baggage

“Baggage”: A drama written for teenage girls.

What do you think?
Technically?  Artistically?  Spiritually?  Emotionally? 

(My friend Jenifer is singing in this at the end and it is sponsored by an organization some of my friends speak for).

baby girl

What kind of makeup do i need to be beautiful?

-10 year-old girl, location: luxury makeup store

Need?  Need?  Baby girl you don’t need anything.  Her words nearly razored my heart.  You’re ten years old.  Where are your thoughts of popsicles, bike riding and chalk?  Has the battle to be beautiful already impressed itself upon you?  What kind of world am I living in?  Can I point the way to something different that she will hear, deep in the core of her being?  I’m not speaking from a self-inflated sense of power or influence.  I just want it all to be okay.  This wasn’t about playing dress up…this was deeper.

I want to be beautiful
Make you stand in awe
Look inside my heart,
and be amazed.
I want to hear you say
Who I am is quite enough.
Just want to be worthy of love
And beautiful.

-Bethany Dillon, Beautiful

I get the cry of a woman’s heart to be beautiful.  Maybe it’s a generalization, but I think it’s fairly accurate.  Our hearts tend to adornment, creating, beautifying.  That itself is even a hope-sprouting thing.  But when did our quest became so ugly, so dark and so twisted?  When did these adult issues start capturing the attention of little girls? 

I wished I could have spoken life into her, I wish I had that kind of power.  I told her she didn’t need makeup, that she was a little girl and that all girls are beautiful.  She didn’t buy it.  She wanted to be “big stuff”, a teenager, Little Miss Hannah Montana.  I told her she had the rest of her life to deal with the makeup and vanity issues, to enjoy the freedom that should come with youth.

Baby girl, I want it to be okay for you.  I want to say, “sweet baby” and make you feel whole inside the way my friend Marilyn can.

fear even in theory

one of my friend’s lives and breathes a good love song.  seriously, if the song is mushy (particularly if it’s country or celine dion) she knows every lyric.  i love her to death but today i’d about had it with the music.  normally, i’m slightly more jaded but can totally still sing along.  tonight i was fried.  this girl’s heart is pure but i’m single, confused and wondering if things get better or easier.

relationships or non-relationships that are complicated and confusing are basically sucking my life dry at the moment.  they are exhausting, exhilarating and today i feel i’m at the breaking point.

then i meet erin o’donnell on my ipod for the first time.  how she got there, i have no idea, but she was an audio lifesaver.  my emotions and ruminations are completely affected by music.  the song, “there is no fear in love” on the no place so far album.  this song has been my only comfort- erin seems to actually understand how relationships can hold up a mirror to all your flaws and amplify them to the fifteenth degree. 

erin’s nailed me to a tee, and yet challenges my frazzled emotions.  here are some of the phrases that hit me and yet seem to sustain me.

there are nights that yield no sleep.

there is no fear in love.

there are feelings with no name.

you are only partway in.

you can’t quite see how this ends.

god is here, holding you.

baby, baby, baby

 Comedienne Kathy Griffin has come under fire from a former TV costar for joking about Jesus at the Creative Emmy Awards on Saturday night. The funnywoman, who claimed the Outstanding Reality Programm prize for her show Kathy Griffin: My Life On The D-List, upset Christians by poking fun at her peers who thanked Christ for their good fortune. In her acceptance speech, Griffin quipped, “A lot of people come up here and thank Jesus for this award. I want you to know that no one had less to do with this award than Jesus… This award is my God now.” Griffin’s comments have upset her former Suddenly Susan co-star Sherri Shepherd, who is also a stand-up comic. On TV show The View on Tuesday morning, Shepherd raged, “I love Kathy but I was trying to text her, ‘Girl, you know you ain’t supposed to be saying no mess like that.’ There’s just a line that you shouldn’t cross, there’s a reverence for God that we should have.” Griffin’s taped acceptance speech will be heavily censored when it airs at the official Emmy Awards on Sunday. Officials at the Catholic League, a U.S. anti-defamation group, called on Emmy bosses to “denounce Griffin’s obscene and blasphemous comment” at Sunday’s ceremony.

