brought Kimmy home for her senior year but is bringing Alison home for a year after her second year of college. She has been avidly studying vocal performance and wants to start a ministry of her own. So much for saving on the food bill.
But this is a good thing. One of the new directions in
which God has been leading
A brief synopsis of the ministry highlights since June are:
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The General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists in
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The Idaho Adventist women’s retreat in September was a great speaking opportunity for me. I don’t remember being so well received and appreciated. I was able to stay with a high school friend, Ginny Tucker, for part of the trip, which took me to some of the most beautiful wilderness in the
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A weekend in
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A taping of a show at 3ABN on the material of the book Dying to be Beautiful. Don Mackintosh is the host of Health for a Lifetime, and had me come speak on the book even though most of his guests are physicians.
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A week of prayer at
Please cruise the new web page. We’d love to hear your feedback on the site.
With joy,
Jen
June 29, 2005:
Last winter I resolved to add frequent entries to this "Recent News" page, and finally I come back to it in the dead of summer. I just returned from the Adventist Campmeeting in South Lancaster, MA, where I had the joy and privilege of speaking for Women's Ministries. Not only because of the spiritual feast, but because of seeing old friends, and making new ones, it was a glimpse of heaven. And the ladies (along with some men that came!) seemed genuinely blessed. It's a bit of an amazement to me that in opening my mouth to speak about Jesus and His infinite love I can be a channel of blessing to others. I'm such damaged goods, I don't know how He can use me. But He doesn't have any perfect people to speak through, so He chooses the broken ones.
I will be leaving again this week to the Adventist General Conference Session in St. Louis. I will be in booth 111 right outside the Adventist Book Center and near something called "The Marketplace." If you happen to be there, please drop by. I have a mini concert at the ABC stage at 4 PM on July 5th, and book signings at the ABC at various times.
The rest of my summer is sparsely booked, for which I am thankful!
Rejoice always!
Jennifer
December 21, 2004:
Just returned from the General Youth Conference, held in Sacramento, CA. Although this newborn convention (since 2002) is an inspiring event for old folks like me, it really does attract a critical mass of people who are biologically young. I hear that this is not the trend with youth conferences, that they are typically comprised of a few young and many old people wringing their hands over how to attract more of them. Suffice it to say that I felt like one of the more wrinkled participants, probably because I was. The draw was hanging out with Katie Millea, a young artist I am mentoring, and my daughter Alison, who had the opportunity of singing for a crowd of more than a thousand people. The perks were the marvelous presentations and the social opportunities. Among my favorite talks was Nathan Renner, who spoke on Christian apologetics. Nathan and his good friend David Asscherick are refreshingly and unapologetically intellectual, which feels like home to a nerd like me.
A Deep But Dazzling Darkness is receiving some really good reviews. David Grahams from Weimar College went out of his way to tell me he was very thankful we wrote it. My friend Mark Colvin from my CD duplicating company is reading it, and mentioned that he is using some of the material for classes he is conducting. Nathan Renner read the first two chapters the day I gave it to him. Dr. Leroy Moore rejoiced that we had followed God's lead in writing it. All this confirms for me that it was divine providence that brought it into existance. Its depth and seriousness might prevent it from being a wide-selling book, but I trust it will serve a purpose. To read more, click here.
More later,
Jennifer
December 12, 2004:
I recently learned that the most popular new word for 2004 was "blog." For those of you who might be out of the loop, that's not the giant fried-egg-type creature that used to terrorize kids on "The Outer Limits," but simply a contraction of the words "web log," which is a term used to describe the practice of keeping what is basically a public diary on one's web page. That's what I aim to do with this Recent News link--keep an ongoing, journal-type monologue of my travels and day-to-day experiences. Hope you can visit often!
First, a general overview of this past year. The breaking news is that I am no longer managing Expressly Vegetarian Cafe. The traveling bug kept biting me, and with such heavy responsibilities at home I was not able to bite back. Then around the end of the summer, I finally found the replacement I was searching for. His name is Gordon Patterson, a man who helped run a vegetarian restaurant in Philly called "Patterson's Paradise" for many years. Oct. 29 was my last day as manager, but I still volunteer and hope to conduct various classes and other events through the cafe in the months and years to come.
Bookings included trips to Chicago, Wisconsin, Washington State and many, many events in Pennsylvania. I had the priviledge of doing an evangelistic crusade in Doylestown, PA. Leslie Kay and I sent our manuscript for A Deep but Dazzling Darkness to Amazing Facts Publishers, where the enthusiasm was so strong that we had copies of the book in our hands within a few months.
Today I have a hoard of people coming over for our annual Expressly Vegetarian Christmas party. I better get off my computer, wake Kimmy up and get busy making my apricot-glazed seitan pieces and veggie-hotdog spread rye toast squares. Any suggestions for dessert?
Okay, blog me back--
Jennifer