A Quick Overview Of My Slow Return To Theatre

Last fall, I opened Instagram for the first time in probably a month, and saw an audition for a theatre about a forty-minute drive away that I didn't even remember following. I auditioned, I got a role, I had an amazing time.

 

Then a local dance teacher I've become friendly with gave me name to a local theatre production looking for a choreographer. They hired me, and I got to choreograph my first-ever full musical. It was a huge leap out of my comfort zone, but I felt so fulfilled and happy.

 

Then I got a job working behind the scenes in the theatre industry, which gave my body (and my bank account) the healing it so desperately needed. With my days in fast food (hopefully) behind me, I actually had enough energy to think, to daydream, to remember who I used to be before making a double double wrong felt like the end of the world.

 

Right before that job ended, I saw another theatre looking for a choreographer. This one was significantly farther away, but I had worked with them before and loved the environment and production they created. I emailed them and they were interested -- interested enough to agree to pay for my travel expenses.

At the same time, I had just interviewed for a similar behind-the-scenes day job at a different theatre. They work closely with the theatre I had been working at, and someone from there asked me to apply. I did, and got interviewed within three days.

Then I heard essentially nothing for a full week.

On the final day of the first job contract, I still officially had no job, despite the manager at the new theatre all but telling me they were going to hire me at the interview, despite two glowing references from people who worked at the new theatre, despite four good references from elsewhere.

The audition date for the potential choreography gig came and went. I had still not accepted, though I desperately wanted to. I was waiting for the job to be confirmed.

But finally, I could wait no longer. Rehearsals for the theatre show had already started, and I could not bear to leave them hanging. I emailed and told them I accepted the terms... despite not knowing where my next paycheque was coming from.

 

Less than an hour later, I finally received an email from the second theatre, offering me the job. I think that timing was not a coincidence.

 

Years ago, before college, before everyone died, before the world broke me, before the pandemic decimated live performance, I believed God had called me to dance, and I was determined to trust Him even when it didn't make sense.

 

And last Friday, for the first time since 2013, I think I did that.

Follow Where?

I'm starting to get restless.

I'm almost three years deep into a 'normal' job. And while I'm good at it and enjoy the actual work... I'm tired. It's that bone-deep exhaustion that I've learned should not be ignored. I only work one day this week because it's tech week for the show I'm in (we open Friday!), and I'm so excited to just... not wake up at 6am. I would turn in my notice this week if I could -- despite the fact that they just announced all employees would be making one extra dollar per hour during the summer.

Maybe it's because I'm in a show -- a rare occasion here in the desert. I know I'm not star material and maybe I never will be, but I am now more happy being a one-line character than I would have been five years ago. I keep thinking of Jesus' words, "Follow Me."

I want to. But where is He, that I might follow? And what must I leave behind -- my job that's paying our bills or the dream I've been clinging to for nearly three decades? Of course my bias/special interests say to leave my job and follow the dream, but is it too soon? I want to follow God's timing, but I don't know what that is. How can I follow a guide that I can't see or hear? He says things like 'love your enemies,' and 'bear witness to the kingdom of God' and 'repent,' but that doesn't tell me whether or not I should be leaving my job or if I should be pursuing this dream of mine.

I want to be self-employed somehow. I miss being able to set my own hours. Even at college, I had control over when I did things as long as I attended classes. Classes were only an hour and fifteen mintues. They were just a part of my day, not the whole entire day like a day job is.

My husband is self-employed now (though it's commission, and he's not 'big' enough yet to maintain a reliably sustaining paycheque), and I'm really kind of jealous. Kyrie is so close to done, so hopefully publishing (read: maybe a small income) is in the not-too-distant future, plus I have two dance film ideas that can hopefully happen by the end of this year, but I can't assume both of those will sustain us. There's no money in dance films unless those films bring in choreographer contracts.

The other day, I remembered for the first time in a long time how my dad, a self-employed contractor, has never lacked for work. Whenever he started getting to the end of his bookings, the phone would start ringing again and he'd suddenly be back to booking six to eight months in advance again. He did no advertising, but he never ran out of work. God always brought more contracts. And I wonder if that's what I -- what we -- need to do. I never realised till now how frightening it must have been at times to know how completely our family's lives were in God's hands, how the only reason my dad ever had work was because God brought it to him. It's completely possible -- I lived it. Everything I ever had as a child -- food, lodging, clothing, lessons -- were as a direct result of God's provision. But my dad is also a much more righteous person than I am. God has blessed him, a righteous man. But I -- I am not the good Christian I used to be. My mid-to-late twenties were a very dark time and I made some very poor choices in those years when I thought God had abandoned me and nothing mattered anymore.

I am less than a decade away from the age my dad was when he started his business. It's not too late. Maybe it's the perfect time. I am in a more calm place now than I was in 2019 when my mindset was 'theatre professional or bust'... and I almost quite literally busted. I pulled myself up by my own bootstraps for every audition, every gig, every piece of choreography, every show, and I almost literally died. The only thing that stopped the madness was the pandemic and even then it was years before I properly acknowledged that I was burnt out and that I needed to breathe in for a while without pressuring myself to create -- at least not at the level I had been.

