Ostracized

God loves to surprise & amaze me. ;)

Before and after my play auditions with HPA this year, I asked Him to place me in whatever role I could best serve Him.  My heartcry was “Father, if it is Your will to give me a lead, I will give my everything to perform it to your glory; but if it be Your will for me to commit my time to one of the causes my heart is burdened for, a calling you've placed upon my life, then I will joyfully and excitedly embrace any role you give to me!"    I meant it, every day I prayed it; until I finally saw the cast lists, and I realized that my hopes, my own dreams, were not in letters on that list. My prayers had been a mixture of pouring out my wishes and asking the Lord to grant my requests, knowing all the while that God’s will always prevails!

Here is a bit of what I wrote on Sunday afternoon: “In my past, I’ve learned to face my pride, my fears, my depression, and my negativity. But envy? It saddens me to think of how often it still hits me. How much I’ve compared myself to others, how often I’ve wished I could have their abilities or talents—and how very little I focus on what God has created me to be, what He’s given me to share with others! Like many, I still struggle with feeling insufficient,  unworthy and unwanted. To be completely open and honest, my inner vanity bug is kicking and screaming right now. Yet, I thank the Lord for the wisdom He grants when requested! It seems to me now that the most ineffective and inefficient person is the one who sits around, depressed, ungrateful, complaining and unwilling to take that constant dare to reach out to others and serve them exactly how God wants them to. And because of who I’ve been born again to be, by the power of the Holy Spirit ever living and breathing in me, and through the joy of the knowledge of Jesus’ freedom, I have overcome the vanity and the envy that eats away at my heart.  I take the stand against it. I have a choice today, and today I choose freedom. It’s not easy to conquer something, but it’s beautiful to live with the freedom of having conquered with Christ. Only then is the burden easy and the yoke light: when we come to the Father. And in coming to Him, we say ‘Your will be done’.  It will, and has, prevailed. I laugh to think of the inklings of thoughts I had immediately after I realized what this next year in theater would look like for me (and to others! *smack that bug*) : maybe I should’ve prayed harder for the roles I wanted, maybe I shouldn’t have so radically asked God to give me whatever role I could be serve Him in, and maybe if I hadn’t said I’d be grateful for a smaller part (meaning God wanted me to invest my time and efforts elsewhere), I’d have gotten a bigger role.  I honestly cannot believe how ridiculous my coming-and-going thoughts have really been; I don’t really know my heart until a challenging situation comes up, do I? But I am so grateful. SO grateful! I didn’t want to learn, I didn’t want to admit to anything, I didn’t want to be thrilled with what I’ve been given, not yesterday and not this morning. And I didn’t think I had the strength to search my soul, to ask God to purify it and then to really listen to what He was telling me. It is amazing me at this very moment that His mercy, so sweet and soft, is sharp enough to cut down these stubborn ice guards I’ve slowly built up….”

I wouldn't be honest if I said that I wasn't disappointed for a moment after seeing the cast lists (honestly, I was confused for a while!) The day was full of temptations to despair and worry and allow feelings of inferiority, insufficiency and even envy to creep in. But thank our merciful, beautiful Lord! Through His love, grace & convicting truth, and by the power of the Holy Spirit, I have been made to not only accept my new positions but to genuinely REJOICE in these perfect opportunities, the opportunities I've been praying for all along! I have been chosen as an Animal Choreographer for Peter Pan to help teach a group of beautiful girls and to share with them how amazing it feels to dance! I seriously cannot stop smiling today, as I think of how incredible it is that the mighty hand of God is working in my life! How wonderful is His love! And He's proven how He delights in the details.... I am the Ostrich? (*I ADORE birds!*) I get to dance? (one of my "favorite things"!) And speaking of the Sound of Music... not only am I a nun (which I have always aspired to be!),  I am also the Baroness Elberfeld (who, by the way, gives a one-liner an amazing raised-eyebrow expression to the Nazi Herr Zellar at the ball!)  I am thrilled beyond words. I’m still pretty sure that no one will really understand why or how I could be, but instead of allowing the enemy to plant nonsensical thoughts of confusion and embarrassment in my mind, I am allowing the Spirit to plant truth in my mind, and my soul had been constantly rejoicing in the beautiful knowledge of my Father’s hand at work in my life. I am embracing this new season with my whole heart: not because I have to, not because anyone expects me to, not out of pride or spite—no. Purely out of a heart that is filled to overflowing with gratitude for the One who gave His very life for me and still continues to give me gifts. Perfect, wonderful, unexpected delights, each and every day.

