Wonder.

I like going places alone.
Well, kind of alone. Alone in that I am unaccompanied by physical persons.

But Jesus, He always goes with me.
Sometimes we walk on bridges or sit on benches.
Sometimes I eat food or get a milkshake and He comes along.

Tonight was one of such outings. I rarely mind that I am unaccompanied in a way that people visually see. In all honesty, it kind of fills me with a sense of confidence.

But there's something I see on my walks with the Lord that jolts me out of that peaceful quiet of loneness.

It is the grasping of hands.

Walking on a bridge at dusk, handholding couples are about in plenty. And in those moments, seeing that symbol of togetherness, my heart pangs in wonderment of what it must be like to be somebody's person, to get them and have them get you. To, as Winnie the Pooh and Piglet have so graciously taught us (not that their relationship was romantic), grasp another's fingers simply "to be sure of them."

It's not usually, "God I wish..."
Or even, "God, why not?"

It is most often,

"God, I wonder..."

Sitting here at my desk, I am convinced that there is nothing better than to wonder with an open heart.
A heart harboring no malice or resentment, merely curiosity.

My pastor once said to me:
     
              "Replace doubt and fear with awe and wonder.
                Awe and wonder what God will do."

While in most areas of my life, I haven't quite figured out how to do that yet, I'm slowly learning to wonder. To wonder at the beauty of relationship, but also the beauty of my own freedom. To wonder where I will go and what I will do.

Wondering at one's life when placed in the hands of the Almighty God is, I believe, one of the greatest challenges that we fully surrendered followers of Jesus will face. When we relinquish control of our souls to His perfect will, we so relinquish control of our futures, careers, and relationships (not that we were very good at taking care of them in the first place...)

And some days, it's a struggle to remember that the BEST He has for us is better than our own plans could ever be.

Actually MOST days that is the struggle.

But I believe in my heart of hearts, that as we draw closer and closer to Jesus, putting aside those things which so easily come before Him, His Holy Spirit places dreams in our hearts. As we receive His love and love Him in return, He weaves His will alongside ours in the most intricate and beautiful pattern. Sometimes, our humanness that is oh-so contrary to the holiness of God, creates a bunch of thread that is all mixed up and knotted. In such times, God, in His manner of transforming and leading us on towards that holiness, untangles those bunches of thread and continues on. It is painful to have pieces of yourself so pulled apart, but it is always, always worth it.

Replace doubt and fear with awe and wonder.
Walk in expectation.
Live not in the past or future, but in this moment.

For Neverland

Tech week is long and grueling. 

Hours standing, hours waiting. 

The lights that need to be adjusted. The sets that just won't get where they need to be. 

Tech week is also my favorite.

(after actually performing that is)

It's where the magic begins.

It's where all these little quirks about the show begin to develop 

and the closest bonds between people begin to form. 

What I like about theatre is the fluidity and continuity. 

Unlike a movie that is shot out of order and then edited for months before it can be viewed,

 stage actors tell a story to your face. 

It adds a sense of urgency, a need to get it right and to give every audience a good show. 

In theatre, we give you a frame. 

The stage. 

You see everything on the stage, but there is more that you don't see and that is everything outside of the frame. 

You don't see the lost boys/girls offstage doing a dance to "shake off the girl" and get into character right before Act 2. 

You also don't see us grasping hands and praying right before we run on stage. 

You don't see Tom, down in the pit, literally blowing the smoke from the fog machine out of the mushroom. 

You don't see the pirates nicely handing the lost boys their gags and hand ties right before they lead us away captive. 

Before the nursery scene you don't see fifteen sweaty bodies piled on top of each other behind the Darling window. 

You don't see the stage manager calling the shots or the guys pulling the ropes to fly Peter, Wendy, Michael and John. 

You don't see us running offstage and guzzling down water bottles or any of the quick changes.

You don't see us warming up and having dance parties to Uptown Funk. 

There's a lot more you don't see, but I can't give away all our secrets. 