Or maybe it's too soon. Knowing I have a neurological condition that sets me up to do things before thinking them through is making me paranoid that I'm missing something vitally important and I'd be rushing into things if I quit my day job now. There's also the fact that every time I even think about coming close to broaching this topic with my husband (because isn't a good wife supposed to discuss these kinds of things with her significant other?), he suddenly relapses back into the angry person who rages at me for hours over literally nothing and of course I have to put my life on pause and sideline all my exhaustion and all my needs until I can talk him into being a reasonable human being again.

Again... how on earth am I supposed to know? How am I supposed to follow a leader I can't see? How can I follow the timing of a clock that doesn't exist?

Music Day - Reality

Like any good Christian '90s kid, I grew up on a steady diet of Newsboys, Audio Adrenaline, and dc Talk on the radio (you know, back when 'Christian radio' was at least palatable). The thing is, when you grow up surrounded by something, you trade freshness for nostalgia.

This song was ubiquitous in my early childhood circles (so, church and home), to the point it was just part of the landscape, part of the air I breathed as a six-year-old. I was barely aware that I even knew of this song until over ten years later when I bought a Newsboys greatest hits album after attending one of their concerts on a whim. Even then, this song remained background noise -- just part of the culture that I still had one foot in.

The other day, though, I suddenly remembered the Newsboys existed and played this album off the cuff. This song stood out to me.

It's little secret that I've lived my life so far in a way very similar to the runaway in the song -- constantly out of money, constantly traveling/moving around and involved in odd-sounding activities that concern the people who feel some obligation to show concern for my well-being. Even in this song, the protagonist has performing arts-based aspirations and admits to being malnourished -- these could be subplots taken directly from my own story.

Runaway

Where's your head

Dreamers' dreams

Are grounded

In reality that comes from above

In this simple lead-in to the chorus that takes all of ten seconds, Steve Taylor deftly sneaks in a very powerful truth that we often forget -- the same God who created our dreams also created reality. Christians especially tend to think that dreams and reality are two separate (and mutually exclusive) things, and rarely (if ever) stop to realise that God is in charge of both. The same God who created the runaway dreamer created the reality around them, and therefore the dream will only make sense in God's timing.

This is something I've been pondering a lot for myself lately. I started exploring that in my Desert Rose post from a few weeks ago, and I feel this song continues the thought. For my entire life I've been pushing for more experience, more practice, more education, more opportunities for my art. And those aren't necessarily bad things -- in fact, personal development in the area of one's calling is the best way to make the most of the gift you've been entrusted with when it's really time to shine. But I was starting to get frustrated with how little was happening -- why I was still languishing in the back of the ensemble despite 97% of the directors I've worked with noting both my skill and my ability to learn things accurately and quickly (which is almost more important than pre-existing skill) -- why I'm living in a tiny dying town in the literal middle of nowhere with very few opportunities to practice, let alone learn more. I had worked so hard and invested so much, and none of it seemed to amount to anything. It was like my gift was being wasted. And my increasing age was only fueling the fire of frustration.

At the time I wrote the Desert Rose post, I prayed that if God really wanted me to be an artist; if He had truly called me to be a dancer, that He would provide opportunities, because I sure as heck wasn't finding any. For perhaps the first time in my life, I stopped trying to make stuff happen. I was just too worn out to do it anymore.

Last week a prominent figure in the tap dancing world who I auditioned for exactly once two and a half years ago messaged me completely out of nowhere saying she was just starting up a Zoom class that would be right around my level (based on what she was seeing on my Instagram) and would I be interested? She even readily negotiated a payment plan that worked for us. My husband agreed immediately. I don't even have to pay gas money to drive two hours to the nearest class -- all I'm paying is the tuition. This is exactly the kind of opportunity I've always dreamed of but either was too far away or didn't have a consistent enough income to support it.

Perhaps the reality is that I am called to dance after all... but I had to live in the reality that comes from above.

Now for the song itself.

The Newsboys' glory years were marked by a brightness in the drums and a freshness in the bass paired with melodies just catchy enough to be fun and not annoying. The Australian accents and Steve Taylor's unique (and brilliant) approach to song lyrics didn't hurt anything either.

For this song, Taylor and Furler peek into the letters of a runaway sending letters home to their parents, attempting to soothe their fears (read: keep them off their back) while subtly asking for money to fund their sketchy-sounding exploits (they may or may not have quite literally joined the circus). The thing with Steve Taylor's writing is it's almost funnier to read the lyrics in the liner notes than it is to hear them in the song. I'm very willing to bet that nobody else could write a serious song about God's timing and guidance and include lines like lent the money you sent me to the clown with the knife or could you find a better photo for the milk carton backs? and make it work. The pair also prominently features a line ripped directly old of a Baptist hymnal -- trust and obey; there is no other way (the hymn continues 'to be happy in Jesus, but to trust and obey'), mostly because it supports their point, but no doubt the chance to annoy all the anti-rhythm-section Baptists was a clincher. And I am very certain that no other band could have managed to pull off this song with the right mix of light humour and serious exhortation -- too much seriousness and the brilliant writing would have fallen flat. Too much lightness and the point would be gone (which would also have been a disservice to the writers).

