It has been a long, long time since I posted anything new. I’ve not been idle. I wrote a new book called “I Made Them for Hope,” which is about everyday miracles that happened to me and people I have known for a long time. But mostly I’ve been working on a project that is very dear to my heart.

In 2002, Dan Worley and I were running Summer Theatre Workshop (STW), a teen theater group here in Lake County. We wanted them to have something memorable and meaningful to perform, since the songs and dialogue would be memorized, performed several times, and probably remembered all the days of their lives.

We looked through everything available and found nothing. Fiddler on the Roof had been done by a local high school not that long ago, and we just couldn’t find suitable material.

So we decided to write our own.

Eight weeks is not very much time to rehearse an entire musical, and at the same time my mom was very ill and I had been gone a lot, so the script we had intended to hand them on the first day had no Act 2. Dan and I would rehearse with the kids, go back to the studio in the afternoon and write furiously, and hand out the next scene the following morning. It was grueling, but somehow it came pouring out, and the play made sense and was very successful, playing to a packed house every performance.

I loved that musical. It was miraculous all the way through—from the cast and crew, who were perfect for the parts and the jobs, to the songs, which we wrote specifically for them in their vocal ranges and which were often written in minutes.

My heart’s desire has always been to see Even In Shadow back on stage. But the script needed a lot of help. It was long and wordy, and sometimes the dialogue was downright, as Dan puts it, “suppository.” We knew it needed serious rewriting. I worked on it for two full years, and we wrote five new songs.

In 2019, we were auditioning actor/singers in preparation for getting the show back on stage. We were trying out my revised script and had even made arrangements with a former student to direct it. And then COVID-19 hit and shut us down.

But, you know what? It’s a good thing. For the next five years I worked on the script—stripping it down, developing characters, removing expository scenes, and adding others.

Out of the blue, one of our former STW members contacted us just to say hello. Kellie had been part of our stage crew for three summers. She was such a joy to have around that when we wrote Even In Shadow, we based a character on her personality and named her Kellie.

Kellie had moved to a town a couple of hours away and, surprisingly enough, lived fairly close to another of our former members—Amanda, who had played the Kellie part in Even In Shadow. Soon we were emailing both of them, so happy to be back in contact with those lovely young women who had added so much goodness to our summer productions.

Wonderful things happened through those contacts, but I’ll keep it short. I needed to see if my heavily revised script would sound believable in the mouth of a real human. The voice of my Mac is pretty good, but it’s just not the same as someone capable of the full range of human expression. So I asked Amanda if she would read her part to me over the phone. She said she would. And after reading her Kellie lines, she asked if I’d like her to read the dialogue of other characters in the scene. I was overjoyed.

Dan happened to be passing by and heard Amanda reading. He stood for a moment listening, then said we should record her reading the script and put it on YouTube with all fifteen songs in their rightful places in the scenes. Then he had the idea of translating the script into a hybrid form—a combination of script and audiobook. 

A year later, it was done—all the scenes, almost all the songs. Then one of my most cherished heart’s desires happened. Amanda came to our studio and recorded the songs the Kellie character sang in our original production. We also asked her to sing the last song in the show, and as we listened it seemed that it had been written just for her.

Amanda is now the age of the character she played in the production when she was eighteen. All the life she has been through in those twenty-three years has given her a settled maturity, depth, compassion, and wisdom that inform the characters in the play as she brings each of them to life in her narration. Dan and I were totally astonished by her performance.

I’m telling you all of this because you may have a heart’s desire that seemed impossible to bring about—like Sarah and Abraham, even though God Himself promised them their own child. There may still be a fulfillment of the heart’s desire someday.

Many things happen during delay. People mature. Technology makes things feasible that weren’t possible before. Former students move from New York back to a town close enough to come record in our studio. And what seemed impossible comes to pass over and over—miraculously.

Scripture says, “Delight yourself in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart.”

I am in awe that our beloved musical can now be heard in its complete form, and every bit of it has been a miracle.

And guess what? We’re getting ready to hold open auditions to find out what kind of talent is available around here. This time we’re not doing the show with teenagers only, but with actors the age of the characters.

I wish Amanda lived closer. She’d get the Kellie part for sure! But who knows? Maybe there’s another lyrical soprano with an angelic voice who can carry off those very special songs. You never know. We’re going to at least try. And if we can find the singers and actors who can carry it off, Even In Shadow will be back on stage—maybe this year. One can hope! It’s still my heart’s desire.

If you want to hear what we did—Dan, Amanda, and I—here are the links.

Listen to the Full Musical

Even In Shadow audiobook on Spotify

Even in Shadow audiobook on YouTube

Listen to the Soundtrack (15 tracks)

On Spotify

On Apple Music

On YouTube Music

On Amazon Music

Our Licensing Website