Handing it Over

Well, the time is here at last. Safe Haven goes into production this week. Lines are learned, sets are built, and all the little details are (I hope!) taken care of. Time for the director to sit back, relax (yeah, right!) and enjoy the show.

There’s a theater tradition that, going into production week, the director hands the show over to the stage manager. That’s all well and good, and I have nothing but confidence in our stage manager, but as we came into this week, I decided to try something different. I handed the show over to the real Stage Manager. That would be God.

Not that I haven’t always given the shows over to God. (Not much choice, really. They’re His shows.) But I don’t remember ever doing it so specifically before. This was Saturday, and I was in the auditorium spending some time in prayer for the production. I told God that I was taking my hands off, and I was putting the show into His hands. I told Him that He was the manager and controller of the play. And then I stepped back.

And truly, I have stepped back. Okay, yes, I’m still watching rehearsals and giving notes. And yes, I’m still dealing with details. But I’m not obsessing with worry over the show the way I usually do.

Why should I? It’s in good hands.

 

What a Friend

“Oh, what peace we often forfeit,
Oh, what needless pain we bear.
All because we do not carry
Everything to God in prayer.”

“What a Friend We Have in Jesus” is kind of the theme song for Safe Haven, and I’ve downloaded about six different versions of it to use for scene change music during the play. So I’ve been listening to this song over and over and really hearing it for the first time.

God’s answers to prayer are not our answers. This is shown rather vividly in the play when one character has his prayer answered in a way no one would ever choose. Yet, in God’s plan, everything has worked together for good.

I’m seeing this in my life right now, as well. (Funny how often I find myself dealing with whatever we’re working on dramatically.) I pray for peace and healing, and I’d like God to wave His magic wand and make it happen. Yet God’s answer is, Follow Me through this desolate wasteland – peace is on the other side. I ask, Can’t we go around? But God is firm. The only way out is through.

So here we are, wandering in the wilderness. I think back to the words of the song – Oh, what peace we often forfeit…All because we do not carry everything to God in prayer. If this is peace, why does it feel like so much turmoil? That’s when I have to cling to faith and just keep following Him, knowing He’s promised to bring me through.

If only I could learn this as well as the characters I write do.

Certain of What We Do Not See

Have you ever had one of those terrifying moments when you’re struck with the “knowledge” that everything you’ve ever believed in is a lie, that everything you thought was important doesn’t matter, and that the very earth beneath your feet might crumble away at any moment? For a minute or two you’re left stunned, shaking, nearly unable to breathe while you’re hyper-aware of the weight of the world all around you – a world that doesn’t care whether you live or die.

 Gradually things shift back into focus. You remember that while the world at large doesn’t care whether you live or die, there are people around you who care very much. You remember, if you knew it in the first place, that God is in His heaven and that He cares passionately about His children on earth.

In other words, your faith deserts you for a moment, and you have to make the choice – again – to believe.

Usually when these kinds of thoughts come to me it’s early in the morning, before I even get out of bed. I wake from some half-remembered dream into fear that fades back into faith as I re-orient myself to my waking life. Two days ago, though, I had one of these faith crises in a new and rather terrifying place – as I was driving down the interstate at 70 miles per hour. One moment I was fine, thinking about what I needed to do that afternoon. The next moment my faith had deserted me – not just my faith in God, but my faith in everything. I didn’t know that up was up, or that two plus two equalled four, or that my heart would keep beating.

It only lasted a minute, and thankfully I managed not to hit anything while I was wrestling with the mysteries of the universe and driving at the same time. Ever since then, though, I’ve been thinking about the nature of faith. “Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.” (Hebrews 11:1) So does that minute of fear and doubt mean I’m not certain of what I do not see?

I don’t think so. I think, in fact, that those moments of doubt are instrumental to faith, because they force me to make the choice again. I’m admitting that I cannot see, but I have faith anyway. If I never had a moment of doubt, I’d be certain of what I did see.

I’ve been thinking, too, about how necessary faith is to stay sane in this world. We all have faith. We have faith that it matters whether or not we finish a project, whether or not we get up in the morning, whether or not we take our next breath. In the total absence of faith, there is nothing to do but curl up in a corner with our hands over our heads. God created us in such a way that we cannot live without faith.

The issue, of course, is choosing what to have faith in. That’s why the moments of faithlessness (which feel like the edge of insanity) are so helpful. They give you, for a moment, a blank slate without pre-formed notions. You can write any faith statement you choose.

