TAMMY FAYE LAVALLEY BAKKER MESSNER
1942-2007
The make-up counters in heaven are busy today.
And the angel choir now has its sweetest angel.
I feel much better today knowing that Tammy Faye LaValley Bakker Messner is walking with her Jesus and shining down with her loving and generous glow.
Early Friday morning, July 20, 2007, Tammy Faye Messner fulfilled her lifelong mission when she left her earthly vessel and traveled home, beyond the PTL satellite, to the golden streets of glory. She's singing with her Jesus, walking hand in hand, and only stopping long enough to dip from the rivers of milk and honey and mascara.
I know we should celebrate, as that is what she would want. But I can't help but feel somewhat saddened that this bubbly and genuinely sweet voice has been silenced.
I'm not what conventional religion would call a Christian. I believe there is something or someone that is a higher being but I am not sure what it is. I would like it to be Jesus; after all that is what I was raised to believe. And I know the bible and what it teaches, in all its contradictions, that is right or wrong. But the logic side of me questions, making me realize that I don't have the blind accepting faith one needs to be a true Christian. And in my 34 years on this planet, I've known or known of very few of those people, true Christians, who are here to serve the Lord, love others, spread generosity and their faith, and do not judge others or what others do, but love them and let Jesus do the judging. Tammy Faye was one of those people.
If there was ever someone that could make me or any supposed “non-believer” believe, it is Tammy Faye. Through all her troubles, from her marital problems with Jim Bakker, to the hostile and vicious takeover of their life work by Jerry Falwell, from Jim's topple from head of PTL and Heritage USA to his railroaded conviction, prison life, and their eventual divorce, from her struggle for acceptance in secular entertainment to her new marriage and his imprisonment, from her financial struggles and drug addiction to her brave battles in her war with cancer, she kept smiling, singing, praising the Lord, and having the optimism of a genuine saint. She was an angel well grounded by her faith in a world of faithlessness and turmoil.
I watched her reach out to those that she felt hurt her: the evil Paul and “I Wanna Be Like Tammy Faye So Much That I Wear Funky Wigs And A Lot Of Make-Up” Jan Crouch, who stole Jim and Tammy's Trinity Broadcasting Network in a boardroom scheme; Jessica Hahn, the woman with whom Jim had a one night stand in the early 1980s; Jerry Falwell, who had promised he would help Jim and Tammy through the PTL scandal and then hand the reigns back to them but then smeared them in the media, bankrupted the ministry, and then refused to speak with Jim and Tammy; and reporters who had written false and gossipy innuendo about the Bakkers and their ministry.
I watched her remarry a wonderful man and stand by him while he served his prison term and continue to share a wonderful life with him. I watched her enter briefly secular TV with Jim J. Bullock, thus further etching her mark in the annals, eh-hem, of gay divadom (a group who Tammy herself, in her last interview, thanked and told how much she loved because of the love and acceptance they had shown her since her fall from grace). Probably most remarkably I watched her join the cast of the VH-1 reality show “The Surreal Life” and stand firm on her convictions, all the while befriending such unlikely “stars” as porn legend Ron Jeremy (with whom she shared her last Thanksgiving dinner), former rapper Vanilla Ice, and Erik Estrada.
Her strength through it all made me believe in faith, if not inching me closer to God.
I will miss Tammy Faye. I expect many will. History always rewrites itself, but I think Tammy did a pretty good job clearing up many of the misconceptions about herself, her ministry, her marriage, and her religion and her God while she was alive. Somehow I think Tammy Faye knew that she was going home to Jesus on Friday morning. She requested to be on Larry King Live the night before. She stated that she talked to God every day and told him that her life was in his hands. Somehow, I thought that he would let her stay around a little while longer. I thought he would use her tremendous personality to show people that God does heal. But I think he knew she'd done enough already. She praised his name before she could speak, and, with the help of the same television with which she'd praised him her whole life, praised him right up until the day she died.
My guess is that in drag queen shows all over the world tonight Tammy Faye, in all her glamorous beauty, will live on. . .as she surely will forever. She's moved onto another echelon of dragdom-the dead divas wing, joining the likes of Judy Garland, Marilyn Monroe, Mae West, Anna Nicole Smith, Tammy Wynette, Patsy Cline, Joan Crawford, Bette Davis, and on and on and on. . .
Love and prayers to her children, Tammy Sue Chapman, her son Jamie Charles Bakker of the Revolution Church in New York City, her husband Roe Messner, her grandchildren, her former husband and his wife, the Reverend Jim Bakker and Laurie, and all her friends, family, and fans the world over.
The next time a drop of rain falls from the sky above, I'll be looking for traces of mascara and then I'll know beyond a (eye)shadow of a doubt, that those are Tammy Faye's joy-filled tears dropping just a little bit of happiness onto our miserable world.
The Voice salutes Tammy Faye- standing on the everlasting rock!
Copyright Nicholas Yaekle, The Voice of the Disenfranchised, http://www.the-voice.blogspot.com
July 22, 2007