So,  while I may have been myopic in my character last year (“’Where?’, Miss Eshton?”), thanks to my awesome Father, I’ve got both eyes wide open (and in fact, Ostriches have the largest eyes of all land animals- the only creature to have eyes larger than they is the giant squid! “Who knew, right?”) !

Note: You know how I know this is all a “God thing”? I feel like I’m on caffeine when I’m not. I’m waking up feeling this way. And the feeling won’t go away. If there is such a thing as “spiritual caffeine”,  I’m on it. And I am loving it.

I am blessed, and I am overjoyed. Now the fun begins.

Homeschool Performing Art’s Sound of Music & Peter Pan 2013-2014….Let’s do this.

Tryout Day: Her Worries, His Worth

To all of you who were praying for my auditions for HPA's "The Sound of Music" on Thursday, thank you so so much! I definitely felt God’s hand at work throughout the entire audition. True,  besides the fun, the energy, the laughter, the amazing girls I met, the sheer delight I felt during the acting exercises, and the ease I had going into my monologue, there were moments when I was completely confused, moments when I just wanted to go home, and the ever-dreaded moment just before they called my name when I realized I was losing my voice and then couldn’t find the right key to sing my song in. I remember asking God, all day,  to be there with me and sing through me on that stage. I remember asking Him, when it was over, “Why? Why did my voice sound so awful, why didn’t I remember to breathe properly, why didn’t I sing very loudly, and why was I suddenly so nervous that didn’t express myself with the motions I was longing to act out?” I wondered if God actually didn’t want me to sing well. I wondered what was so wrong with me that while I can, in all modesty and honesty, sing with beauty and clarity and strength and an operatic power that actually gives me chills, surprising myself to the point of tears, whenever I sing listening to the soundtrack, playing the song on the piano myself, or even acapella—but somehow I cannot sing well with another person playing an instrument?  I wondered if I am just one of those people who aren’t cut out to sing in public. Then, during the long night after my audition, when I wanted to just sleep, I kept thinking on what I needed to do, what I needed to improve, what I needed to fix, what I needed to remember next time I sang, what I just needed to try harder at, what I had to do in order to get what I want. Yes.  That was what it all came down to. I recognized this—later than I should’ve—and I begged God to help me. I asked him to forgive me of my selfishness and my envy. I asked Him to take away my fears, my doubts, my anxiety that I couldn’t figure out how to shrug off, and the depression that was settling upon my soul once again. After a rather fitful night, I got up and went to work as usual, still finding that I couldn’t stop thinking about auditions. It frustrated me so much that I couldn’t fix whatever was wrong in my mind. So I prayed from the depths of my heart for God to do what I couldn’t, to take control, to do what He willed. And yet the thoughts kept coming. I’ve always believe that God wants only good things for His children, and that any thoughts or feelings that oppress or lead me to despair are not from Him but rather are temptations from the devil. The Holy Spirit does convict us of sin, and when we listen, leads us to repentance; but, the Lord does not desire that we would be downcast or anxious. After all, Jesus said “Do not be anxious about anything,” and “Do not let your hearts be troubled: neither let them be afraid.” The Bible also says that the Lord hates idols, which can be anything that we allow to inhabit the center of our minds or hearts, take our focus off of Him, making it to be held it higher esteem than our Heavenly Father. So I struggled with these thoughts. I admitted that my anxiety about auditions was becoming a very unhealthy and obsessive thought process, one that I did not want at all. Yet I was, and am still, unsure of how exactly to make the thoughts go away. I’ve asked the Lord the guard my heart and mind,  I’ve commanded the devil to flee from me, and I have turned to God’s truth for comfort and wisdom. And God is surely beginning to open my eyes to the truth.

