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By Bethany Beebe

My hometown, though beautiful, at times could feel like a prison. Once I settled in, it was home and I didn’t want to leave. But there was something deep inside me that knew there was more. I was wrestling with two worlds: one, my family’s tradition, which was being passed down unto me. The other world was one of adventure, and world travel that I sometimes felt with the tip of my fingers. But even that was slipping away. Can I wish, dream, even think this way?My journey of deep contemplation actually started when I was working at a local gas station/deli. My feet were aching from the amount of time I spent standing on them for my job. The line in front of me was getting longer and I was ringing the customers out as fast as I could. I glanced to my right and saw there was yet another line formed at the deli. My job that day was to be in the deli but I hop on register when I see it getting busy. Now the deli was getting busy so I gave my co-worker a look and she nodded showing that she understood I would be leaving her. Exhausted and frustrated that there was only the two of us working at the convenience store, I walked over to the deli.

“May I help you?” I asked the young man who was gapping up at the menu.

“Ummm,” he said.

I couldn’t believe it. He had been here for at least five minutes and he still didn’t know what he wanted. The people in line were growing agitated and to them, it was my fault. But all I could do was wait for the customer to tell me what he wanted. I turned to my co-worker, a woman in her late fifties, to see how she was doing. Her line was gone and she was leaning lazily at the counter looking out the window at the gas pumps.

It hit me. Right then, in between the time it took for the man to tell me what he wanted and the glance at the woman. I didn’t want to end up like her. Don’t get me wrong, I give ‘much kudos’ to those who do work like that because it is a hard, hard job that gets little reward. But at that moment, I saw my whole life flash before my eyes. I would wake every morning, come here to work, leave with aching feet, go home, make dinner for my husband and children, then go to bed and wake up the next morning to repeat the whole thing over again. I could see everything that was before me. There were no twist and turns in my life. Just the straight path that would lead me to be like this woman I worked with.

It horrified me. I didn’t want that. I can remember praying as a little girl, “God, let me live a full life. Let me have some great adventures. Let me live in a castle.” Well, the last part was me being a girl and that went away along with the prayer of asking if I could be a princess. But the desire to live life, the desire to live an adventure was still with me.

That night when I got home, I started making changes. I prayed to God, “Show me where I am supposed to go.” And he did, within months my life began to change.

I am now working in the props and sets department for WYSIWYG Filmworks, and there is no straight path laid out for me. There are times when I don’t even know what we will be making when I walk into work. Most of the time we don’t even know if we will have the supplies that we need to accomplish the task that has been asked of us.

There was one time when we were asked to build a runway for a fashion show that would feature the costumes for our up coming movie. After talking to Rocki, one of Christian WYSIWYG’s costume designers, about what she wanted it to look like,
Alexis, my team leader on this project, and I had an idea of what to do. We had a stage to start with but we had no money for more supplies. We needed paint, wood, nails, electricity; you name it, we needed it.

We had some supplies, like mounds of black cloth and small amounts of wood to build frames. So of course, the obvious choice would be to work with that, and we did, but it just wasn’t working. The cloth wasn’t draping right or it was too short or the wood wasn’t right. It was tough. Then Alexis had a stroke of genius. “Let’s pray about it.” So we did and God told us that everything we were trying on our own was wrong. We were not to use the black cloth that had been the main focus of our original design. I was at a loss, because without the black cloth, I had no clue what we would do. Not to mention that the only time we had to work was during the day when the light would come in from the windows. We had no electrical power at that time but God provided an unusual source to charge our batteries for our tools. One night we worked by small work lights and had to guess where to put the screws to hold the structure together. It was crazy.

But God is so good. He knew that we had everything we needed right in our studio. We started to pray more about what we should use. There was some plywood left over after we built the stage, which we then used for the walls of the runway. We prayed more and found paint that matched the colors of the costumes. Then everything else started to fall into place.

The structure was amazing when it was done. It was nowhere near what I thought or planned at the beginning, but it was amazing. Rocki loved it and said it was perfect for the clothes she’d designed. When it came time for the run-through, God even supplied the lights we needed to light the runway. It was in the form of a few friend’s car and truck headlights, strangely it worked perfectly.

I just can’t put into words how amazing God is and that he knows what our hearts’ desires are. He gave me a life that I was longing for. He took me from a path that had been walked down by many women in my town and placed me in a path that my heart was asking for.

Every day now is an adventure to me. I can look at my life and have no clue what is going to happen to me in the future. I have no clue what is going to happen in the next ten minutes, and I love it. I am living the prayer I prayed when I was a child. Well, except for the whole living in a castle thing. But I am still waiting for that to because I found that God will give us the desires of our hearts. Look what He did for me.

Bethany Beebe has worked with Christian WYSIWYG Filmworks in set production and prop-making.
She currently is working with Final Cut Pro, editing a DVD series.