Lazarus Rising From the Dead

The drive to the North Hollywood casting studios can be unpredictable so I've learned to avoid Santa Monica and Sunset Boulevards and leave at least twice the amount of time to get there than I think it will take.

I arrived before my call time and signed in to audition for a commercial for the world's most famous burger chain.

"We're waiting for your husband," the casting director explained I was going to have to wait.  I needed a partner to audition with since the commercial called for a husband and wife. Five white guys and I sat in the waiting room. 

"I can audition with one of them," I offered. 

"Advertisers aren't that creative," the director responded. Okay.

Lazarus (my TV husband's name, not the guy Jesus raised from the dead) arrived late (big no-no) so we didn't get the usual five-minute prep. 

It showed. 

We had to start over three times, which might not have been so bad if my fake husband hadn't kept using the name of a competitor's chain!

Goodbye SAG national paycheck. Goodbye residuals. 

But I've learned even if it doesn't seem like you'll book a part, give it all you've got anyway. Sometimes it turns out you're right for the part afterall.

After one audition, I had a feeling I might book the part but the director cast someone else. The day of the shoot,  my agent called saying the other actor's flight was delayed - in another country! The director wanted me to replace her on set that day. I showed up ready to work (that director later cast me in several projects).

Back to Lazarus. "I just had something else on my mind," he apologized. I wasn't mad though, because lately I've had a feeling that dreams, promises, that seem dead are going to come back to life. Thanks for the reminder, Lazarus.

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The Road Less Traveled

"I took the one less traveled...and that has made all the difference." ~Robert Frost
Photo: Maria Peterson Photography

"Shay?" said a woman's voice on the phone. I knew what she was going to say before she said it. 

"Shay, he's gone." No one calls at 6:00 a.m. on a Saturday with good news. 

Not even when it's your birthday.

He'd taken the road less traveled hoping to save souls in San Francisco. He'd fed the homeless when their stench made it nearly impossible to be around them. He'd befriended the skateboard kids who came looking for food, and sometimes to steal money. He'd helped me settle in the city not knowing whether or not I was just another con artist trying to take advantage of his kindness.

He encouraged me to take the path less traveled, to follow a dream....a long shot by anyone's standards. Too old, too dark, too "thick" by Hollywood's standards. 

"Go," he said. "Pursue the adventure of God's calling."

"You're setting out to do something only God can accomplish," he wrote to me in an email as I headed to Hollywood in the spring of 2007. 

At times when the way seems impossible and I've grown weary, I get this picture of him cheering from heaven. "Go!" he shouts. "Follow the yearning in your heart!"

He left on my birthday but somehow I know he'll share with me in the fulfillment of an impossible dream.

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Love in a Red Sack

Photo:  Maria Peterson Photography

This picture my friend Maria took hints to me of love. Blooms and candlelight and music. Expectancy.

I've wanted to write about marriage even though I don't have relationship credentials. But do prayers count? Do tears? Does faith?

I've stood at the altar with friends who vowed to cherish eachother forever. I've wept with those same friends as their vows deteriorated into ugly words, sexless nights and shattered plates.

Most times there was no unfaithfulness, no beatings, no addiction; just a slow death of love. 

"I feel like he walked out of the marriage long ago," said one friend.

Once passionate hearts turned to hearts of stone. Irreconcilably broken. The enemy of love whispers, These are my friends. I'm so much like them. Will my marriage die, too?

Statistically, I'll never marry. The stats say I'm too old, too black, too educated. I read this Washington Post article, Marriage is for White People, that said, "African American women are the least likely in any society to marry." 

Given the odds, you'd think I'd be jaded about marriage.

But I'm not. See, I think marriage was meant to be the closest representation of heaven on earth; to reflect the very heart of God singing a song to our heart. When God banished man from Eden, He made sure he wasn't alone.

So I don't just see a woman shopping in the photo. I see the bright bloom of possibility. Expectation. Hope fulfilled. Overflowing from a cheerful red sack.

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