Another Goodbye, Another Hello

Outside the stage door after Boeing Boeing last night

"In my mind's eye, you take me hand, we walk through foreign lands, the foreign lands of life."

-dc Talk, "Mind's Eye"


We are getting ready to move--again.

After trying and failing once before, after gaining a lot of practical acting experience in New York and Tulsa in the five years since then, and after facing my terror and memories of my past failure and going through the audition process again, I have been accepted into a graduate degree program to earn my Masters of Fine Arts in Acting.  I will start at the University of Alabama this fall--it's like a dream come true for me.

I love adventure.  My dad told me once that he thought I was the most adventurous person in our family.  When I was kid, I remember lying in bed, dreaming about traveling the world.  Chris, my teammate in life, is a fellow adventurous soul.  He likes pushing himself to the precipice of his abilities all the time.

But adventure comes with its downside.  And one of those downsides is loneliness.  And I can see it coming ahead of me, looming large over my life right now.  And the overwhelming task of packing up and moving an apartment.  And starting over.

"Who is this coming up from the wilderness
leaning on her beloved?"
-Song of Songs 8:5

In the last couple of days, I started realizing that the weight of the unknown was getting heavier than I could carry.  I also realized that I had been holding back on "casting my burden" onto Jesus by talking to him about it.  So I started praying.  And it helped, so much.  He met me, in the way that only he can.

But I'm going to miss Tulsa.  I am going to miss the community that's been forged here.  It will be hard to leave, and it will be hard to step into the unknown once again.

Goodbye to afternoons at Mary Beth's, goodbye to espresso bar shifts with Seth, goodbye to dinners at Cathy's, goodbye to so many other people and experiences that have shaped me and captured my heart.

I went to a play last night--Theatre Tulsa's Boeing Boeing--where I got to see my friend, Cody McCoy, onstage again.  Cody's brilliant onstage, especially in roles like the awkward but sincere Robert Lambert, so this was a treat.  Before the show, the theater's president of the board, who was also my director in Oliver! in March, told us about their upcoming season.  They've picked some great shows, and it was weird to hear my actor friends next to me talking about which shows to audition for.  Things here in Tulsa will continue on, and my friends will continue on with them, but my path is diverging.  And it's strange.  I am headed into I know not what.

We still have two and a half more months in Tulsa, but it's like in the last week or two, the angle of the treadmill I'm walking on has increased, or like I am starting into the foothills of a mountain hike, and I'm having to breathe heavier and push my muscles harder.  Put my head down and put one foot in front of the other.  I am so deeply excited about our next step in the journey, but also I am realizing how weak I am to this task, that it's time to trust Jesus more, time to lean more on him as I hike.

I am glad to know that this big God who is the only one I can fully trust is also the God who will do whatever he wants to do--with me, with Chris, with the people we'll be leaving.  And this step is not unknown to him in the least.

"...even the darkness will not be dark to you;
the night will shine like the day,
for darkness is as light to you."
-Psalm 139:12

I am glad that my story is not my own, that I am the clay and he is the potter, that I am the daughter and he is the daddy,

that I am the actor and he is the brilliant director.

And that he knows what he's doing--from Tulsa to Tuscaloosa.




Lord, please help me to say goodbye well.