-IMDB TV News

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that I live and breathe and live entertainment.  So when Hollywood and Jesus intersect, I’m all over that.  I pretty much read every industry news brief I can get my hands on.  (And although  I love analyzing fashion, I’m not just reading for the latest gossip as hard as that is to believe).  Anything industry and I’m reading it, except for Variety, the industry standard, whose subscription is a few hundred dollars.  Thankfully, the new e-version brings the price down to $165.

Anyways, I appreciate Kathy Griffin’s caustic humor at times, in spurts, I get what she is going for.  She’s off-the-cuff, irreverent and gutsy at best.  But quotes like the one above just make me think, (insert grandmotherly, matronly voice-over) “baby-baby-baby, what’s happened to you?”

I want to know who hurt her, who marred her deeply, so that behind every joke is deep pain.  I want to get behind the caustic one-liners and beyond the stage-mask and see.  People (namely Christians) often find my favorite entertainers to be a little off-the-wall and unexpected.  I appreciate Rosie.  I think we would be friends, okay maybe I wish.  Because there is always something there, behind the persona, that beats just like mine.

Kathy Griffin is funny.  I get it.  Maybe her “Jesus joke” is a whole lot deeper, I truly hope it is. 

I hope if I ever “make it” I will take risks and reach out–to stand on both sides of the gap between faith and entertainment, and reach for the hands of both sides. 

message to myself #2: come as you are…no really?

God: Do you believe your world will fall apart if you express your true thoughts and opinions? You can make all the noise in the world and I will never be angry or annoyed with you. –Sheila Walsh

You can read some of her message here in an interview she did for Christianity Today with a family friend of mine, Dick Staub.

Sheila Walsh talks often about her childhood relationship with her father, (he developed a brain condition which changed his personality to being volatile and aggressive, and his death was also traumatic). His behavior was verbally abusive, so she learned to be quietly overcompensate and serve.

I’ve been told my presence is too “big” at times, intimidating and too candid. It makes my aunts laugh, who remember me as an overly compliant child. I grew up in a crazy household, seeing and hearing and believing about myself a lot of things I shouldn’t have. Part of learning to speak my own voice has included mistakes of over-speaking.  Learning to use and sometimes harness my voice has. To accept our personal power and the ways our words can damage others, yet also be free to be our raw, gutsy, brave selves is a process.

still a bright eyed baby…

A few weeks ago, as we were leaving the conference, Marilyn asked Amy to make sure I never lost my ”bright eyes” and always remained “her bright eyed baby”.  She means “baby” in the way every girl still wants to be a little girl and dream big dreams. 

I find the most beauty in bright eyed babies who aren’t bright-eyed with naivete, but who’ve remained bright-eyed in the face of adversity.

This evening, my housemate had a small potluck gathering of women and their children.  Hers included there were 4 women and seven children.  One thread ties this little  nest together, they are domestic violence survivors.  Just being in the same house as them, hearing and participating in some conversations, my mind was stimulated and impressed from the calm wisdom in each of these women.  They are survivors, no other word really captures this. 

I imagine the final grief in the end of these marriages is really the loss of a dream, because the loss of a loved one must have occurred far before they ever left the abuser.  I am not really sure of this, but maybe deep down they knew love wasn’t supposed to hurt, but maybe they grew up with that kind of pain and so it seemed familiar.

Sometimes I am discouraged that loss doesn’t kill your dreams.  This sounds sick I realize, but what I mean is that you would learn your lesson and adjust your level of hoping.  Childhood taught me that there might just be too many people in the world for God to make the dreams come true of every one, and I was just in the latter camp.  That God was just too busy with the million others to call me “special” and make my dreamings come alive.  I just wanted to be “special”, so when Marilyn says I am a bright-eyed sweet baby, you can’t help but feel special.  My grown up heart knows a life without hope is no life at all.  It is the fragile little girl heart that sometimes wants to be put out of its misery.

The death of dreams ache like nothing else.  As a little girl, my reality taught me that the world was not safe to dream, yet despite every intention, I am a big-picture girl.  My mind relishes theories over facts and big-picture planning of the future gets me excited.  I am by nature a connector, a marketer, a networker, a social butterly.  I love pop-culture trends and patterns because I want to be in that industry as an actress, and see marketing as a handy trait for branding oneself, which any famous actress typically has a persona that is semi-marketed.  Yet I doubt they will tell you that, because it’s really their entourage that does a lot of that for them.  I am also an aspiring and sometimes professional actress and writer, thus my life in the fine and performing arts lends to being a natural storyteller.  I love interpersonal dynamics, which is why I so enjoy analyzing a script and a character in tv and film. 

message to myself, and you too :)

See, I am doing a new thing!  -Isaiah 43:19

Truthfully, the WOF conference came at the most inconvenient time for me this year.  It was the weekend before the weeklong Little People of America Conference, the same weekend as a dear friend’s wedding and the same weekend in which I was bloody, bloody sick.

