BST's Blog

I cracked up at some of the comments from yesterday. Awesome--some of you are coming on out of those shells. Love it! Yeah--I like food. I not only enjoy eating it--I love what happens in those times. The laugher, the sharing of a meal. I love it!

These blogs over the last few days are my attempt to "humor" things up a bit. I am about to share some CLASSIFIED information. I mentioned sequins yesterday. Do I have some stories! I share this stuff in an act of humility realizing how completely retarded it will make me sound.

I have been performing on stage since I was old enough to say words. As a kid I played kids parts in the local University theater program as well as school stuff. I got more and more involved and loved performing. I enjoyed acting, but loved singing even more. During college I auditioned to work for Walt Disney and was cast in a group--just not the one I wanted. I was disappointed, but in retrospect am glad I stayed in school and finished. After I graduated I decided to audition some more. The first one I went to was for Six Flags Over Texas. I got cast in the "Young Country" show there. I worked for 10 month doing that until I moved to the big broadway style show in the Southern Palace out there. Talk about a rude awakening! In my country show, there were 2 men and 2 women and we all shared a dressing room. I was so modest, I wouldn't even walk around the house with my shirt off, and here I was sharing a dressing room with these other people who, clearly, DID NOT feel the same way I did about such things. I'm not sure what was worse--enduring the dressing room scenario or having to wear Porter Waggoner style jackets with sequins, spangles, fringe--you name it. Eventually, when I moved to the Southern Palace we had huge dressing rooms all separate.

I worked for an equity theater in Fort Worth too (Casa Manana--similar to TPAC for all you Nashvillians). There are way too many stories to recount about that stint, but one day...one day.

What I'd like to tell you about is being cast in a show for Norwegian Cruise Line. The Jean Ann Ryan Company held auditions in NYC, LA, Chicago, Dallas, and Toronto. I had already been cast in another show but decided to go to the audition anyway. To my complete surprise, the casting agent told me that she had a ship for me if I could leave in two weeks. I still remember my complete shock. I would be one of only two singers and a company of dancers from all over the US and Canada. Crazy!

I backed out of my other contract with Gaylord, packed my bags and flew to Ft. Lauderdale for the 6 weeks of rehearsal. This was potentially one of the most grueling times of my life. i felt like I was in boot camp. Never mind that in the "show biz" world I would barely consider myself a "singer who dances", I had to fake it as best I could. Learning a difficult tap routine, doing dance moves that only made me laugh inside my head (Janet Jackson style) at how I must look. Realizing that I could not hide behind the lead and hope the attention would be on him or her--I WAS the lead! It freaked me out.

We also had "weigh ins". Yes--someone at the beginning of the six weeks determined an ideal weight for us and we were to lift weights, diet, exercise and do whatever possible to look good. Little did I know why this would be important to me and my vanity!

I will never forget the nerve wracking plane ride to San Juan, which would be our home port. We all had our earphones on listening with no small sense of panic to every note and mapping out every dance move with our feet. We were to board the ship and have our first show that very night. We were a mess emotionally, physically--you name it.

THEN--after a crazy embarkation experience, we went straight to the dressing rooms where the moment of truth came. They had this rack of clothes in front of me and told me that we'd need to get a fitting on everything. I couldn't imagine how in the course of one or two shows I'd be able to wear all the things in front of me. (One of the shows required 9 costume changes for me.) The first show each week was called "A Tribute to Broadway" and it was very classic--tuxes, etc. The other show was called "Dance" and was considered the Las Vegas style show. I should have known right there that this ol boy was in trouble! When they pulled the nine costumes for that show out I literally said... "where are the rest of these costumes? There are clearly pieces missing!" I thought surely they wouldn't have me wearing some ridiculous sequin waste coast with NO SHIRT!!!??? Please! (This is where the light bulb went off in my head about weight lifting and exercise. It's amazing what public nudity of sorts will do for your motivation to exercise!) OK--so, not really nudity, but to me--yes, nudity. In that one show I had 3-4 different costumes that had a jacket of sorts but no shirt. If I hadn't been so emotionally scarred from the 6 week basic training rehearsal, I might have jumped overboard. There are many--MANY--more stories about this time in my life that won't be shared today or probably ever. It was a great growing experience for me professionally.

The schedule was the best part. Since Beverly and I were the leads, we had our own cabins and very relaxed schedules. The dancers in the show all had other staff duties like bingo and tours and things...as well as having to share cabins. We did our Broadway show every Monday night and the Las Vegas show every Friday night. The days were spent trying to wake up my pectoral muscles, hanging out at the pool or going onto the various islands. My favorites were St. John, St. Lucia, St. Barth's and Virgin Gorda. We saw a lot of great places and I did experienced some wonderful diving. After a while the schedule became boring and we added other things to it like singing a jazz set with the band one night or singing on "country" night each week. I actually liked doing that. It reminded me of home and I was quite homesick.

I need to get to an end here because this is already long. It's just so hard to summarize such an experience in one blog. Over the course of that year I experienced loneliness in ways I had never known. Out of the 500-600 people working on the ship I knew of not one other person who claimed Jesus. Not one. I'm not talking just people who saw things the way I did--I mean NO ONE! There wasn't even a church service onboard. I remember at Easter they had a priest come on board and I was THRILLED. It was the first even hint of something I related to.

There was a girl in my cast who was a dancer named Audra. She and I had things in common and buddied up pretty quickly. We were really the only two who seemed to have an interest in staying moral--or even sane. There was never a romance there, just simply a great friendship. We called each other "bud" and she was my life saver on that ship. We ended up having many conversations about faith. She grew up Catholic, but hadn't been involved or interested. She seemed perplexed when I asked her to tell me about her faith. "There is nothing to tell," she said. In talking with Audra and Dominique and others in the cast who knew my convictions, it became clear to me the extent of the glass bubble I had built around myself. Audra and the others didn't care about worship styles or gender issues in leadership. They didn't know what communion was much less care about whether it was one cup or two or if someone sang a song during the bread. It was like I had awakened from this very deep coma. Wow! I had to get to the base of what I believed--and I had to struggle to discern what that was. (never mind that I was experiencing a coming back to the Lord myself at that time, but that's another week of blogs)

The good news is, after leaving the ship Audra was baptized and is a believer today. My small little Spiritual world was expanded and God used things like sequins and weigh-ins (which continued every single week we were employed--if we went over our assigned weight even twice, we were fired on the spot. No pressure) to show me that this world belongs to Him and that my cage needed to be rattled. Maybe this is why I have such little patience today for arguments that seem useless. Maybe this is why I feel such a burning passion for people who don't look, talk, or act like "we" do. Maybe this is why I feel like the thoughts and ideas coming from the emerging culture stuff are right on target. I don't know. I just know that there are days when I find myself daydreaming about being on the beach in St. Barth's or at the midnight buffet eating while realizing I'd have to live on the treadmill the entire next day--but not caring! I find myself daydreaming about such things and then the pictures of those costumes flash through my mind and I have to get up and shiver.

So, for people who say current worship stuff is "entertainment"...send 'em my way. I can set them straight about the entertainment world. The hearts of those leading in worship are so critical. There can be no self seeking. We must be certain of who receives the glory.

Ha--I just read back over this. I honestly can't believe I am about to hit the "publish post" button. Maybe one thing I have going for me on this blog is that it's so long most people won't make it through it anyway! Thanks for loving me. I thought recounting parts of this story might give some of you insights into the wacky guy I am today. Wackiness and retardation aside, it helped me be aware of those out there who don't speak Christian ease but still are interested in spiritual things...and they are many.