Screen Play.

AHHH!!! Okay... So this is totally not formatted correctly. And it bugs me. But I had it all set up and blogger simply smushed it all together and glued it to the side of the column. So I'm frustrated at it right now. But despite the terrible formating injustices that have occured I'm certain you will get what I'm attempting to do here. In case you don't I'm attempting to write a screen play.

This is called 'Creation'.

This is the pitch:

A young woman suffering from the scars left by a troubled childhood comes face to face with her silent grudge against God when she meets a seemingly eccentric man on the subway and is given a supernatural board game enabling her to create a brand new earth and rule it however she pleases. Through her own personal attempt at creating a perfect world she discovers that God has her best interest at heart even when it feels like he's completely uncaring and absent in her darkest moments.

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FADE IN:
INT. SUBWAY CAR - MORNING

EVELYN sits by herself cradling her hot COFFEE CUP like she does every day on her way to work.

The car stops. More people enter the car as others leave. A YOUNG MAN, in his twenties, with a BOOK BAG draped across his shoulder rushes to take a seat a few rows ahead of Evelyn.

The car lurches forward and begins to move again.

The Young Man ahead of Evelyn disruptively shrugs off his book bag and struggles to get comfortable.

Evelyn watches the Young Man in slight irritation. The Young Man turns suddenly in his seat, and catches Evelyn’s eye.

Evelyn blushes and quickly redirects her gaze to the coffee cup in her hand. The Young Man grins, turns to face forward in his seat, then turns back towards Evelyn.

YOUNG MAN
Hey.

Evelyn keeps her eyes focused on the coffee cup.

YOUNG MAN
Excuse me?

Evelyn glances upwards and acknowledges the Young Man’s inquiry.

YOUNG MAN
You wouldn’t happen to have a piece of gum
would you?

Evelyn shakes her head no, her eyes flit nervously between the Young Man and her coffee cup.

EVELYN
(dismissively)
No. I don’t have any. I, uh, I don‘t chew gum.

The Young Man stares at her in silence for a second nods and turns back around in his seat. A moment later the Young Man turns back around.

YOUNG MAN
A breath mint then. Even sophisticated people carry

breath mints.

Evelyn shakes her head no.

EVELYN
No. Sorry.

YOUNG MAN
(Teasing)
Seriously..? What sort of person doesn’t carry breath

mints with them? Seems suspicious to me.

Evelyn continues to stare down her coffee cup as she nervously rubs the rim of the cup with her thumb.

EVELYN
(Flustered)
I, uh, I don’t know but…

She looks up to meet the Young Man’s unbroken gaze and forces a weak smile.

EVELYN
It looks like you don’t carry them either.

The Young Man’s face lights up with a wide smile and he shakes his head in agreement. Evelyn smiles easily despite herself.

YOUNG MAN
Touché. But you have to admit, under different circumstances,

it could have been one awesome ice breaker.

EVELYN
Yeah… I guess, under different circumstances…

The Young Man leans forward and reaches across the seat to extend his hand.

YOUNG MAN
My name’s Joshua, by the way.

Evelyn, leans forward and reaches to shake JOSHUA’S hand.

EVELYN
Evelyn.

Joshua nods and holds Evelyn’s hand until she nervously tugs it free and slumps back into her seat.

JOSHUA
Well Evelyn, it’s nice to meet you. Even if it is in

unfavourable circumstances.

Evelyn shrugs and smiles slightly.

EVELYN
Well… All things considered the circumstances weren’t that

unfavourable.

JOSHUA
Yeah?

EVELYN
Well it worked didn’t it? We’re talking.

JOSHUA
Good point. Very good point... So, what do you do? What’s

your profession?

EVELYN
I’m a student… For right now anyways, I hope to be a social

worker, or a counsellor… something like that… You know,

someone who works with people from difficult backgrounds.

JOSHUA
Sounds like a worthy profession.

EVELYN
Yeah, well… It is I suppose- So. What is your profession?

JOSHUA
Oh, I’m in the family business…

EVELYN
Oh, yeah? That sounds interesting… So what’s your family’s

business?

JOSHUA
We deal with societal problems.

Evelyn nods and waits to hear more.

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And so do you because it's late and I don't have the patience to re-format the entire thing right now. :D This is what I learned today. How to write a screen play. It's actually pretty fun.

Cole.