But it is the only chance for me to connect with my friend Marilyn.  It’s more than just that, but you may read about that in a previous blog entitled  why I go.

Anyways, back to starting a new thing.  I took my little arena seat in the front row and felt heavy that night.  It was not as if I expected to have or did have a come-to-Jesus-moment because my life has never worked that way.  But in the quietness of my heart and through the words of each speaker, my hope was being renewed, little seed by seed.

My discouragement was summed up in one sentence by that casting director. 

-The world is not ready for a LP heroine.

Her words had ricocheted around my mind for over a week until, sitting in that seat, I heard a small voice say,

-The world might not be ready yet, but the kingdom IS.

And so maybe this blog is mostly for me, ammunition to face my next daunting audition, kinda like Melissa Etheridge’s latest song being literally called message to myself.

thank you! small is beautiful.

My dear friend Rachelle who chatters away at Magpie Girl has bestowed upon me the first ever “Small is Beautiful Award” for my blog. 

In a nutshell, my blog is about…

• life as a little person, no really, i’m 4′1″, sometimes fitting in to both worlds sometimes feeling totally alone.

• life as a striving and sometimes employed professional actress.

• life as employed in other professions when i’m not performing, and yes, i enjoy those seasons too…some of which include full-time ministry.

• life as a barely published still aspiring writer, public speaker and girl who still has to summon courage to bare myself in another audition.

• life as a broadway enthusiast, pop-culture ‘princess’, hollywood watcher.

• life as a paradox (not really, only to some) between a career in hollywood and my faith, wanting to know who this  jesus is.  my dad calls me a liberal, rachelle calls me normal. :)

• life as a scrappy-artsy-craftsy girl who also dabbles in reality tv, cosmetology, vintage decor and fashion.

• life as a huge kristin chenoweth fan, person obsessed with grey’s anatomy, viewer of the view (but loving it formerly with rosie) and who thinks jen garner is the cutest mom ever.

• life as a girl who can’t wait to be a mom but also still somehow manages to find life in the public eye appealing.

• life of a girl who yearns for justice rather than politically correctness and for god to stand in the gap, mother her and say “yes sweet baby” like marilyn calls her.

• life of a girl in relationships that fill her life with beauty, and sometimes confusion.

First of all, I want to say shalom! to anyone discovering my little blog from hers, I hope you come over and hang out often! 

To my friends who’ve been reading for awhile now, thank you! for all your support, humor and love!

For more information about my design venture, please visit my site at hopesprouts or contact me by email @ hopesproutsdesigns[at]yahoo[dot]com.

Love you!

why i go.

i’m pretty cool (or so i think) and pretty unphased by the whole christianity-in-a-box-sold-at-your-local-christian-bookstore-if-you-have-a-giftcard but every year i get a whole lot out of women of faith.  i never would have thought i would go to something like this, i always considered myself far too cool, edgy and hip.

i became friends with marilyn meberg while a student at SPU.  she is irreverently funny, wise and always manages to cut through the crap to get to the heart of the matter.  she is tender yet fierce.  i began attending women of faith when i was leslie’s assistant, but now enjoy getting to see marilyn on a yearly basis.  i think she calls everyone “sweet baby” but the way she says it, you feel like a child again and as if you’re the only one she says it to.  this is i think my 7th year, i started out at leslie’s book table for the preconference and i think i met marilyn 5 years ago.

through marilyn, i have been able to meet or get to know jenifer thigpen, jody mcbrayer (he’s with avalon), mary graham, sandi patty, patsy clairmont, nicole johnson, pat wenger and a myriad of other stand-out women.  i’ve sat with each of them in their section of seating and i will say with full honesty that each of these women is as kind, witty and encouraging sipping their coffee in their seats as they are at their book tables and on the platform.  they don’t claim to have all the answers, they realize that life is one big mess, but yet on the other hand they sense a greater hope toward the One who is.  i’m actually advertising a large christian womens conference, those who know me well should know that i wouldn’t do this unless i really believed in it.  i’m pretty skeptical about all that.

