June 18: So Tired

I'm so tired. So very, very tired. Up at 5:00 this morning to kiss my sleeping babies, on location at 6:00 with the cameras rolling an hour later, and absolutely no appetite. After a twelve hour shoot today, we just now sit down at this table and prepare to watch ALL of the dailies. All 156 of them. It's just past 11:00 and our Director of Photography is going to spend the night on our floor. We're tired, so very, very tired. Nothing ever goes as expected, of course. We had a number of scenes to shoot today, being our first day on location, and we were behind schedule the entire time. We were exploring and investing, and no one really knew what to expect from one moment to the next. It was surprising, though, how incredibly calm everyone really was. Even though the first day of any project like this is a learning curve, and everyone is feeling anxious because we're afraid of defining what the entire project will look like from this point on, our first day with "Sacred" was a well-oiled, invested, focused experiment. So many of us commented on how smooth the process was, despite it being our first day doing any of this at all. We attribute that, of course, to the most focused, invested Friend we have. Oh, did we have fun! We invited two high school janitors at Kennedy School to join a scene as extras, and I think they were a little overwhelmed. And me? For the first time ever, I got to do what I've always wanted to do: sit and watch, and direct my actors while everybody orchestrated everything else. And at the same time, everyone made our location at the school our home. We all had a task, filled in the missing gaps, exuded patience, and were incredibly kind and encouraging and loving to all of the new faces that appeared on set as extras...and everyone was praying.One of the most difficult scenes to shoot, in fact, involved a lot of grief, and it turned into a scene with a lot of tears for many of us. It was exhausting, but it happened so naturally that we all felt a part of the real thing. I finally learned that one of our cast members and a group of others stood outside the door praying for everything that was happening in that room. The Holy Spirit moved as they requested, and we all will remember this precious moment because of Him.

We're tired, so very tired. But, wow...let's do this again.

"Do not fear, for I am with you; do not anxiously look about you, for I am your God. I will strengthen you, surely I will help you, surely I will uphold you with my righteous right hand." (Isaiah 41:10)]