(Jamaica Star) June 27 will forever be etched in the memory of Tavia Bishop, as it signifies the day she received her calling from God who she said chastised her for ‘worshipping’ her pet cat.
The surreal experience took place more than two weeks after the cat, which she named Kookie Koreo Kardashian, was killed by dogs.
Bishop, 21, of Portmore, St Catherine, said she got Kookie on May 12 to help with her fight against depression and anxiety. But she said interactions with Kookie started to overshadow her relationship with God.
“Before I got the cat, I had an awesome relationship with God. I was so in tune with Him. I would pray every morning religiously. But after a while I stopped doing that,” she said. “I used to get up and not even pray or look about breakfast for myself. As me wake up, straight round a the back me gone feed the cat. I completely forgot about God and started to idolise the cat.”
However, when Kookie died on June 11, she started questioning God. “I sat on my bed one day and I was staring through my window and I asked ‘God why did you take Kookie away from me?’ I heard His voice say ‘Because you’re putting the cat above me and yourself’,” she said. “I ran out of my room and started crying and I fell on the floor started shouting his name, ‘Jesus! Jesus! Jesus’!” Bishop said her aunt also told her that there is a calling on her life.
Bishop, a University of Technology Jamaica student, has taken the calling seriously. She found herself in church the next day, and although she is not yet sure she will getting baptised, she has taken the steps to make her life more pleasing to the Almighty.
She has changed her interactions with persons to be more Christ-like and has ended relationships that were morally wrong. She is seeking to encourage other persons to draw closer to God.
“God is a jealous God and when you put anything above Him, you automatically put yourself in distress. He had to open my eyes by taking something away from me that I love for me to realise that ‘yuh nuh come pon this Earth by yourself, a me make yuh’. I knew what I was doing was wrong but having the spiritual encounter has changed my life completely,” she said.