i brought one of my dearest friends amy two years ago and i speak for her to say, she would echo my thoughts.  this year we hung out a little bit with anita renfroe, her delightful daughter elyse, nicole c. mullen (who brings down the house and yet is one of the easiest people to talk to) and her daughter.  again, these are genuine, talented and anointed women.  not for one minute do i think their lives are perfect or they have faith completely figured out–but i do believe that they are called to that platform and they are incredible individuals.

so, if they come to a city near you–i’d recommend going.  you will laugh and cry and you don’t have to go to the book tables.  i think it’s like a pep rally, and i don’t know about you, but i could use the pep!  it’s not perfect programming, i can already hear the throngs of cynics out there, but you know what, i am a better person for attending and  richer person for knowing these women.

i find that there are many judgments about contemporary christian media, and many of them are fair criticisms.  but i find that there is good and bad in any media market, and there are many gems among christian media – women of faith being one for me.  it’s easy to become cynical, thinking ourselves too cool for anything mainstream.

one of the best days of my life.

at fifteen years old, being cast in new line cinema’s indie flick “a leonard cohen afterworld” was one of the best days of my short life.  jared leto, jake gyllenhaal, selma blair and arden myraan were all cast in it.  it came out years later after a director-change and total abandonment of the original plot.  it was supposedly extremely dirty and i never saw it–but the title was changed to highway.

but filming it was one of the best days of my life.  the only thing i’ve been dreaming of since i was three years old has been to be a gifted, working actress.  i don’t remember my first audition, but i was one of the alternates to play the little girl in the movie willow.  i didn’t get it because ron howard was looking for a girl closer to 5, and i was 3.

i loved absolutely everything about the entire process of film making.  i loved the trailers, getting outfitted by the wardrobe department.  i still remember my outfit, it was a short, short 60’s mod dress with bright flowers.  it was the shortest dress i’d ever worn but it was also really comfortable, i felt free and flirty in it, like i owned myself.

i loved the catering trailer and having lunch with arden who later went on to star in a show with fred savage and now is on madtv.  it was her first big break and she was really sweet.  i loved interacting with the pa’s and camera crew.  everything about the process, i fell in love with.

one of my scene’s i got to be jake and jared’s groupie and sit on their car staring at them adoringly.  jared was dating cameron diaz at the time so she was on set, although i didn’t really interact with her.

there were lots of fans trying to get at the set, but they were roped off.  it was weird hearing people scream for jared leto.  jake wasn’t really a star then, but he was super fun to talk to.  later that day i went shopping with selma blair, it was one of her earlier movies and before her breakout tv role on zoe, duncan, jack and jane.

basically, it was before most everyone’s big break.  sort of a low budget movie and then when it finally came out our scenes were cut and the movie had gone through a director change or something–it was totally a different plot. 

i’m not writing about this to brag, it’s not like i have the opportunity to audition very often.  i haven’t done a movie since–only bits on tv…

i will tell you, that day i knew i was born for it.  i still go to bed and wake up with those longings.  nothing has changed.   i still spend hours researching and thinking and pining and drooling.  someday i hope i have the opportunity to act on what i was made to do.

for now, i have to live my life in plan b.  so i related to a recent tyra banks show episode where she was shedding light on young girls who fall prey to casting couch scams.  where basically the director tries to get naive girls to sleep with him, promising they will be cast in the film if they do.  this show was inspired by a tragic murder of one young woman.

while i’ve never been naive enough to be scammed, i related to danielle fishel (formerly “topanga” on boy meets world) and the way she talked about her longing to be successful.  she said that sometimes she felt she would almost do anything for it, to feed the hunger that burned within.  i wonder if all actors can relate to this.  i think it’s more than just a passion for actors, there’s something wounded and misunderstood and desperately creative about them. 

it was as if she said “yes, baby i see your pain.”  in that moment i heard my own “yes, baby”, i acknowledged the pain of my own longing and heard god sigh too.  i hope that all the strange, exciting, but also painful steps of 2007 so far are stepping stones to this dream.