The first thing he showed me was this. Friday night, my sister Becky, my friend Sarah and my friend Alexa Heeres all had a sleepover at the Heere’s home. In their house, I saw a plaque that read, “Faith makes things possible, not easy.”  I stared at it for the longest time, processing what this meant for me where I was at (It was a, “God, could this possibly be you speaking to me through this?” moment!). And the more I thought about it, it made sense. I had asked God to sing with me on stage? That didn’t mean that He would or that He wouldn’t because He was trying to teach me a lesson or something. He did sing with me on that stage. He was in every breath I breathed… which, in that 20 seconds, happened to be …well, only two.  Without Him, I would have been silent. Without Him, I would have forgotten the words. Without His voice within me, I wouldn’t have been able to picture each thing in the song in my head. And WITH Him, I was able to keep going, bad as I sounded, after I made a mistake (and looked to the piano lady for help!).   Maybe my voice wasn’t perfect. Maybe it was froggy and croaky because it was late and my throat was giving out on me. Maybe I could’ve tried harder and breathed deeper and sang every note unashamedly out instead of reservedly in. And maybe I just don’t remember exactly how my audition really went. But I know God was there. He gave me the strength to not only survive the entire 6 hours I had to perform and talk with people, but to thrive in the drama, the conversations, and the little joys that came and went throughout the night. 

I don’t make excuses, yet I attribute much of the confusion to exhaustion; but, there were in fact things I can practice on, such as taking deeper breaths, focusing on the people around me rather than my own worried self, and just truly relishing the freedom that I have to open my mouth in song, even if it is in front of fifty other people!  I have realized, through the mercy of our Lord, that He truly does give us good gifts. But God’s perfect idea of “good” is not necessarily what we would usually call “good”. My entire audition opportunity was good, the people were wonderful, much of the night was a blast! But as ugly as some of the other parts look in my memory, they were all good. God gave me that experience. He’s giving me the experience now of seeing what I need to work on, and relying on His strength to help me work on it. He’s telling me that even if I see no point in my mistakes or that any good could come of that audition, He has something good in mind. And there is one greater lesson He is teaching me, one deeper issue that I’ve been tied up in that He is untangling within me. And that is the question of my worth.

I am feeling incredibly unworthy. Yes, I’ve read in numerous places over the past week, heard it from some people, even sang it when there was a song about it on the radio:  I am unworthy, but Christ is worthy!  Indeed. But I’ve been worrying about myself. And I believe that I began to subconsciously make my audition into the turning point that determined who I really was, as if somehow, how well I could perform would define who I am. I’ve been asking, and I’ve been given answers. What makes me worthy? It’s not my looks or my talents or my wit or my personality or my interests or my relationships… and that’s the truth. My worth is not defined by how well I perform or how confident I am. It doesn’t matter if I stand out in the crowd or if others even listen when I speak. I can be walking out in God’s truth, following His commandments, loving Him and others with all my heart, serving, speaking, searching, praying, working, trusting, proclaiming His goodness to all…. but my worth is not found even in that. It’s not even about my becoming small so He can become bigger. He is already big! There’s nothing I can do to change who Jesus is!  Of course, I humble myself and magnify Him in my heart and in my life. Of course I need to surrender to Him, love and live for Him,  and in doing so show the world how great our God is!

But when it comes right down to it, Jesus is the One Who is worthy!

His worth is all that matters.

It is not me in Christ that defines my worth, but Christ in me that defines my worth. It is Christ’s worth, never my own worth, that defines who I really am. I still don’t know the explanation for it, but I believe it as the truth, and I hold to it as a promise my beloved Savior has made to me.

And tomorrow, I will wake up and begin the entire process of preparing for auditions again. And this time, may I always remember what I’ve learned. I will always keep my eyes turned upon Jesus, having confidence in His worth and in the knowledge of the freedom I’ve been given! I will have joy, because of Him! And I am SO glad that He loves me. 

Always.