Pas de bourrée, Pas de bourrée…aaaannnddd…Jazz Hands!

So I had an audition on Saturday…my first audition since I performed in Annie last summer at Jewel Box Theatre in OKC (hmmm…did I never actually blog about that?). Anyhow, we’ve had a lot of exciting changes in the past year, which doesn’t lend well to a hobby that involves incredible time commitment. But my husband is wonderful, awesome, supportive, amazing…and gave his full support for me to audition for the Shawnee Mission Theatre in the Park’s 2011 summer season. I have been looking forward to it since…well, basically since we moved here and I found out our favorite park had a Theatre!

Turns out this theatre has some roots. I think they are in their 42nd season and they have incredible turnout for their shows, both in terms of the sheer number of people wanting to be a part of them, and also the people that have made it into family traditions going to see the shows each summer. Last year they had over 730 people audition and they were expecting an even larger turnout this year! No pressure.

I prepared and sang my little heart out here at the apartment, practicing my 16 bars until I could sing them without even thinking about it. Of course, singing in front of the mirror/wall at home, or in the car, is quite different than entering a big room, looking at the 16 people that are watching and listening to your every move/note (somehow having to compare it with the other 700 people they’ve had to listen to in a two-day period) and belting it out. And belt it out I did. Except that my song wasn’t really a belting song. I just got so nervous about projecting that it came out. It’s a crazy thing, the audition experience. It’s like you are in an alternate reality, having full conversations with yourself while you’re singing a mere 16 bars of a song, saying things like, in my case, “oh no! This came out as a belt…how can I fix this? Help! That’s not what this song is supposed to sound like...hmmmm...maybe I can save it with the last note? I wonder if I’m even looking at them anymore. I can’t seem to will my body or voice to do anything it’s supposed to! This is SO not like it was at home in front of my mirrored closet doors or in the car. Can I get a do-over, please????” You know the feeling…or maybe not.

Anyhow, not pleased with how that went, I was off to the dance audition. At that point, I pulled a little bit of a Joey Tribiani (minus the whole "lying on the resume" thing, of course). Ever see that Friends episode with Joey’s dance audition? This one? (It won't let me embed the video...but I promise, it is worth the 4 min and 15 seconds to check it out)

Yeah, so I learned the easier combination and then the choreographer offered a little “add-on” for the intermediate/advanced dancers. Since I have zero years of formal dance training, I OF COURSE thought I should give it a try. So while the rest of my group went into the wings to continue working on the more basic dance combination, I and one other guy – who happened to be in ballet tights and a t-shirt (should have been my first clue that this was for professionals only) – stayed to learn the more exciting difficult impossible dance combination. Suddenly I was reliving that dance audition of Joey’s. The choreographer starts off slow and all of a sudden takes off like lightning (or whatever else is really fast). All I could do was stand there and stare blankly at her. I laughed (out loud, I think), picked my jaw up off the floor, and politely excused myself to the wings to play with the rest of the amateurs. So that’s how my audition went. Once we were actually doing the (easier) dance combination in front of the judging choreographers, I felt ok about it. But hmmmm...overall, I’m thinking if I get cast in one of these shows, it will be completely due to the grace of God. At least I got a fun (funny?) story out of the deal! And really, I love the entire process of theatre, even the audition process, so it was a great experience. Here's hoping for a miracle!

Still Waiting...

I know I've kept you all in suspense of the call that (almost) changed our lives forever...and I apologize that the suspense will continue for a bit longer. It worked, though, didn't it? I'll post about that soon, I promise. But today, March 15, 2011, is the day marking seven months of waiting for the call. The one that really will change our lives forever. Seven months down, unknown number of months (weeks...days...years?) to go. Uff da, the open-ended nature of adoption is tough (yup, I said uff da...proud Scandinavian here). I'm not gonna lie. Even as we rejoice with our friends that become pregnant and have babies, or even our other "waiting" friends who are chosen by birth parents and then bring their sweet babies home (and please don't misunderstand me, we ABSOLUTELY do rejoice with them...God is SO good!), it sure is hard to wait. And keep waiting. And wait some more. Especially since our wait actually started long ago, when we lost the dream of parenthood the first time back in May 2008 when we miscarried.

