this. just. messed. me. up.

This girl is 20 years old.

At the Lord's leading she moved herself to Uganda.

She has since adopted 13 children who simply had no one taking care of them.

And I wonder...as much as I talk...

would I ever actually have the courage to do it.

Glinda the Good Witch

For those of you who are still excited to read about The Wizard of Oz (Sarah and Sue Dub) here's little bitty Chloe...

This tiny little sprig of a thing was our Glinda. The kid came to auditions and did a fabulous job reading. She's 62 years old and stuck in an 8 year old body. We had her read for Glinda in the auditions and for some reason, every time she read Glinda, she read it with a British accent. She has this huge mass of curly hair on top of her head and looked and sounded just like Hermione. During auditions I said, "Chloe do you like Harry Potter?" She said yes and I said, "Oh, that's why you sound like Hermione." I must have hurt her feelings because she looked at the floor and wouldn't lift her head up. I said, "That's a good thing kiddo. Most kids your age can't talk with an accent like that." She smiled, but the look on her face made it abundantly clear that she had no idea what I was talking about. So I asked her to read it without an accent. She couldn't do it. For some reason, in her mind, that is what Glinda sounded like, and nothing was going to be able to get her to say those lines any differently. That being said, it fit the part incredibly well and we didn't even question whether or not to give it to her.

The day we passed out parts, she looked incredibly dejected. I was shocked, thinking that most little girls would want the princess role, getting to be all dolled up in a big pink dress. But Chloe was clearly not content. I went over and talked to her and told her about how she had a lot of lines and even a solo and she looked at me and said very seriously, "Oh. I've never sung by myself on stage before." With her extremely matter of fact tone of voice she might as well have closed the script, handed it back to me and walked out of the theatre. I realized that she was already convinced that once she told me that, she wouldn't have the part anymore. So I explained to her that there's a first time for everything and she should be excited that this would be her first solo. To which she said, "But there's going to be people here." I pretty much just laughed and walked away. She continued to look disgruntled though and as we were doing the script read thru we finally were approaching her first line. I said, "Chloe get ready. Your part is coming up." When it was her turn to read her first line she raised her hand and said, "I just need to say something...I really wanted to be a munchkin." We did our best to explain to her that she would probably like this better, but truth be told, at the end of the day I don't think it really mattered to her whether she was a munchkin or the good witch.

Chloe was one of those kids that would get the giggles. I mean out of control, unstoppable, contagious giggles. Most of the time, it was pretty funny. She always had a question and you always had to pay attention to where she was because she'd become a munchkin in a hot second if you didn't keep your eye on her and remind her that she had a pretty important lead role and she needed to play it.

One day I was trying to block one of the munchkin scenes and I had placed every kid exactly where I needed them to be and said, "DON'T MOVE AT ALL." I turned my back for just a couple of minutes to work with Dorothy and by the time I turned back around, munchkins were everywhere and they were all bent crooked, swinging one knee back and forth and Chloe said, "Look Miss Jen...we're doin' the Stanky Leg." If you don't know what that is, youtube it. To look around and see Glinda spearheading a munchkinland rendition of the Stanky Leg was, well...pretty hilarious.

For such a tiny little thing, the girl knew how to make a point. She was tougher than you would have ever guessed and when one of the boys had an issue staying out of the girls' dressing room, Chloe took it upon herself to handle the situation. And I'll just say this...he never went within ten feet of it after that. She was also one of the more dramatic in the group. In her bio in the program she wrote that she "loved camp because it gave her the opportunity to experience the pain and drama of millions."

No better place in the world for that girl to be than on a stage.

Monday's Fabulous Moment

In a nutshell:

Finding out that my car's emergency brake doesn't really work as well as it should.

The End

I love cellos.

I don't know what it is about them...but I just love that sound.

One of these days I'll get back...

Lately, it seems like a lot of my mind's attention has been on NYC. With friends coming and going and me all wrapped up in my theatre bubble the way I used to be I haven't been able to help but to think of all the fun memories I have there.

The first time I went I was 8 years old. My grandma took my cousin and me and we stayed with the family of a friend of hers. Getting to do New York the way people who live there do was pretty amazing although I don't remember as much of it as I wish I did. It's funny the little things you remember though. I remember being at the top of the World Trade Center towers. It was 1993 and one of the buildings had just been bombed. I remember looking from the one we were standing in, into the hole of the one next to it. Les Miserables must have been on Broadway because I remember seeing the famous face of that little girl on buildings everywhere and my grandma pointing to it and saying she wanted to take us to see that show. I don't remember having any knowledge of Broadway or real theatre. And I know I told her I didn't want to see it. That sad face scared me. How much I wish I hadn't said that... I remember my grandma taking us both to the Gap and buying us each a new outfit for school and feeling so excited to wear that on the first day.