The song is almost surprisingly fast. One doesn't notice it really until they near the ending, when the chorus repeats. It's a testament to the band's skill that the listener doesn't feel 'rushed.'

Musically, this is Newsboys in their prime. This is the sound and styling that made them CCM superstars and cemented their legacy. This song was a mega-hit in CCM in the mid/late-'90s, and it was still second to Breakfast, which appeared on the same album and may very well be the most well-known Newsboys song of all time (also probably holds the world record for 'most breakfast puns in one song'). It also features Taylor/Newsboys' trademark clapping section (this time a nearly a cappella repeat of the chorus accompanied only by clapping the rhythm).

Title: Reality

Artist: Newsboys

Album: Take Me To Your Leader

Year: 1996

iTunes here; YouTube here.

In the reality that comes from above

God is calling -- there's no greater love

It's His reality that welcomes us back...

NaNoWriMo Indecision

National Novel Writing Month is coming up. Is that a thing here still?

I'm not sure.

There are a lot of emotions surrounding NaNoWriMo this year. I haven't done it since 2016 -- and even then I didn't finish, for the first time since 2008 (too much homework, too much stress, was still processing/not over The Year of Hell -- I pretty well imploded that semester). I haven't had much for ideas really since 2014 (Kyrie). Even the fire for the old ideas still languishing in my notebooks and computer folders has largely died.

On top of that, my perennial writing buddy committed suicide last month. And NaNoWriMo is significantly less fun alone (never mind the grief involved...).

I want to honour her. A good way would be to keep writing, in her memory. I want to give her a cameo in this year's novel, but how, and where? Do I write the entire novel about her? A subplot? A passing glance in the fabric of the backstory?

Earlier this summer, as I was contemplating this year's NaNoWriMo, I had toyed with the idea of finally doing the sequel for one of my earliest stories -- it was a time travel story, and I had left space for a sequel (which I'd already sketched out at that time). The main character in that story was in fact loosely inspired by Brittney (who passed away four years after I wrote it, but not before reading and giving her approval to the rough draft), and I have yet to write anything in her memory. I still have all my notes ('all' = maybe half a page) for that sequel, but I don't trust myself to pull 50,000 words out of it. In my younger writing days, I could start with literally nothing more than a sentence and maybe two characters (not necessarily named) and get a decent novel out of it, but 2012 proved that I don't really have that ability anymore (that novel literally ended with multicoloured cows in a field singing karaoke. It was supposed to be a serious military drama). I need some kind of an actual plot idea, or at the very least a character voice (Kyrie came entirely out of a quarter-page character monologue that fell fully formed into my head one day. Even all my subsequent planning for Kyrie was written in that character's voice).

I don't trust myself to be able to pull off that sequel. I know that of course if I doubt myself I definitely won't be able to so instead I should just fling myself right into it without giving a care. The artist cannot put a brush to canvas doubting... (Milosz)

My other idea is a late 1950s theatre drama. I have three characters, but I don't know what the drama is, and that scares me. Five years ago, this would have been enough of a plot for me to start November with. But now, all I see is the terrifying blank space ahead.

Lately I've been fascinated by the modern-day parable. My last novel (2016) was that, and since then I've written a couple parabolic short stories as well. Not only does it give me sort of a direction to go in, it gives the story greater weight. The problem is I've run out of parables. I feel this blockage keeping me from both the sequel and the theatre drama -- I want to have a faint whiff of a parable somewhere in the background of my story this year, but I can't find the one for either of these stories.

If I'm honest, I don't really trust myself to write another good novel at all. Never mind the fact that my last novel, written in such a haze of stress and exhaustion that I literally do not remember writing it, is probably the best thing I've written next to Kyrie.

But I do feel like I need to write something this year. I took last year off of NaNoWriMo, but I think writing another novel is the next step in my slow healing. I haven't truly enjoyed writing since before the Year of Hell (2015), and I want to get back into it. I feel the time is right. But I've changed so much and I don't know if I really truly trust myself to be able to do this again.
It's just been so long...

Trust, Continued

As I mentioned around the end of last year, I was thinking a lot about trust.

It's a word my professors here use often -- 'trust yourself,' 'trust the process,' 'trust God,' 'trust your practice,' 'trust (teachers)' -- and I couldn't do any of it. Years of manipulation and emotional abuse had told me very clearly that nobody could be trusted. The decimation of everyone I ever cared about in 2015 led me to conclude that even God could not be trusted.

When you can trust nobody else -- not even God -- all you have left is yourself. This terrified me. I knew I would let myself down, but I had nothing else. So I trusted only myself, and if I screwed something up, I did what I had learned in childhood, the only way to maybe escape a tiny amount of the consequences of failure -- I beat myself up about it. (If you beat yourself up about it enough, sometimes the person you've disappointed/angered will be placated... Sometimes.) There was no forgiveness until there was improvement. Of course, this kind of pressure makes improvement almost impossible, but I knew no other way. To forgive myself for a mistake before I had seen improvement felt like accepting mediocrity. I have been overlooked and ignored and passed over my entire life because there is always someone better than me. Mediocrity is a death sentence. To accept it was unforgivable.

