This Theater is Open Again
This week, my husband has been working with a friend to quite literally bring a theater to life.
He has been up on ladders, covered in dust and sweat, installing whatever electrical guts need to be installed into places no one sees.
It isn’t the glamorous part of any theater. No one is applauding him, or his friend.
But it is necessary work. Because very soon, that stage will shine, in every sense of the word.
And the people will come to experience it. People who need to feel. People who need to be reminded that they are still alive.
…a detail of a sold expressive portrait
Is that not a powerful metaphor for what I, as a bondservant of Jesus in my “fourth quarter”, am being asked to do?
I am called to reopen the theater of my own imagination. Clean it up. Wire it. Prepare a space inside myself, just behind my eyes, where the presence of the Holy Spirit can show me something new.
Some of us shut those curtains a long time ago. Too many disappointments. Too much time has elapsed between our first and second acts. Even more time between the second act and the third. We think we have been forgotten.
But the Spirit of the Lord is “hovering over the waters”. He is stirring, even in our bones.
There’s movement behind the curtain. There! Did you see it?!
It is time to dream again. Time to let the theater of our imagination become rehearsal for what God wants to birth through us next.
And we don’t need applause to begin again. We don’t need proof. “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not (yet) seen.” Your hands do not need to touch the evidence for your heart to believe again.
It only needs one honest emotion.
But isn’t that where it gets sticky?
Because the church, sadly, wants to call that “emotionalism”.
And so, in one fell swoop, those of us who were made to feel deeply, are made to feel less intelligent.
But those same Christians who cry “emotionalism”, will pay handsomely - willingly - for a night at a movie or for Netflix. And why?
Well, to “safely” feel something…anything...but at arms length. They are paying hard earned money to feel their feelings second-hand, when we are being invited by God to feel real things freely! We can enter in, and feel alongside the great cloud of witnesses, the angels, and even to feel alongside the God-man Jesus, sometimes with sound effects like wind, maybe tongues of fire, and sometimes with groaning that can’t be uttered!
Let me tell you something: feelings are what happens when the inner theater is not fake. When that space behind your eyes begins to belong to God again, and you and I begin to imagine the Kingdom of God being made manifest on the earth.
I believe God is asking us to do a new/old thing: He’s asking us to conceive it first in the womb of our imagination.
Or, returning to the real-life metaphor, He is asking us to do the hidden, dusty, thankless work of wiring ourselves back into wonder.
We are to feel again. We are to hope again. Because the people will come to experience that. We are to prepare a space for them to learn to do the same.
The Light That Once Was
The Preacher and I attended a conference on Jekyll Island this past June.
Four days of worship, teaching, learning, remembering. After more than thirty years in ministry together, conferences like this carry their own kind of nostalgia. They’re a mixture of longing and belonging. There’s nothing quite like gathering with other believers to worship Jesus. There’s also nothing quite like being among leaders - fellow pastors - shoulder to shoulder in both giving and receiving. Equipping and being equipped.
A rhythm we’ve known for decades now.
For most of our ministry life, we had a mentor. His name was Pete Beck. A former trial lawyer in his “BC” (before Christ) days, he came to the Lord in the early 60’s, before I was even born, and he did so with that same courtroom precision and passion. He would ultimately live past ninety.
Pete loved the Crimson Tide with a vengeance and I, ever the Tennessee girl, gave him no end of grief about it. We had the funniest, friendliest rivalry. The most brutal jabs. He was always quoting Bear Bryant or telling some tale from his days at the University of Alabama.
But the real stories, the ones that mattered most, were told in quiet moments. With tears, shed by us and him. In hard seasons. In leadership crossroads when The Preacher and I needed counsel and Pete offered it, full of Scripture and sharp humor. He was a theologian through and through, brilliant and unflinching.
But the thing I realized I missed most about him, the thing that caught me off guard at the conference last month, was something much softer.
Our dear Pete Beck
Pete always lit up when I walked into a room.
Not in some grand gesture. Not in any way inappropriately. Not with fanfare. But in a way that made me feel known.
Like I was a favorite.
Like he was truly glad I existed. He loved my husband - oh, he was staunchly in Tims corner - but he also saw me. There was a lift in his eyes, a warmth in his smile, a kind of deep-felt delight that can’t be faked or forced. I know I was not the only person in his circle of influence who he “favored”, but he sure made me feel like I was.
Pete went to heaven in 2021. The loss was quiet, but it lingers.
Friends…
At that conference on the beach a few weeks back, we found ourselves meeting new friends, and reconnecting with couples who have now become our old friends. I was also kindly greeted by the pastor (and prolific author…and former dean of Charis Bible College in Colorado) “Pastor Greg Mohr”, who now serves in Pete’s place, both in our lives, and on our church’s oversight team. He is seasoned. Kind. Wise. We are so grateful for him.
I know he likes us. And I know he likes me, well enough.
But as the days passed, I noticed a gentle sadness sitting inside me. I didn’t understand it at all. Not until I found myself alone on the beach one evening, the waves rolling in quiet succession, the whole shoreline mine.
Thats when it broke open. The ache. The tears.
What I missed wasn’t guidance or affirmation.
What I missed was the light.
The way Pete’s demeanor changed ever so slightly when he saw me coming in the door. The way delight danced at the corners of his mouth. The way he made me feel favored. Special. Simply because I was me.
It sounds silly and selfish, I know. This is quite the vulnerable post. To say out loud, at almost sixty years old, that I miss being someone’s favorite.
Trust me, I feel low-key ridiculous to miss that. But I do. I, Sheila Atchley, who am now a grandmother, miss being someone’s favorite.
Not someone’s obligation. Not someone’s respected peer. And certainly not just…some pastor’s wife from Tennessee that someone else is acquainted with.
Someone’s delight.
(my sold painting on the subject of grief, titled “His Bottle, His Book”. My tears are placed in God’s bottle, written in His book.)
Listen to me. I know Jesus delights in me. I know that.
But when a person thinks you’re great…well, it’s a rare thing, you know, to be delighted in. To be received with that sparkle that says: I see you. I know you. I’ve watched you become.
And even more rare to appreciate being delighted IN. It is even more rare to realize that no one else quite fills that space. That the ones who knew you “when” are fewer than they were last year.
That morning on the beach, I crossed an invisible line.
It’s my turn now.
It’s my turn to favor a few someones. My turn to delight in a handful of young ministers who don’t yet realize the sacred weight of what they’ve been given. I am the one who must light up now.
And I do.
I am now the one who makes space. The one who remembers.
I only wonder…will they notice?
Will they recognize what it means, when someone older is so very glad to simply see them coming?
If you’re in the over-50 crowd, like us…do we realize that half of our whole job is to simply be glad to see people? Do we realize what it means at a yearly conference, to be delighted to catch up with some random pastor and his wife? The really important things go so far beyond our teaching outlines or sermon notes.
And if you're younger, if you're in the thick of becoming, hear this from someone a little further down the road: If even one person lights up when you walk into the room, if even one older voice calls out the gold in you with no agenda, if even one seasoned soul seems genuinely glad to see your face….stop. Take note. Let it land.
Because that is no small thing. That is favor. That is a holy gift.
Don’t rush past it. Don’t take it for granted. Don’t count it as small.
Receive it.
Remember it.
And when it’s your turn, don’t forget how much it mattered.