As we see it happen for "everyone else" (I know, I know...not everyone else), it sometimes feels like we are on the playground at recess waiting to be picked for a team, and watching person after person be selected as we stand in the line waiting, hoping to be good enough to be chosen. That's the raw honesty of it. Open-ended waiting sucks. We have no due date. No excitement of decorating a baby's room (since we have no idea when our baby will be here and/or even if we will still be living in this apartment). No baby showers. No doctor's appointments. Not even shopping for baby clothes (since we don't know what season to buy for). Just lots of waiting.

Man, that part of God's refining is not fun, is it? Of course, the fact that I'm handling this wait so incredibly well (hehe...note sarcasm) could very well be a reason we are still waiting...God is doing some big, hard, wonderful, painful, amazing, wouldn't-change-it-for-anything refining in my heart as we go through the process of preparing for this awesome challenge of parenthood. It goes from "well, the wait could be anywhere from a few days to a few years" (but what I really mean is that it will probably be closer to the "few days") to "oh crap, we really could be waiting a few years or longer" to "hmmmm...maybe I'm just not meant to be a mom. I really thought God gave me these gifts and desires, but maybe not...poor, poor me" to "no more pity party here, but maybe I really do just need to move on. Maybe God has something else out there for us and we are limiting Him because we just won't let this parenthood thing go." I have to constantly rest in God's truth and what I believe are promises He's given, otherwise I second guess everything. And believe me, I have. Feelings of doubt can rob us of so much, especially as we try to be diligent in waiting on Him for something we are confident He's promised us. Here's a quote from a great book I read that I felt like I could have written myself: "When I stood around talking with other women, I felt somewhat like an imposter. I was incomplete, not quite a part of them, having failed what I perceived as the true test of womanhood: the rite of motherhood." (taken from The Infertility Companion by Sandra L. Glahn, Th.M. and William R. Cutrer, MD).

Infertility (or "delayed parenthood," as I like to call it in our case...since all of our infertility tests came back normal) does crazy things to a woman who has a strong desire for children. It can turn motherhood into an idol. It can cause her to be prone to schizophrenic tendencies, where it seems that everyone who posts about their kids or pregnancies is directing it straight at her saying "see what I have that you can't have?" It can cause her to isolate herself from people that she loves, because it hurts to be around them and she just doesn't feel like she fits in because she's not "one of them." And then as she cringes when friends tell her "I'm pregnant!" she feels awful because she wishes she could have that head-over-heels excitement she used to have (like a real friend should have, right?) instead of feeling like she just got punched in the stomach again. Again, raw honesty here.

So...how can we find hope and encouragement, even during an agonizing wait for something we trust that God has promised us? And it could be anything, not just motherhood. This is simply my current challenge...there have been many others and I'm sure there will be many more as life is filled with refining fires. These past couple months, I've been blessed with an amazing group of ladies at a Tuesday morning Bible study as we learn about Abraham. We're going through Anne Graham Lotz's book The Magnificent Obsession and it's all about Abraham's journey as he longed to know God more intimately. He waited on God's promises to him (one of which was to be a father and have descendants too numerous to count) even as those promises seemed extremely far-fetched (he and his wife Sarah were old!) and didn't necessarily make sense based on what the circumstances were at the time. Abraham was carried through by his faith in the truth of who God was (is). He dropped everything to go where God told Him to go...even if it meant leaving his home, his possessions, and everything he'd ever known! And even as He exercised great faith, there were times that he acted on feelings instead of truth (and took matters into his own hands), which turned out to be clearly away from God's path. We so often say "oh don't worry, God, I got this...I'm not sure You can handle this the way it should be handled." But what we (at least I) tend to really be saying is "I'm not sure I can trust you since my circumstances just don't seem to line up with what I'm wanting to happen." Or, if we are really honest with ourselves, we might be saying "I'm not sure I'm going to like what You have for me, so I am going to force things to go my way instead." Oh, the blessings we could be robbing ourselves of when we look right past God's truth, God's character, and God's promises and settle for good enough, instead of God's best.

As we are on this journey and sometimes can be overtaken by doubt, self-pity, or just plain frustration that things aren't happening the way (or the speed) that we'd like (and this can be applied to anything...I just use our journey to parenthood as an example), we have to remember the truth of God's character, His wisdom, His divine authority, and His incredible love for us. And if we truly want to be walking with God (which I absolutely do), we have to walk in the same direction and at the same pace (great snippet from Anne Graham Lotz). Lord, please help me to walk contently with You in your direction and at your pace.