In the end, I could not really even trust myself, and I knew this. I kept letting myself down, but in the absence of any other viable options, I kept re-placing my trust in myself... knowing it was fruitless and I would end up frustrated. Trusting myself wasn't the ideal option, but it was the best option out of a very limited pool of choices.

This cycle wound me up so tightly that all I wanted was to make it stop. I wanted off the merry-go-round of constant failure. And the only way to stop failing is to stop trying...

I attempted suicide on 8 March. The knowledge that I could no longer trust myself took on another, very vivid, meaning.

By the end of the month, things had gone about as far as they could go. It was no longer a matter of if I was going to die, it was a matter of when. Something had to give. I could not trust myself, and I could no longer pretend that I could. I had to find someone.

At the beginning of April, I expanded my circle of trust to two -- myself, and a prof. I told him what was happening -- trusted this prof literally with my life. And then I trusted another teacher with the story. And then a counsellor. And then three friends. I could almost physically feel weight coming off my weary heart with every retelling of the story, every connection with someone who -- it turned out -- cared about me.

But trust isn't a switch that flips on and off. It's a habit. I had spent twenty years building a habit of not trusting anyone, of questioning everything anyone said (especially if it was nice) because they were likely to go back on it anyway, of figuring things out for myself because sooner or later those who said they'd help me would give up on me. There were moments now, acts of trust, but not a habit. I still didn't really believe any of these people who knew the story were in it for the long haul -- nobody ever was. I figured I might as well plan to keep carrying it myself, because eventually that was what was going to happen anyway. Twenty years of being used for sympathy had taught me that the phrase 'I'm here for you' has an expiry date.

I was trusting a select few now, but I was cautious. With my heart in such a fragile state, I could NOT afford to have my trust broken again -- it would mean almost certain death. They say to choose your friends well, but everyone looks good on the surface, How do you know who really will stick with you? Does any human even have that much patience?

Although the darkness I was in in March never really lifted to begin with, in September it made another violent assault, and at the end of October, its fury increased tenfold. I lived for weeks on the verge of complete (mental/physical) collapse. There were about five consecutive days where I would sit in the living room and wonder if I should call 9-1-1, if I would survive the next twenty minutes.

Trusting only in myself for so long means I can be very self-disciplined. Last school year I had begun to be particularly intentional about daily habits like dance and voice practice, eating healthy, and getting fresh air (most of these I was trying to do anyway, but last year I began to keep track of how much I was actually doing any of this). Upon returning to school in September, I returned to more or less that same routine -- practice voice, practice dance, walk to school and back, keep track of nutritional intake and make meal adjustments throughout the day as needed, at least attempt to go to bed earlier than 2am, doing all of these even when I really did not feel like any of it mattered to anybody.

After a while, I found myself thinking, 'if you do this (daily discipline mentioned above), you'll feel better.' At first a common retort was, 'no it doesn't. It never does.' But by the end of November I actually began to feel joy again -- for the first time in a long time. I distinctly remember bouncing around the kitchen one day, then suddenly asking, 'what am I so excited for?' I still don't know what I was excited for, but I decided not to question it. For the first time in literally years, I was happy.

And I realised that implementing all these little things, even when I didn't feel like it -- that was trust, on some level. That little voice saying 'you'll feel better' was onto something. I was trusting that maybe eventually it would result in something or mean something. It's fairly widely known that singing, dancing, fresh air, and good nutrition all improve mood from a scientific perspective... and over time, they actually do. They don't tell you that sometimes the effect is cumulative. I feel like that knowledge would help a lot of people, so here it is -- keep doing these things. Trust that the benefits come after consistent practice, not after one session.

Once that clicked in my head, suddenly a bad practice session was no longer cause for suicidal thoughts (I am not kidding -- a bad practice session would literally end with me writing a prototype suicide note. This was not an infrequent occurrence -- my attempt in March happened immediately after a frustrating dance practice). I was suddenly able to tell myself that one rough warmup did not mean my voice (or my body) was shot for the rest of the day -- and I was actually able to believe that.

Make no mistake -- everything is not perfect. I'm still reluctant to say it's even 'okay.' Trusting all that practice to actually result in improvement sometime down the line is still difficult, especially in singing. I still feel so far behind to begin with, and because I was in such a dark place for most of the semester, my singing suffered greatly. As a result, so did my performance. As a result, so did my self-confidence. As a result, so did my professors' trust in me to take on any responsibility at all onstage. I may never get another speaking role at this college (or possibly anywhere) because I showed very clearly this semester that I do not deserve one. And as much as it pains me to know this: that is absolutely fair. That whole downward spiral this semester makes singing so much harder now, with all those horrific performances in my very recent past and my instinct to beat myself up -- to only forgive when improvement is made -- still so strong. I'm trying to take solace in knowing that the concept of 'trusting' -- in the way my teachers/professors describe it -- makes more sense now.

I only hope it isn't too late to do anything with this understanding -- that I haven't managed to sink my career for good.

Dance and Trust

Remember a couple weeks ago when I was finishing my NaNoWriMo 2016 project and I came up against my inability to trust God with my life and it hampered my ability to finish the story because I'm spiritually not there yet?