You can write, “I choose to believe that hard work and getting ahead is the most important thing in life.” You can write, “I choose to believe that my thoughts and ideas are always right.” You can write, “I choose to believe that my children’s happiness and comfort is my highest priority.” You can write, “I choose to believe that Jesus died for me, and that He loves me passionately and has a purpose for my life.”

Choose wisely.

Redefining Christianity

Yes, it’s been over a week since I’ve written. Sorry. Let’s move on.

We had our first rehearsal (read-through) for Safe Haven yesterday. It’s always a little frightening to hear the script out loud for the first time – I hear all those parts where lines don’t sound the way I thought they would, and I end up cringing a lot. But there were remarkably few of those spots yesterday. It went well, and I think I’ll only be tinkering with lines, not writing whole new sections, like I did in Blackwell Inn.

It was also good to hear people reading and feel like I cast it well. Characters and actors are good matches.

One thing I heard as we read yesterday that I didn’t like was how often I used the words christian and christianity in the script. As I mentioned in my very first post on this site, I don’t really like those words. In today’s society, they don’t tend to mean what they’re supposed to. Christian should mean Christ-follower, but to those outside the church, it too often means crazy, hate-filled idiot. A major theme in the script is the difference between those who use their christianity to beat others over the head and those who have genuine faith. I hope, through advertising, to be able to draw in an audience from outside the church, and I hope to show them that following Jesus is different from what they may have thought. But I fear if I use that word too much, they may tune out anything else. So there’s a place for tinkering.

The “Wow” Factor

In 1984 (the actual year, not the novel) my parents took my brother and me to Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Perhaps because we took a day off from our Disney trip to do it, or perhaps because people in 1984 weren’t as keen to grab kids’ attention with the “wow” factor, or perhaps both, I remember it as one of the most boring days of my life. So I wasn’t sure what to expect when my husband and I took our son to Johnson Space Center in Houston yesterday.

May I just say – Wow!

They had lots of stuff aimed at grabbing kids’ attention, and Nathan had a blast (pun definitely intended). And it was interesting to see how the astronauts live on the space station without gravity. All of it was fascinating, but what really grabbed me and won’t let go was the Saturn V rocket. This was an actual rocket of the type used to travel to the moon, but it had never been used. Eventually they built a temperature-controlled shed around it to preserve it and left it for tourists to look at.

Have you ever stood beside a rocket? If not, you cannot begin to imagine the size. Even if you’ve seen them on TV and think you understand that they’re big, until you’ve stood beside it, you cannot begin to imagine what “big” means. Our tour guide had said ahead of time, “I guarantee when you step into the shed, your first words will be something along the lines of, ‘Oh my goodness.’” I thought, Well, now that you’ve warned us, that won’t be true. But it was true. I had determined I wouldn’t be shocked, just to prove him wrong, but the words were jerked out of me without my consent.

The size was amazing enough, but even more incredible was the proportionately tiny space allocated for the astronauts. They were squeezed into a triangular cone on top of something like 350 feet of fuel tanks. That cone was the only part of the rocket which would return to earth – the rest was jettisoned after the fuel was burned.

Anyone who knows me knows I think more than is good for me, so naturally I’ve been thinking too much about the symbolism of that rocket. (I swear, this stuff just comes to me; I don’t dig for it!)

I thought I’d been prepared for the size of the rocket, but when I stood next to it, the true, overwhelming size of it blew me away. It was huger than I ever could have imagined. I think when we come one day into the presence of God, that will be our reaction. We may talk, here on earth, of how big He is, and how overwhelming, but we can’t begin to imagine what that means. No amount of knowledge will ever prepare us for that moment when we step into His presence and simply have to say “Wow!” (Or think it, since the wow may be so huge we’re beyond speech.)

The other thing I’ve been thinking about is how tiny the astronauts’ space was compared to all the fuel it took to get them where they were going. It wouldn’t have been comfortable. It may have seemed like they could take over more of the space and stretch out a little. Of course, they didn’t do that, because they wouldn’t have reached the moon without all that space for fuel. And that’s how it is for us, too. It’s not too comfortable to make ourselves decrease so God can increase in us, but if we start stretching out, if we try to take space back from Him, we won’t have the fuel to get where we’re going.

I realize it’s a stretch as an analogy, but it shows me again how, when God is first in your life, everything points to Him, whether it’s intended that way or not. That’s a big wow factor.