parallel lessons.

PinkGirl is at call backs for The Little Mermaid. Ya know she dreams of being cast as Ariel. This was her instagram graphic and request yesterday:

“Hey guys tomorrow is the first rehearsal for Little Mermaid and it’s when I find out what part I get. Please Pray for me not to get the role I want but to get the role that God wants me to have and for me to accept that that role is the role God meant for me to have. I’m very nervous and I need to put total trust and faith in God. So please pray for me. Thank You.”

This is very different than where she was over a month ago, when she asked me to do something for her.

PinkGirl: “Mom, I want you to tell me every day that I won’t get it.”

Me: “No. I won’t do that. I would rather you be passionate about your dream and be heartbroken if it doesn’t come true than not be passionate about it. I won’t help you kill your dream to help you protect yourself from getting hurt. Joy and heartbreak are better than never being passionate about your dreams.”

And then she and I started growing in parallel. We both couldn’t help but notice the similarities in our situations. I’ll drill it down.

It was July 30th of last year when I made the first of many decisions that steadily led me to put my passion for leading worship ahead of my passion for God. 10 months later and I could clearly see that I was putting the art before the artist. Took another week to act on that knowledge and in the end, the only action I could bring myself to take was to pray: “Lord, I can’t give this up on my own. Please take it away.”

And He did.

I led worship for the last time on June 30th.

PinkGirl felt how hard it was for me. Throughout her short 12 years, I’ve seen her deep capacity for empathy wreck her again and again. In this case, it’s hitting very, very close to home.

My daughter watched me let go of my passion in order to put God first in my life.

But she also knows that I didn’t do it by force of will or strength of character or any other noble ability.

I was honest with her. I confessed to her that I wasn’t able to do it on my own and asked God to help me. To intervene in my life. To take away the things that separated me from Him. To comfort me. To help me find joy in Him.

That’s when she started praying for God to give her the role He wants her to have – whether it breaks her heart or not. She’s praying for His will, her ability to accept it, for Him to comfort her if He says no and for her to find joy in Him.

She’ll tell you she flip flops between moments of peace and fear and hope and resignation. Sometimes all within the time it takes to draw a single breath.

Solidarity, babe.

She’s faced this kind of heartbreak before. When she was cast as Grace Farrell, she knew she had lost her last chance to be cast as Annie. She was much too tall. When she was cast as The Wardrobe in Beauty and the Beast, she experienced a crisis of faith that rocked her, but thankfully, turned out to be a pivot point in her spiritual growth and her relationship with Christ.

Today has the potential to deal her one of the happiest memories in her young life – or one of the greatest disappointments.

Either way, she and I are both learning the same lesson:

God is enough. Passion for God is better than passion for ANYthing in this world.

Last night, during bedtime prayers, after asking God to give her the part HE wants her to have, she prayed:

“God, please bless my voice – but I know it’s not mine. I know you’re just lending it to me while I’m here on earth.”

Amen.

[CLICK HERE to see a listing of all the blog posts in this series “the search for Joy.”]