Yeah, so, it happened again. For years I've been trying to choreograph this ballet piece -- since even before I lost my faith in God. I've worked on this thing in fits and starts. I've made a Pinterest board with pictures of costumes, poses, and corps formations. I've journaled eleven pages and counting of looseleaf. I've scrapped at least three versions.

This week I've been nibbling at it again and this is the farthest I've gotten on it. I tripled the amount of dancers and finally a storyline began to take shape. The individual steps aren't there yet, but the mood progression is there now, and that's half the battle sometimes.

That storyline follows a suicide survivor alone with her grief. Guilt, shame, frustration, and anger (personified by the other dancers) dog her every move, until finally she decides to trust God with the situation though she doesn't understand it.

Clearly this last phase is the part I'm sticking at. The part I have never gotten to -- the part where the protagonist trusts. And it's for the same reason I got stuck in the novel -- the character must trust God, but I have not. How can I believably take a character where even I emotionally fear to tread? My imagination can take me a lot of places I will never be in real life, but it balks when asked to picture what trusting God would be like. My experience with trusting God is equal to the experience of betrayal. You pray for a child's life to be spared. The child dies. How do you respond to that? How do you look at the God who let this happen and say, 'yes, I will still trust Your plan?'

If Society Could Change One Thing...

Do you want to help people who are struggling with mental illness, depression, grief, suicidal thoughts? Like, actually help them, without simply posting a hashtag that means LITERALLY nothing?

I'm serious. It's relatively simple.

It's this: don't ever say, 'you can come talk to me' or 'if you need help, call/text me' unless you REALLY mean it. Before you say this to ANYBODY, consider the possibility that we will actually take you up on it -- that one day, your text tone is going to go off at 2.36am and it's going to be that one person saying, 'hey, can we talk?'

If you are honestly not going to respond in that situation, bite your tongue. Don't make that offer.

See, the reason a lot of us don't reach out for help is because we've heard this before and we know it means nothing. People have said, 'hey, if you ever need anything, let me know,' but then when we did contact them because we needed someone, they didn't reply, or -- worse -- blew us off. (I personally am willing to give you a few minutes or even an hour or so because I don't expect everyone to have their phone on their person 24/7, but being blown off has no excuse. It means you read my text and decided I wasn't worth it.) It's hard for us to figure out who actually means it and would stay up all night for us if necessary and who's just saying it 'to be polite.'

Look -- I don't want your politeness. I live in Canada. I have politeness up the wazoo. I want your actual care and concern.

Don't say it if you don't mean it. Even if it's awkward not to say it. DO NOT say it if you don't mean it. If everyone lived like this (not saying things they don't really mean), it would ultimately mean that the depressed/suicidal people in your life will be able to be more willing to reach out to someone because then they will know that when people say this phrase they mean it. Don't contribute to the negative experiences. Don't be the last person to break their trust in humanity. Don't be the last bad experience they have before their final experience of life.

From experience: it takes an astronomical amount of courage to even go to one person for help -- no matter who it is. Even if it's your best friend. I don't know the actual statistics, but I would venture to guess that most people only attempt to contact one or two people before they get discouraged and make a permanent decision (if you know what I mean). I contacted exactly one person. I trusted that one person to recognise the danger I was in and get me the help I needed. In other words -- I trusted that one person literally with my life. I had only enough courage in my proverbial gas tank to contact one person. It used the last of my mental energy. He had to take over from me. Thankfully he did, but if he had blown me off, I wouldn't have contacted anybody else. I wouldn't have had the courage or energy to contact anybody else and I would be dead right now.

Before you say 'let me know if you need anything,' consider this: Are you willing to hold this person's life and death and their entire future in your hands one day when you least expect it?

If not, don't say it.

It's a small thing. But if everyone lives by this principle, it will change the complexion of society enough to give depressed and suicidal people a greater chance at life.

Too Good To Be True

Written 24 January 2017, 12.55am.

A common observation by one of my college profs is that I 'fight' a lot. Not 'fight' as in 'make trouble/argue with people,' but 'fight' as in 'struggle.' Multiple profs in my program have noted that I'm stubborn and passive-aggressive. But it wasn't until Christmas break that I began to figure out why. Over the break, I was talking with a friend and somehow over the course of conversation the thought came to me: 'I'm scared it's too good to be true.'

I've loved music and dance all my life. The theatre has always drawn me. I've always loved stories. But I also grew up in a Baptist church, where the performing arts were Absolutely Forbidden (except hymn-singing and the annual Sunday School Christmas skit). Very early on my natural empathy for people (don't laugh) and my ability to memorise and understand the Bible (relative to my age) convinced people -- including myself -- that I would grow up to be a missionary.

I was okay with that -- excited, even. I loved hearing stories of other missionaries and I thought 'wouldn't it be so cool to be able to lead people to Jesus?' This was something on my radar well into my teen years, although I wasn't so pretentious as to decide exactly where I was going. I was content to wait on God for that.