...A Brief Synopsis Of My Life So Far... (3)

I very quickly slipped off the road into the ditch and I’ve been there a long time. Long enough to have assured myself that this is normal. It isn’t, but I had myself believing that it was. Another core issue in my debacle is trust. I didn’t believe God when he said that he favours me. I didn’t believe that the picture in the mirror of me looking so radiant while standing beside God was accurate. How could it be? Look at who I am? I thought that I understood grace. I thought that I understood what it means to walk every day dependant on the strength that God provides; but I was really just standing on my own, struggling to will strength into my weary body. This lack of trust created a rift in my relationship with God, as it would with any relationship. Trust is kind of crucial if you want to maintain a healthy relationship with someone. Trust also breeds confidence. And as I’m starting to discover confidence is really important if you want to live your life to the fullest. Proverbs 3:26 says; For the Lord will be your confidence, and will keep your foot from being caught.

I have worked hard to do this on my own. I have pretended to trust God all while stubbornly refusing to take his hand and allow him to help me up. As a result I’ve tripped, stumbled and fell flat on my face. Then, because I believe God to have lead me down this path, I get angry at him for leading me where I have been hurt and where he has not been there to catch me. All of this is terribly incorrect but when your throwing a fit facts go out the window early on. Along with those facts goes the security that comes organically through the confidence that God provides. It’s like the image in the mirror. Standing next to God not only brings confidence in my abilities, but also in every aspect of who I am. I find myself content with my appearance and things like weight, hair, and clothes become inconsequential in a lot of ways. I feel grounded. I feel okay with who I am because I know who I am to God and that’s all that matters. The confidence that God gives takes the pressure off of me and places it on God. I can be confident that everything is alright because God is and always will be God. That makes him very capable of handling the things that come up in my life. That makes me okay because he’s capable of taking care of anything that comes up to challenge or to tear down my reliance on and trust in him.

I know that a lot of this is common sense, as it should be, but sometimes we become so focused on making it that common sense becomes a rare phenomenon in our situations. So it’s helpful to say it anyways. God does not give bad gifts. He gives what is good and right for our benefit. He is a very awesome God. But we in our selfishness can sometimes discredit the gifts that he gives. We deny to accept the gifts he offers believing ourselves to be acting out of pious righteousness and then suffer in our desire of the very thing he offered to us. If you are in a desert, dying for a drink of water and someone gives it to you, you don’t refuse the offering. To refuse to accept the water and die of thirst believing yourself righteous is foolish. Yet I know that I myself have done this more than once.


....................END PART THREE....................

Cole.

...A Brief Synopsis Of My Life So Far... (2)

I began to doubt the encounter I had had with God. I began to doubt that his yes meant yes. I decided that God never just says yes and gives to his children good things. God says yes, but you’ll have to do this. You’ll have to work really hard, complete 4 years of Bible college, top of your class, and lets not forget all of the community/ministry service you’re going to have to complete in between. I became really discouraged. It was all so much work. Did I really want this that badly? All of this hard work was discouraging and I began to feel so burnt out that I began to doubt the worth of the thing I could not stop myself from desiring. I was so jilted by all of the effort that came back with unsatisfying conclusions that I began to seriously wonder whether God wanted me to have this.

So I began to question. In frustration I would ask him, God, do you really want me to do this? Am I really called to missions or is this just something I’m chasing on my own accord? When God was consistent to tell me that he really had called me to missions I got even more frustrated and angry, with God and with myself. Maybe I don’t want this anymore. Maybe I never heard God. All of my previous attempts to please God proved this point. It seemed that everything I attempted, thinking that it was inspired by God was, in the end, very uninspired. I tasted the bitterness my supposed failures left on my tongue and felt wounded by a God whom I believed to have mislead me. I could not pass his test and so I would not have the thing that I desire most. Which, ironically, was a life lived in such intimacy with God that I would be willing to die for him.

Very soon after graduation I decided that I would not pursue missions. I would not be a missionary. I would find something else. Maybe I’d teach. Anything but missions because it was quite obvious that God did not intend for me to be involved in missions. And I tried very, very hard to see that through but within a semester of classes it became quite clear that I couldn’t just give up on something I’d wanted for so long. I started to calm down. I began to reconsider my previous temper tantrum and realize that God is steadfast and he doesn’t waste words. He doesn’t say yes if he doesn’t intend to see it through. The thing was I was tired. And I was no longer willing to throw myself into things headfirst anymore. No more work. I wasn’t going to beat my head against a wall trying to mould it into the right shape. I wouldn’t so adamantly deny that I wasn’t called to missions, but I wasn’t going to go out there and make it happen either. I was pouting and I praise God for his restraint because he had every right to flick me across the room while indignantly shouting, ’How dare you!’

