Between Heaven and Hollywood Read online

  In addition to whatever crop the farmer happens to be cultivating, some fields tend to also grow rocks. They propagate in a variety of sizes; some start out no bigger than your fist, but if you’re not diligent in removing the rocks they can quickly grow into boulders. The pesky and invasive rocks that grow in a farmer’s field not only have the potential of damaging expensive farm equipment, but they also take up valuable real estate that could have been seeded. Seeds will not grow on top of or underneath rocks, so they must be picked up, and that’s where I came in.

  Rock picking usually involves taking a wagon or trailer pulled by a tractor out to the field, walking up and down looking for rocks, and then picking them up and throwing them onto the trailer. In my case, the rocks were then transported to someone else’s field, where presumably another nine-year-old fourth grader was hired to pick those rocks out of that field and bring them back to ours. The cycle is infinitely self-perpetuating, which explains why rocking picking is a time-honored and ancient profession. I think that’s how it went. At least that’s the way it seemed to my nine-year-old self, who would rather have been anywhere doing anything else.

  I don’t want to leave you with the impression that I was lazy or that I shied away from hard work. Nothing could be further from the truth. For one, I was making four dollars an hour picking rocks, which allowed me to buy Star Wars action figures when they came out. Even at nine years of age I had my priorities straight.

  Nevertheless, despite my tender age, I wondered if there were something more enjoyable I could do that would still allow me to buy my toys. Something that was more fun but also paid me lots of cash. I believe the expression is having your cake and eating it too.

  After a few years of rock picking and other mind-numbing jobs I was forced to do, I began to acknowledge that, for me, certain work was pure drudgery. At the same time I also accepted much of this work was unavoidable and often necessary. I began to realize that if I had to work, then I needed to learn how to work smarter. It took me a few more years, but I eventually figured out that some kinds of work were just more appealing to me than others, and if possible I would trade up from the work I didn’t care for to the work I preferred.

  In an attempt to save money at the grocery store, my parents kept and maintained a huge vegetable garden. Actually, they kept it, but their children maintained it. The first of their free laborers were my older brother and sister, but as soon as I came of age, the task of weeding this massive expanse fell on my shoulders. I’m not talking about a cute little plot of ground where my folks grew the occasional tomato plant or begonia. I had to weed an enormous tract of land with dozens of types of fruits and vegetables. If memory serves, there were far more weeds growing than rutabagas and cauliflower, so much so that oftentimes I couldn’t tell the difference between them. By the way, I have since learned that vegetables are much easier to pull out of the ground than weeds. I learned this lesson the hard way.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote of weeds, “What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have never been discovered.” No disrespect intended to this great American poet, but I am here to tell you Ralph never weeded my parents’ garden. If he had, he might have changed his mind about the virtues of weeds.

  I grew to detest weeds only a bit less than having to go out and pull them. I accepted that this had to be done, and I knew why my budget-conscious parents were growing a garden in the first place, but in order to save my back and knees, I needed to think of a better way. I needed to work smarter and come up with a compromise.

  That’s why in my freshmen year of high school, I purchased a riding lawn mower. You’re probably thinking it was my intention to ride over the weeds, mowing them down and then calling it a day. My parents would not have gone for that, so I had something far more creative in mind.

  I planned to use the riding lawn mower to start my own lawn-mowing business so I could pay my parents not to grow a garden. I asked them to calculate how much money they saved at the grocery store each month by growing their own produce, and then I told them I would pay them that amount each month instead of tending a garden for our family. It was my idea for how to eliminate a job I disliked and offer a compromise I hoped my parents could not refuse. They were speechless when I first presented my plan to them, but after some consideration they found no other option but to agree with my logic.

  At fourteen years of age, I started David’s Lawn-Mowing Service. I drove that riding mower all over town, mowing people’s yards wherever and whenever I could. I made decent money that summer of my freshman year in high school, even after subsidizing my parents’ nonexistent vegetable garden.

  At the end of each month I wrote my parents a check from the money I made, and thereby eliminated the need for a garden and freed myself from the bondage of having to weed it.

  I can’t swear to it, but I might have even seen a glint of admiration in my father’s eye when he would show neighbors the exact location of the garden where he wasn’t growing corn. “And over there is where we’re not growing potatoes. Next year,” he would muse, “I’m considering not growing strawberries.”

  I don’t consider what I did to have been lazy. I think of it as knowing myself, understanding my limitations, and working within the boundaries and confines of the system. At the time, the “system” was comprised solely of my mom and dad. It wasn’t so much that I wanted to “beat the system,” but rather to navigate within it and arrive at a mutually satisfactory destination. I learned the invaluable concept of compromise from negotiating with my parents. Of course I could not have known it then, but this was a skill I would employ time and time again much later in my professional life.

  A couple of years later I heard the US government had devised a similar arrangement with our nation’s farmers where under some circumstances the government would pay the farmers not to grow certain crops. Now you know where they got the idea! And you thought this book was going to be a lot of self-aggrandizing fluff.