In my mid-teens, performing made a resurgence in my life. It gained a further hold when I went to college and found myself almost accidentally swept into the musical theatre program. I loved every single second of it. I've made posts on this blog to that effect. But even as I was pursuing the performing arts and even as I was justifying my degree to my Christian acquaintances by saying, "The art world is so dark -- it's a mission field too," and even as I was telling myself I was training to be a more effective light in the darkness, I was scared. Not of the darkness -- there was so much of that around me I was more or less used to it. Rather, I was scared that at any moment God would snatch the performing arts -- my deepest love and often my only solace -- away from me, plop me into a 9-to-5 office job, and forget about me.

I knew God uses the arts. I've seen Him do it. There is no doubt in my mind that God loves the arts. But I had trouble realising (or perhaps believing) that maybe... maybe I was one of them. Maybe the one thing I longed for the most was also the very thing God had created me for. I knew God does need artists, but as much as I wanted to be one of them, I couldn't bring myself to believe that maybe He wanted me to be one of them too. To think that God might have actually wanted me in the performing arts was too good to be true. So I tried to ruin it for myself and get my no-doubt-impending failure over with as quickly as possible. I have almost succeeded.

I was so scared of having it taken away from me that I began to self-sabotage. I far overloaded the fall 2016 semester with classes and then added a couple fairly sizeable creative projects with deadlines on top of that. Every time I practiced voice, I would almost subconsciously do exactly the same thing as before, and then complain that I was not improving (this, I think, was at least part of the 'fight' my professors were referring to -- they kept telling me what to do to improve, and I kept not doing it). I started turning in half-done papers and skipped more classes in the last two weeks of the semester than I ever had in my entire education up to that point. I absolutely stopped trying in dance class. During voice recital/performance/finals week (when I should have been sleeping the most for the sake of my voice) I stayed up for 65 straight hours working on four major projects for three classes. My vocal master class prof straight up told me after the final dress rehearsal for the class final performance, "Go home and go to bed," to which I replied, "I can't." I wanted nothing more than to do exactly as he said, but I had a presentation to research and create before 8.30 the next morning -- a presentation that would have already been done if I hadn't overcommitted myself so badly elsewhere. I was texting my best friend back home things like, 'would it really matter to anybody if I killed myself?' -- texting her these things because I knew she was too far away to stop me. I was in a complete tailspin, and it was pretty much self-inflicted.

I fought my professors' advice and/or help at almost every turn, even though they probably wanted to see me improve just as much as I did. But I couldn't believe that might be the case. I couldn't bring myself to trust them, and I certainly could not bring myself to believe that maybe God wanted me here, in the arts, in this program, developing my skills. I kept telling myself the professors were only investing any time at all in me because I was spending money to be in their classes. After all -- that's all I've ever been good for, right? As for God, I had long since given up on His love for me.

So I subconsciously kept myself from doing what I wanted more than anything, so that God wouldn't have to break my heart again. If my life was going to get screwed over again, I was going to be the one doing it. I didn't need the church or my relatives or God breaking my heart anymore. I started breaking my own heart, berating myself on their behalf, to save them the trouble. I told myself everything that everyone else had told me for all these years: 'you're only worth something if you have a good job and make a lot of money,' 'you're annoying,' 'you're in the way,' 'nobody likes you,' 'nobody wants you around,' 'nobody asked you,' 'we don't need you here,' 'who said you could talk?' 'you can't do anything right,' 'maybe it's time to give up.' After all, even God's church gave up on me -- telling me, however, implicitly, that God doesn't want artists.

And I believed all of it. I believed that this love for the performing arts and this tiny seed of talent that I did have meant nothing, that God had simply put them in me to confuse me and to make it hurt more when His true purpose for me -- which, obviously, would probably include an office job and many early mornings and no alone time whatsoever -- was revealed. It wasn't until this semester (note that it's still only January) (EDIT: It was January when I wrote this, although many of the sentiments remain the same now, in May) that I began to wonder if maybe there was a reason He built this into me. Maybe He wants me to be a performing artist. But I'm too scared to believe it. It seems too good to be true.

Music Day - Crushing Hand

"God is in the business of throwing us curve balls, because His aim is to form the image of Christ in us.  He will do it by whatever means it takes. When I fear this process, it is because I don't really believe that He loves me. After some thirty-two years of being a Christian, I am only beginning to see just how much He does. His hand can crush, yet He chooses to lay it gently upon us."
        ~ Terry Scott Taylor, 2002 (Full interview here.)

Over the past year I have written and not posted more than I have written and actually published. There are many posts in my drafts folder full of frustration and anger and pain -- my personal writings even more so. I've begun to forget how much you readers actually know of the past two years and how much was written but never published here.

Suffice to say the last two years were horrendous. Death on every side, divorce on every side, woundedness, broken-heartedness, and just plain old life. By April 2015, I had completely given up on God, although the aforementioned things would continue well into the year 2016. I believed God existed, but I absolutely did not believe He gave one single crap about me or my breaking heart. And I believed this -- doggedly, relentlessly -- for two years (although I believed it in some milder form or another much longer than that).

At the very end of last semester I had a conversation with the director of my program -- ostensibly about singing, but very quickly it turned into the spiritual, and how frustrated I was with God. How I felt He hated me or at the very least had turned His back on me.