The night of the very first Peter Pan performance, when I arrived home, I got out of my car and stared up at the sky. As I looked up at the stars in that vast expanse I felt as if my heart might burst. Thankfulness, awe, and wonder that I was getting to do the thing that I love doing the very most. 

The Neverland state of mind is believing that adventures are waiting around every corner and that fun is the most important. Somehow staring up at the night sky helped me to believe that. 

Adventures are waiting around every corner and fun is important. 

While I waited for my car lights to turn off (it takes sixty seconds - weird I know) I was thanking God that not only did he put this desire to perform and entertain inside of me, but that he was letting me do it. That He didn't put it there for nothing, but with a purpose. He gives gifts to be used. 

Then, directly after my car lights turned off, the biggest fattest shooting star went rolling across the sky. It didn't shoot. It rolled and dragged it's gleaming golden tail all the way across and I watched it the whole way. 

I cried a little because I'm emotional like that and I knew God put it there for me. 

Neverland is not just a nice place we pretended about for a few months while we rehearsed for a show. Neverland is a place we keep in our hearts always- even as we inevitably grow old. It is the place that takes joy in the smallest occurrences, the place we belly laugh from about nothing in particular, and the place we hope for almost impossible things from. Neverland, is the part of our hearts that longs for adventure and fun. 

While we are "leaving Neverland" we never have to fully leave. 

We keep looking for adventure, for good friends that are more like family, and for a life.... lived fully. 

So I made this video. 

For the memories. 

For the cast and crew that is so in my heart. 

And for Neverland. 

No Family Like a Show Family from Lauren Hofer on Vimeo.

Just In Case.

On Good Friday, the Lord told me to write this letter to someone. I didn't know who it was for and I didn't end up giving it to anyone because I lost it. Days later I found it and read it over to myself. I realized that it was a culmination of all the things God has been teaching me in the past year or so. I've been reading it to myself at night before bed to remember. I'm so forgetful.

I share it here, in case someone else needs to remember too.


To you.

There is nothing you can do that would make the Father love you more than He does now and always has. Your Creator takes the utmost delight in you simply because you are His creation. He has seen you at your very worst when you blatantly chose sin as well as when you quietly succumbed to it, and still He went to the cross for you. For the love of you. While we were still sinners Christ died for us.

So let Him be your sufficiency as you strive to walk in grace and truth. May you be ever weak so that He might be ever strong and show His power through you. If you must be desperate, then be desperate, but only for Him, for His healing, and for His truth. He gives rest to His children. Rest in the knowledge that He alone is your victory. What Jesus did on the cross paid for victory from every bondage. So press on in hope. Hope. Always have hope. May it be your anchor in the troubled seas of this life. May hope hold you firm when all seems lost. Hope in the knowledge that God is always good, that He is always present with you, and that because of those two things you never have to be afraid.
 
                                                                       
                                                                                           Blessings to you this day.
     

I Don't Have Enough

The goal was to slay this semester.

Literally.

Slay it.

Slay it by accomplishing the whole plethora of commitments that I had enlisted myself in.

I was going to be so on top of school.
Read every single chapter of every single book and really learn.

I was going to be disciplined and save money to travel by packing lunches and not eating out.

I was going to have the Peter Pan script memorized so long ago and be completely prepared for every rehearsal.

Add to those a twenty-six hour work week, a few friends, some other time commitments, and a bunch of dreams about being a writer, story teller, and creative.

For the sake of brevity, I'll fast forward 2.5 months to the middle of march. What passed was a miserable case of tonsillitis, a missed week of work and rehearsal, two rounds of antibiotics, one foul tasting apple cider vinegar concoction, one four months passed expiration drivers license, one missed fafsa form, one crying meltdown, a few other calamities that I won't mention, and.... oh yeah.. turns out the tonsillitis was a result of mono, which I managed to get without kissing anyone. Go figure.

As a result of that marvelous viral infection, I was told by a very wise person in the medical profession that I ought to be in bed for four hours during the day as not to relapse before the show (which opens in less than a month).