  During the summer of my sophomore year I was talked into working with my brother, who had a small business painting houses. I have very little to say about my summer of house painting other than it wasn’t for me. Since I couldn’t pay people not to paint their houses, I elected to exercise the next best option. I quit.

  AMBER WAVES OF GRAIN

  The summer of my junior year my dad thought it would be a wonderful and life-enriching experience for me to “go on harvest” and work on a wheat farm. I learned that two important inventions were responsible for the sudden surge and popularity of wheat farming in 1930s America.

  The first was the development of the combine, a machine that aids in the harvesting of grain crops by combining three separate functions into one piece of equipment. The combine made harvesting wheat easier and less expensive and therefore more profitable.

  The second invention largely responsible for the popularity of wheat came out about the same time as the combine. Toast.

  Yes, you read that right: toast. Around this time the automatic bread slicer had been perfected, and a couple of years later the automatic, spring-loaded toaster was introduced into homes. America would never again eat breakfast the same.

  You may wonder why I am telling you all of this. You might even be thinking, I’m not reading this book to hear about combines and toast! What’s this guy going on about? I point these things out because they are what I had to tell myself that summer while driving a combine or tractor across a wheat field when there were plenty of other “teenaged guy” things I would have rather been doing. It’s always hot when you harvest wheat; either that or it’s raining. “So how did you spend your summer vacation, David?” Wheat, heat, and rain.

  By the way, I am allergic to wheat. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not talking about a “Quick! Throw him down and stab him in the heart with an epinephrine auto-injector!” type allergy. It’s more the sneezing, coughing, and runny nose kind of allergy that leaves you so miserable you wish someone would throw you down and stab you in
the heart with an epinephrine auto-injector. I am sure there is a marked and valid difference between the two, but at the time I had considerable difficulty discerning what that might be.

  I learned something about myself from my experiences picking rocks, pulling weeds, painting houses, and harvesting wheat: although these were noble pursuits in their own right, none of them were for me. It wasn’t that I thought I was better than these jobs or that they were beneath me in some way. I didn’t realize it at the time, but the problem was that these jobs didn’t match the dream I had for my life. For as long as I can remember, the only thing I wanted to do was to go into the entertainment industry. This dream consumed my daily thoughts. I was interested in the cowboys and desperados of Dodge City, mostly because I wanted to be one. I enjoyed playing with my Star Wars action figures because I imagined myself as Han Solo or Luke Skywalker, traveling across the universe righting wrongs with my lightsaber and blaster. I knew I could never actually be a cowboy or Han, but I wanted to be the guy who got to portray him on the big screen. The frustration and boredom I felt while riding a combine began to crystalize this vision. All along, my discontent was trying to tell me something, but it wasn’t till I was eighteen, during my last summer on the farm, that I began to realize it.

  LISTENING TO THE WHISPERS OF MY DREAMS

  It is when you are stuck doing something in your life that you would rather not be doing that you often find yourself thinking most about what you would rather be doing. Your uncomfortable reality and your lofty dreams make for strange yet compatible bedfellows. One can’t exist without the other. One gives birth to and continually nurtures the other.

  To put it simply, if you feel the life you are living is empty, vacant, or unfulfilling, then it’s possible your dreams are trying to show you a better way. Dreams are like exit signs prompting you to get off the road to nowhere. Which is why we must listen to the whisper of our dreams, for they are the doorways to happiness and a satisfying life. Your dreams are your ticket out.

  It was during this process of bemoaning one life and coveting another that I started paying attention to my inner voice, my calling. By the way, it’s referred to as “a calling” because if you’re not listening then you might not hear what God is trying to say to you. During my last summer on the farm, I began to listen.

  I had no choice because there was little else to hear. Have you ever heard the sound wheat makes when it’s growing? The silence is deafening. If you ever need to be alone with your thoughts, I mean really alone, then go sit in the middle of a wheat field. The boredom left my brain on pause and my heart open, both begging for meaningful discourse. I’d be out in the fields with nothing but wheat in front of me and wheat behind me, and I suspected there was something different for me out there. Not out in the wheat of course, but way, way out there beyond the wheat. About 1,200 miles past the wheat to be exact, in a mythological city called Hollywood. Truth has a way of sneaking in when you’re alone with yourself, partly because despite the way it may feel, you are never truly alone. God is always there, and sometimes he uses these quiet moments to communicate with you. For lack of anything else to distract me, the quiet of the wheat field made it easier for me to hear his whisper. His whisper came in the form of a desire—a dream, really.

  I couldn’t understand it. Why acting? Where did this desire come from? The whole thing was a bit ridiculous. My exposure to acting and the dramatic arts was extremely limited. We did own a television, but it was rarely on because the Mennonite Brethren frowned upon television as too worldly. It wasn’t until I was eight years old that I saw my first movie in a theater, and believe me when I say that the adventure came about completely unintentionally. I was out with my friend and his parents, and they took me with them to see the movie Grease with John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John. It was a magical experience. The sound and images on screen were incredible. Even though I was sitting with an entire audience, it was as if I were taking my own trip into an incredible fantasy world. My enjoyment was tarnished only by the fact that, after seeing Ms. Newton-John in her skintight, black leather pants, I was convinced my soul was now consigned to eternal damnation. It would be another ten years or so before I ventured back into a movie theater.