"Why do you think He doesn't care about you?" he asked.

Suddenly the answer I kept giving to that question -- 'just look at the past two years, do you think it matters to God if my heart lives or dies?' -- seemed inadequate. Lacking an alternative answer, I spread my hands and shrugged.

"He wouldn't care about everyone else and not you," he said. "You're not that special." (Possibly the strangest word of encouragement I've ever received.) He continued, "Kate, I guarantee He cares about you." He went on to talk about how he's seen God's hand in his own life, despite his own difficult circumstances at times. I hung on to every word. Maybe something here would connect. Maybe this thing I so badly wanted to believe and couldn't would finally make sense.

It didn't -- not immediately. I don't know that it ever will completely. But the conversation as a whole -- and my own inability to satisfactorily answer his gentle questions about my position -- percolated in my mind over Christmas break. What if I was holding onto an unnecessary amount of bitterness? What if -- maybe -- God still did notice I existed?

The thought chipped away at me. I opened my angry mind a tiny crack to a possibility that I hadn't allowed myself to entertain in a very long time. What if -- maybe -- God didn't hate me?

This is where I am now. There's still a ways to go -- I'm still not entirely convinced He loves me, but the fact that I'm questioning the idea that He hates me is much closer to the idea that He cares about me than I have been at any point since December 2014.

To trust this silent God still seems like insanity. He is so unpredictable and He is so withdrawn and He is so, so quiet. But people, artists even, who have gone before me into this blind trust of the same Being -- people like Terry Taylor or like my program director -- continue to commit their fragile human hearts to Him decade after decade. Is it enough for me to trust their long-term experience of Him as ultimately good and loving and follow their example?

I do not yet have the courage to sing every line of this song and mean it. But I appreciate the sentiment -- and I can identify with the struggle in it.

Title: Crushing Hand
Artist: Lost Dogs
Album: Nazarene Crying Towel
Year: 2003
iTunes here; YouTube here.

You know my name, wound me
You know my frame, heal me
You lay Your crushing hand
Your mighty hand
On me gently

Do what You must and save me
I'm in the dust, now raise me
Lord, I believe, help my unbelief...

Acoustic guitar with heartfelt poetry and the harmonies of Terry Scott Taylor and Derri Daugherty (of The Choir). What's not to like?

Fear and Trust

Trust. Fear. Courage.

The latter two terms have been themes on this blog lately. My life since my cousin died has been consumed by fear -- fear of someone else dying. Fear of leaving. Fear of staying. Fear of creating anything in case it sucks. Fear of myself. Fear of others. Fear of God -- what if He kills someone else?

Courage -- I've written about it before, but I have not lived with a single speck of it. As mentioned before, I have created absolutely nothing since my cousin died. I lost NaNoWriMo this past year for the first time EVER. National Choreography Month is in less than a week and I don't have a single plan. I listen to music and I don't see the dancers anymore. I go places and I don't feel the stories anymore. It's like my soul died when she did. And now I'm just stuck in this meaningless limbo called life... this driving to the grocery store and back, this waking up at 8am and eating oatmeal, this sitting in front of my computer and refreshing Facebook because I have literally no idea what to write for any of my papers. How much can you force creativity? I had points before my cousin's death where I thought I was, but now I look back and think, you weren't really forcing it -- you were just complaining about 'lack of inspiration' because then people are impressed by your dedication to making art anyway.

Trust -- how in the actual world do you trust a God who lets a child die in the face of all the prayers for her life? How do you trust a God who claims to hear and bring comfort yet leaves you in the lurch for two years? How do you trust God when His very people turn against you and tell you you are not wanted or even needed?

I can't get out of this black hole called my life unless I trust Him -- but to trust this unpredictable, distant God with my already-broken heart is insanity. What if He crushes it even more, until it's mere powder, carried on a cruel wind? Is trusting Him with my pathetic life really any better than my pathetic life now? On the other hand, is this crippling fear of what more He will do to me justified? Is it holding me back from something good?

But how do you trust a God who is not averse to letting people die?

Rock Climbing, Art, and Mediocrity

Originally written 30 January 2014.

Art. God. College. Calling. People. Knowledge. Family. Dance. Engage.

A couple of the buzzwords in my head lately. There are others: isolation, depression, why?

I know God doesn't have to answer to me, but if I don't know the point of being at college, why bother being at college?

In chapel the other day, the speaker (the president of the college) was using rock climbing terms as his metaphors. One was 'dyno,' or 'dynamic movement,' which is when the climber leaves his three-point hold on the rock to leap up to the next hold. Sometimes the only way for the climber to progress any further up the rock is to let go, push off out of his other holds in a leap up to the next. Obviously that parallels life, but what is the hold that I'm leaping for? It would be stupid to let go without at least seeing the next hold (if not any further)... isn't it? I don't know.

The more I read from artists and about artists, the more I see the theme that God has entrusted artists with something he does not entrust to many: I don't feel I know enough about this yet to be able to tell exactly what, but it seems to have something to do with seeing and giving grace to a world starved for it, something to do with drawing the laity into a deeper communion with God and each other, something almost kind of like prophecy -- warning sometimes and providing hope sometimes. It's a high responsibility and I don't even know where to start handling it yet. Perhaps this is why some of the greatest art in history has come from Christians -- such responsibility can't be managed without full reliance on God. Art without God so easily gets stilted and hollow (or, nowadays, commercialised), and a world awash with that sort of 'art' degrades the whole idea of art -- even good art.