The next time I went was my junior year of high school and it was without a doubt one of the most fun weeks of my life. My friend Rob and I ran all over the city, usually without a chaperone. I'll never forget heading down some back alley as it started pouring down rain, completely starving, and walking into a random deli. I swear it was full of Mafia members and the minute we stepped through the door every head of every huge man in the place turned and stared at us. We were scared to stay, but more scared to leave. So we bought a brownie, ate it quickly and scurried out, checking behind us every few steps to make sure we weren't being followed. That trip was where all of my Broadway experiences started. I slept through Music Man, was completely taken with Kiss Me Kate and cried through The Lion King. I still cry every time I hear Endless Night.

After that trip I had trips with my mom and trips with my dad. For awhile there I was going multiple times a year. I spent hours in Central Park. I was there the May before Sept. 11th and the June after. I saw The Producers, 42nd Street, Hairspray, Little Shop of Horrors, Movin' Out, Cabaret...and who knows what all else. I won front row tickets to Wicked with Kristin Chenoweth, Eden Espinosa, Joel Grey and Norbert Leo Butz. I made it to FAO Schwartz a couple of times and remember walking up to the door on my last trip, so excited, only to read a sign on the door that said it had gone bankrupt. I've eaten so much greasy pizza that I've probably put forced myself into an early grave with it. I road tripped it with some of the best women in my life.

I've been there with some of my favorite people in the world and there's just something about the experience that makes your relationships stronger. Something about the bigness, the busyness that connects you with the person you're there with, isolates you as you realize that without them you'd just feel really lonely in a big, beautiful city full of life.

Anyway, as boredom drew me into blogging, that's what was on my mind. It won't be anytime soon, but maybe one of these days, I'll get back...

I'm just a big, messy closet...

"The heart is hopelessly dark and deceitful,
a puzzle that no one can figure out.
But, I, God, search the heart
and examine the mind.
I get to the heart of the human.
I get to the root of things.
I treat them as they really are,
not as they pretend to be."
Jeremiah 17:9-10 (The Message)

God...searching our heart. Our hopelessly dark and deceitful heart. Our Lord and Father...examining our mind. The One who created everything thing we see and everything we don't see...not allowing us to pretend any longer, but calling things what they are. Treating them for what they are.

It's painful.

Left to our own devices, we are all dark. Without hope. We are all deceitful.

When I started my journey to truly understanding this, to seeking Truth, not truth, I thought that the decision to start that journey would be the hardest part. Subconsciously, somewhere I believed that once I stepped out into faith to make that decision God would just be there to cradle me through the process, changing my heart quickly and painlessly. It seems crazy, but it must be what I believed, because it's how I responded. If you ever wonder what you truly believe, look at your response when something defies your expectations.

But God gave me this picture...

A closet. A big, messy closet.

And it helped me to understand.

Because here's the thing, if our heart is like our closet, just big and messy and full of stuff, most of us all go through the same process to clean it out. We pull almost everything out. And when you pull all that junk out and it's laying on the floor outside the door, you realize you've got a far bigger mess than you even thought. Sometimes, in the beginning, you're still feeling on top of the world and ready to take on the mess. But as you start putting little things away, back where they belong, you realize that there are things you never knew were there in the first place and things you had put there so long ago and then just forgot about. The longer you stare at it, it seems that somehow things are getting messier rather than cleaner. At least before it was contained, but now it's all out in the open...and something has to be done with it.

There are 3 options:

Toss it all back in. It won't go back in the same place it was before, but it will be a mess just the same. And you'll be a little more aware of all the things that are in there that you need to get rid of, but decide to just deal with that later. Hiding it...a dangerous place to find yourself.

Or, you could leave it all out, exactly where it is. A mess, for anyone and everyone to see. A mess for you to constantly be reminded of. A mess that if not attended to will get pushed and shoved around because it's in the way of everything else in your space.

Or...you can just keep going through the process. Piece by piece until everything is cleaned back up and back where it belongs.

It's what God does with our hearts when we allow Him into that mess. He helps us sort through, decide what to keep and what needs to be thrown out. What needs to be given away. What needs a little TLC before being put back in its place. Where we need to put things when we put them back in so that everything can be seen, and everything has its place.

He will not bail out on the process. And we shouldn't either. It's going to feel a lot messier before it feels cleaner, but the polishing will happen and your heart will shine again.

"...work out your salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure."
Philipians 2:12-13 (NASB)

The High Cost of Friendship

Read it. Ingest it.