Considering that most of my other "slay the semester goals" have already gone to the goal junk yard - the place where all good and bad goals go to die - the few that I was holding onto involved throwing myself at life with all the energy I didn't have.

So. in essence. I have not slayed this semester.

My friend Haven is really into fitness... I shouldn't say really into.
My friend Haven is pursuing fitness and doing so well. She does competitions and she places. There's a whole shelf in her room filled with these muscular lady trophies.

She told me once that during her work outs lately she had been just saying, "Lord, Lord, Lord," to get her through, because they were hard.

A few weeks ago, while drinking latte's with my friend in the early morning, I said to her:

"Where we end is where He begins."

It's slightly ironic and comical to me because I spoke words I hadn't understood.

The more my goals have slipped out of my grasp, the sweeter Jesus has become, and the more sure of Him I have been.
The sicker I have felt, the more I have had to rely in faith on the hope that He is my healer.
It does not mean that healing will come when I wish it, but that it will come.
And until it does, the Lord Jesus will be enough.

I have been prayed over by my community, and reminded that rest is and was God ordained.

So when I'm at rehearsal, being a lost boy, attempting to have all the energy that a preadolescent boy has, and I just. don't. have it. would I say, "Lord, Lord, Lord," and rely on His Sufficiency.

Would my best plans fail as I grow in dependency and remember that where I end, is where He begins, and that when I have the least to give, my Lord Jesus has the most.



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Sometimes, I am apprehensive to share because I know there are people facing life threatening situations, and what are my petty problems compared to those. I'm thankful that Jesus doesn't tell us our struggles are insignificant, and that He grows us in every hard situation, whether it is a little hard, or a lot hard.

To Believe in Darkness.

For the past two days. I have been for brief periods of time experiencing feelings of hopeless, depressive anxiety. I would liken it to being emotionally and spiritually stuck in a room with only a TV and no hope of over escaping.

It's awful and completely foreign to anything I have ever experienced.

On three separate occasions in the past few weeks, I have read or heard a certain phrase, almost the same exact phrase, but in three different places. One was in one of those cute proposal videos online, another was in an autobiography called "Kisses from Katie (READ IT) and another was in my favorite fictional book series: The Mark of the Lion.

It is as follows.

To believe in the darkness what she once knew in the light. 

Each time I read it, the words gripped me and resonated in the deep places of my heart.

Another version I heard was along the lines of,

To believe in darkness what we were promised in the light.

I felt like God was asking me, telling me,
"Will you believe in the darkness what you once knew in the light?"

I remember one very dark night taking a trash can to the end of my long driveway. I used to be petrified of the dark in a numbing and paralyzing sort of way. As I was walking through that darkness of which I used to be so afraid, the Holy Spirit said, in His still silent voice of peace,

"you will go into darker places than this."

I know that His purposes and plans are for good.

I don't know what the darkness before me is, nor do I wish to imagine frightening scenarios in which my life falls apart or I am subject persecution or hardship.

but these past few days, I have had a teeny tiny taste of the darkness of the human condition, and in those moments of seemingly senseless anxiety and hopelessness, choosing to believe the truth of Jesus that I have claimed and abided in while in the light--that was hard.

Psalm 107: 14
He brought them out of darkness
and the shadow of death
And broke their chains in pieces.

I serve a God who breaks chains in pieces and who brings His children out of darkness.

Each day (the whole whopping two of them) that I have struggled against myself, I have gone to scripture. I have sat and breathed slowly asking for peace with each intake of air. I have written out the confusion and myriad of things in my heart. I have asked the Lord to save now.

and He has. He has breathed peace over me and used me when I had nothing and showed me His Presence in tangible ways.


Each day I have been left in awe of Him and His trueness.
He's true.
He's just so true.

This Place I Am In

This place I am in is confusing. 

It is the place stuck between intense passion and lack of direction and focus.

It is the wanting to do something big, yet not knowing what to do.

It is the feeling that my life has the potential to mean something, to have great purpose,

and yet the knowledge of how to get there escapes me.

Passion without movement is waisted.

Intense feeling without direction and follow through does nothing.