Another word that was used in the 'rock climbing chapel' was 'engage.' Engage with business, engage with science, engage with sports, engage the arts, engage the world. Engage with the arts -- how? I'm at best a mediocre dancer, I'm not training 60 hours a week like the pros do, and I'm not even healthy enough to dance for very long or very well. But to engage in the arts would mean I would have to be one of the best. I'm already too old for this. To train myself to that level where I'm even on the art world's radar... that would be the next thing to impossible. I would go crazy just trying to reach that level, never mind actually trying to maintain it once I'm there.

I've been settling back on these excuses, rationalising that no-one will ever see my dancing anyway because it's not suggestive enough for the world's stage. But this is exactly what I rail against all the time in Christian music -- this mediocrity, this sense of, 'well, I'm good enough... I'm better than the rest.' But if I won't stand for that in music made by Christians, how dare I stand for that in dance done by Christians?

All these excuses -- what am I afraid of? The work that will go into it? Actually succeeding?

Music Day

I've been listening to this song for a week. In a week where the radical shifts forthcoming in my life are threatening to strangle me, this song has been comforting me in a way not much else is. The other night I fell asleep repeating that word to myself -- Changeless, changeless... It was the only glimmer of anything I could focus on that didn't try to crush me with the pain of knowing I might never dance ballet again. My Father in Heaven, who holds my life in His hand, is changeless.

Title: Changeless
Artist: Terry Scott Taylor
Album: A Briefing For The Ascent
Year: 1987
Label: Frontline Records
iTunes here; YouTube here.

Betting The Farm (Or Boat...)

So the other day I was griping to a friend (he wouldn't say it like that, but that's what I was doing) about how decidedly not supportive my family is about this whole dance thing.

It's really frustrating because most of them are Christians as well. They understand my faith. They know God, and how great He is. Yet they think I'm crazy when I tell them I'm just going with what God is telling me and have no 'serious,' 'logical' plan for the future outside of just going where He leads me.

Um, what gives? I want to grab these people by the shoulders and get right up into their personal space and say, "Don't you trust God?!" I mean, He created the entire universe, He keeps all of our hearts beating even now, He created me for His purpose and for all my life you've been encouraging me to find out what God wants me to do and pursue that and now that I have, you tell me it's stupid? Do you know what you're saying? You're telling God He doesn't know what He's doing.

Anyway, so I was griping about all this to my friend and I believe somewhere in there I said, "So right now I'm just kind of betting the farm that this is what God wants and giving everything to that. Either I'm acting on my trust in Him or I'm completely crazy."

And he said, "It's like when Noah built the ark. He spent a hundred years in the desert building this huge boat and everybody else probably laughed at him and teased him and thought he was crazy. And then they all died and Noah lived."

That shut me up. And believe me, once I start ranting, that's no small accomplishment.

For The Glory Of God

The other day I was thinking -- as I usually do -- about this whole dance thing that, by now, I'm nearly 100% certain God wants me to do.

I say nearly 100% not because I've had some kind of elaborate vision with angels and harps and clouds and a big booming voice telling me that it is my purpose to dance. I say nearly 100% because over the past month and a half I've noticed little things that, taken together, seem so far to confirm that this is God's will.

The more of those little things I see, the more I work on choreography and formations and everything. It's actually starting to snowball now. And it's delightful to watch.

However, one thing that has always been in the back of my mind ever since the birth of this idea years ago was 'how?'

How can dance -- an art form which is so open to misinterpretation -- be very obviously glorifying to God and no one else? How am I going to arrange this so it can be taken seriously? The whole concept could easily come across as dorky if not extremely professionally produced from the outset. How am I going to arrange this? How am I going to make it less of a drastic leap from the 'traditional' dance people go to see, but not so traditional that it's boring? Or, put differently, how am I going to 'sell' this concept -- both to the dancers I need to perform in it and to the audiences watching it?

But while I was thinking about all that the other day, God brought a thought to my mind.

If I have said I will dance to the glory of God, and it seems, by the grace of God, that He has called me to do it, won't He also provide the audiences He has in mind, the ones who need to see it?

In other words, why am I worrying about doing this all on my own strength? If God truly has called me, won't He make it all work out? Maybe not immediately, but He will work it according to His plan, right?

The thought stunned me.

Now that I write it in a blog post it all seems rather anticlimactic. But it was a huge realisation -- in fact, it still is. How could I have said that I had surrendered this whole dance idea to God if I was still trying so hard in my mind to 'make it work' by myself, with my own human logic?

Now I have to break the habit of trying to make all the logistics work in my mind before really committing to it. I have to make a new habit of committing to it, doing the work that I can -- the choreography, the practice, the notation -- now and leaving the rest up to God. I have to surrender the reception it'll get from my friends and family and the 'public' to Him and just create the dances. He can't bless it if I won't let Him have it.