I questioned the steadfast, decisive nature of God. God doesn’t sit on fences when it comes to making a decision. He’s already decided what he’s going to do, where he’s going to stand, even before the question is asked. And his yes, is a yes. It’s not a conditional ‘yes but’, it’s not a ‘maybe’; it’s a yes. When he says yes, believe him because he means it. I began to doubt that his yes meant yes because I began to question and disbelieve that he truly favoured me. I got my eyes off of God, placed a critical eye on myself and lost the sense of security and acceptance I had, until that point, been blessed with. With a critical eye wrongly labelled as constructive and helpful scrutinizing my every action I ended up creating a wrong picture of myself in my head which in turn caused me to lose confidence in my abilities to be who God called me to be. Even though I knew all the time that I couldn’t be that person without God, no matter how hard I tried.



....................END PART TWO....................

Cole.

...A Brief Synopsis Of My Life So Far...

Okay. So this is my problem. I worry too much and I’m trying to control too much. I also fear rejection. I don’t want to admit to feeling anything but numb because I’m afraid that if I do I’ll be scrutinized for it. I’m indecisive. Before I had made up my mind that I was just easy going and that it’s not a bad thing. But the truth is I avoid making decisions because I don’t want to be told that I’m responsible for making a major mistake. So I just avoid making major decisions. I worry and fret about all the tiny details until the moment is past and they don’t matter any more.

With the big things I’m even more terrified. I’m terrified because I find that I can’t help but feel something. I can’t help but desire missions. And that frightens me. It scares me to death because I want it, I want it so badly and I asked God for it. Have I told you that? I asked God for it. Actually I was brass enough to ask God if he would allow me to be a martyr. I was young. 8 years old, if that. And it was a really emotionally charged moment. I was sobbing because I’d thought about it long and hard, I’d prayed about it and I found that I wanted it; more than anything else I wanted it. So I asked God. First I asked if I could do it? Could I give my life for God, would I be able to do that? And he answered me, he would be there to help me. And I told him that, seeing as he’d be there to help me, I wanted it. Can I have this God? Can I have this? Then I sobbed harder and begged him to favour me enough to bless me with the opportunity to serve him as a missionary. And through my sobs I heard him. Yes. One word and it stole my breath away. I stopped sobbing immediately and realized that he’d granted me my request, then the enormity of God hit me, the huge reality of him and I cried some more.

I believed him. 100% I believed him. And ever since then I’ve known. I’ve just always known that it’s what I was destined to do… I’ve tried to escape it, but I can’t. It’s who I am. It’s in my DNA. It’s me. The thing is as soon as this encounter was over, with the knowledge of what had happened fresh in my mind, I got attacked from every angle. I would say that I wanted to be a missionary and felt nothing but scrutiny for it. It seemed to come from everywhere, but the biggest influence was my parents. I got my eyes off of God and the wonderful truth, that he’d told me I could have it, and onto myself.

It was like before I was looking into a mirror and God was standing beside me with his arm around my shoulder beaming and all I could see was how beautiful he made me. Then suddenly there was someone else standing next to me in the mirror and they weren’t holding me, they were pointing fingers and revealing every imperfection in such a compelling way that I could not ignore them. They could not push God out of the picture but they didn’t have to, because I did it. Me, with my eyes off of God, just naturally distanced myself from him. I stepped away, I didn’t shove him back, I just stepped out of his embrace. I stood alone and the distance I had placed between us added to the horror of the image. Because suddenly I seen very clearly what God would require in contrast to who I was. And I took it onto myself to become the sort of person who could stand beside God and rest her head comfortably on his chest. Without realizing that’s who I was.

....................END PART ONE....................

Cole.

Battle Summery

You may have noticed that the last post was completed at the start of November and there is nothing after it. That is because I got distracted. Well... Distracted and I realized how biblically inaccurate what I wrote was, which scared me. So I stopped to look into it and never got back to finish writing. I failed NANO month miserably. But I figure that's okay. I did make some sort of effort and it's a step in the right direction. I will write a novel. And God willing it won't be heretical. I may have lost this battle, but I will win the war.

So, this leads me to the purpose of this blog. Does it still have a purpose? Can I redeem the scraps left after Flannigan Finch's crash landing or should I scrap it and pursue something with more promise. I still like this blog. Not that I've wrote much here in a while, but I do like it.
So... for now it stays. I suppose I can find something to write in here.

We'll just have to wait and see.

Cole.