I like feeling.

I like the ache in my heart that wills me to act,

but if I do not act, then the feeling is for naught, and it would have been better to never have felt at all.

Sometimes I think I could spend my life chasing feeling, and missing movement.

I could waist my one precious life.

So what do I do?

My dreams are like the clouds.

Floating.

Wafting.

Moving.

Drifting.

Indefinite.

Sometimes they stay and sometimes they go.

How do you grasp a cloud?

How do you make it solid?

How do you pull it from the sky to the earth below?

This place I am in is emotional. 

It is the fear of failure.

It is the desire to be thought well of.

It is the constant need to have it together.

It is the constant knowledge that I never have it together.

It is the intense love of people who have a tendency to come and go.

It is the overwhelming reality of having so many people to love, and not enough time to really love them all well.

It is the confusion about God's character.

It is the hard truth that my spiritual gift is not faith.

Sometimes I struggle to believe that God is real.

In my heart of hearts, I know Jesus.

And yet I question.

I could be sick about it.

I could be sick that I have seen Him so tangibly in my life and yet I question.

This place I am in is filled with tension. 

The tension between wanting independence, yet still relying heavily upon my parents.

The tension of being so angry at injustice, but not knowing how to fight it.

The tension of having so much wealth, but wanting to live like Jesus.

Of partially wanting to give it away, but selfishly being incapable of doing so.

Is it selfish?

Is if just America?

Are we exempt from "go sell all you have and follow me?"

Is that just for certain people?

I am confused.

The tension of wanting to tell everyone that Jesus is THE WAY, but not wanting to seem religious or pushy. Because, after all, we're just supposed to love, right?

The tension of wanting to chase after my very cloud-like dreams, and yet wanting to enter into marriage. to be a helpmate. to be the wife of a man who follows the Lord. to be a kick-ass mom who raises kids who know their identity in Christ.

The list of tensions goes on.

Tensions are funny because they make you feel as if there are two ropes tide to your wrists pulling you in different directions.

Some days I love this place I am in.

Other days I do not.

but it is the place I am.

It is my life, and living with purpose is here.

It is not for the future. It is for now.

It is the purposeful seeking the face of the Lord.

It is the purposeful loving of people.

It is the purposeful speaking of truth. no matter how hard it is.

It is saying yes when the Lord calls me, and saying no to my flesh.

It is moving forward.

It is not looking back.

It is hoping

and waiting

and moving

and changing

It is always being satisfied in the Lord, and yet never complacent in my relationship with Him.

It is combing through His Word and hiding it's words in the secret places of my heart.

I was created by Him.

I was created through Him.

I was created for Him.

He is my purpose in this place that I am in.

and I count it all joy,

to struggle and wrestle through the tensions

to delight and wonder at His goodness

and to never know what grand things will happen when I say yes to Jesus.

Flickering Lights

I love lights.

I used to be really scared of walking in the dark at night....
so I started forcing myself to do so..
as a result my fear became less intense, but I would still much rather have a light.

I was in Disneyland last week.
Disneyland is the best at night.
The lights make it ethereal.
It's magical in the day time...
but it's even more magical at night.

Tonight I was driving home and like I sometimes do,
I took the long way.
and on the long way, I kept seeing flickering lights.

One of the lights on a bank building was going on and off.
A lighted sign couldn't decide whether it wanted to be bright or dark.

Flickering lights are uncanny.
Lights are not usually supposed to flicker.
It usually means that the power source is lacking.
Or that there is a shortage in the wiring.

Jesus said that we are supposed to be light in this world.
He said that we are supposed to shine like stars.

Seeing all those flickering lights made me ask myself what kind of light I am.
and in what way I shine.

I want to be a light that shines bright always.
I want to be a light that brings stability and hope into darkness.
I want to be a light that does not shy away from darkness, but approaches it boldly,
knowing that I am Jesus' plan.

WE are Jesus plan to displace the darkness in this world.
WE carry His light within us.
and WE get to choose whether we flicker on and off, or remain steadily displaying the light of truth.

That's amazing.