  The acting bug bit me in seventh grade when the high school English teacher, Mrs. Rooney, cast me in the role of Kurt in the high school production of The Sound of Music. I was more than flattered. I was validated because Mrs. Rooney typically cast only experienced upperclassmen and yet she chose me, a novice and a middle schooler no less, to play what I considered the most important role in the musical. I remember thinking Mrs. Rooney must have seen through all of my shortcomings and recognized my raw yet undeniable talent. Looking back, I think it was probably less about my talent and more due to how short I was and that I looked more like a young kid than any of the juniors and seniors, who were already six-foot plus and sporting whiskers.

  While putting on the clothes and makeup was a little weird, I loved the theater. In a way it was like being in a time machine; for an hour and a half I was catapulted into another life, another world. I’ve always been a huge fan of people’s stories. I find them fascinating; I think if I hadn’t gone into the entertainment industry, I might have gone into journalism. The other thing about the theater was, when the lights go down, there’s electricity in the air. Anything can happen—it’s like the actors are on a tightrope. That’s why live theater will never be replaced; it’s similar to a sporting event, except you’re able to transport yourself into the story. There’s something so exciting about it all. And to me at that time, I was hooked. I felt alive.

  By the time I got to high school, the theater program was involved only in producing musicals, and since I don’t have the greatest singing voice, I pretty much sat out. Other than a bit part as a munchkin in The Wizard of Oz, my experience on stage was limited; our school had no drama classes or acting lessons. Most of my classmates were interested in farming or sports, so even though I had begun to realize that what I really wanted to do with my life was to act, I knew very little about how to go about it. I was too embarrassed to share my dream with anyone or even talk about it, because I was clueless about the acting field in general. I had no idea how or where to start, what it would look like when I got there, or what obstacles might be in my way, but as I sat in that wheat field, I knew acting was a dream I had to pursue.

  WHAT I DIDN’T KNOW DIDN’T HURT ME

  If I had known then what I know now about the entertainment industry, I might not have chased my dream. I’m sure the impossibility of it all would have overwhelmed me, and I would have talked myself out of it. Believe me, most people would have advised me to let go of this dream, telling me it was a childhood fantasy. Because of my insulated upbringing, I possessed a wide-eyed innocence, making me the last person on earth who should have left all that he knew, moved to Hollywood, and entered into arguably the most cutthroat, competitive, “only one in a million survive” industry on the planet.

  However, in retrospect I can see my naïveté served me well. I was too dumb to know what I didn’t know, and my ignorance gave me confidence. Not an ideal situation, but I’ll take it. Bottom line, I wasn’t afraid—and that is a good thing when it comes to pursuing your God-given dream. If you allow fear to get in your way, to stop you from getting to where God wants you to be, you run the risk of a far less rewarding and fulfilling life than what could have been.

  My dream of a successful career in the entertainment industry was my beginning, my starting place. The finish line was still far away, so far away I couldn’t even see it clearly, which is surprising when you consider how flat Kansas is!

  What is your beginning? Where is your wheat field, and what waits for you beyond it? These are not rhetorical questions. You are going to need to answer them and be very clear about your answers if you ever hope to live your dreams. In order for you to fulfill your dream, you must first identify it. This is critical, but I don’t believe it is the first
step. I believe your journey begins by understanding where that dream came from in the first place.

  THE ONLY “YOU” GOD EVER MADE

  During the “in the beginning” days of the universe, when God first created humankind, I imagine he used a specific and unique genetic blueprint for each and every one of us. There is and never will be anyone exactly like you. Psalm 139:14 reads, “I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.” In the original Hebrew text, the word wonderfully means “unique, set apart, and therefore uniquely marvelous.”

  Do you have a hard time accepting this? Are you having difficulty imagining that of all the bajillion people on the planet Earth, God created no two exactly the same? It might be easier and more palatable for you to simply refer to God’s unique blueprint for you as DNA. That’s fine. Call it what you like, but I would like to point out that the Swiss chemist Friedrich Miescher first identified DNA some three thousand years after David wrote about being “wonderfully made.” Just saying.

  I believe God included a dream, a destiny, and a uniquely specific reason for living in each of our unique blueprints (DNA). We are told in Romans 12:6, “We have different gifts, according to the grace given to each of us.”

  Here’s what I believe is a plausible backstory to this verse. I am oversimplifying this process, but I picture God pondering his creation and concluding that he needs something specific done here on Earth. Perhaps he knew a certain community would one day need a leader, or that it would need a bridge built at some point, or maybe even that a child somewhere would need to laugh at just the right moment to give him the strength to persevere in his battle against a life-threatening disease.