INTRODUCTION
What follows is a sermon delivered completely as a story. No scripture is read, and no conversation precedes the story to set up the audience. The story is told from a narrator’s standpoint. The songs in the story can be spoken or sung, although singing would be preferable. Later in the story one of the earlier songs is hummed. Again, it is best if this humming is performed rather than spoken of.
When the story ends, the pastor leaves the platform while quiet music is played for a minute or two giving people an opportunity to reflect on and pray about what they have just experienced. No attempt is made to discuss or moralize the story after it is completed. Following the time of reflection the benediction is given.
Paula looked at the bottle of pills on the nightstand. She was drunk and already had taken four sleeping pills. Through her grogginess she thought that if she took the rest of the bottle she wouldn’t have to wake up. As she pondered this, her eyes grew increasingly heavy and she fell asleep before her mind could send the signal to her arm to reach for the bottle. She dropped into a deep sleep followed by a long familiar, dreaded dream.
Her dream took her back to her first four years. They were the happiest of her memories. From then on, her life became more and more painful.
Paula was born to a 14 year-old Laotian refugee. Her father was a truck driver who used her mother for a quick one-night stand. Shortly after her birth Paula was given up for adoption.
With one notable exception, she was a beautiful baby. She had the Oriental eyes of her mother but the Caucasian coloring of her father. Her face, however, had a large, pronounced birth mark on her right cheek. It was about the size of her fist. Invariably it was to the birth mark that all eyes were drawn.
The adoption agency knew that they would have difficulty placing the child. It was hard enough placing a mixed race baby, but with the birth mark, it was an almost impossible task. After several weeks, the agency called Charity Phillips and asked for her help. Charity was a saint of a woman. A widow of ten years, she was always available to care for the most unwanted of children. For more than three years, Charity cared and nurtured Paula.
Just before Paula’s fourth birthday, Paula was placed by the agency in a foster home. The understanding with the foster parents, Tom and Linda Bartholomew, was that in time, they would adopt little Paula. Unfortunately, that never transpired. Soon after Paula moved into their house, Linda Bartholomew became pregnant after years of unsuccessful attempts. When their little girl was born, Paula became expendable. They tried to keep and love her, but their hearts were committed to their own biological child. Thinking that they didn’t have enough love to spread between the two girls, they returned her to the agency.
Paula, now six was placed in another foster family. Jerry and Carol Lungreen were a busy professional couple with no children. Soon after Paula’s arrival she was doing all the domestic chores of the household. When she wasn’t cleaning or doing the laundry she spent her time in front of the television. Since the Lungreens had little time or inclination to attend to Paula she learned to entertain herself. She spent hours and hours watching Disney movies. She learned the songs of the princesses and the heroines. She learned their dances as well. Had anyone been watching they would have seen a child prodigy who sang and danced magically and effortlessly.
When Paula entered puberty life began to change abruptly. Jerry Lungreen, who to this point largely ignored his foster daughter, began to become very affectionate. Soon affection turned to molestation. Paula was threatened to keep a secret. She was made to believe that this was all her fault.
She began to sink into a deep depression that lasted for several years. The only time the depression lifted was when she had the opportunity to sing or dance. During Paula’s junior year of high school, her choir director encouraged her to try out for the school play. To her amazement, she was awarded the female lead role. The play was a musical entitled Man of La Mancha—the story of Miguel De Cervantes the author of Don Quixote. Her role was that of Aldonza, a barmaid and a prostitute.
For six weeks she stayed after school for hours of play practice. She loved everything about it. She loved the stage, the empty theater, the lights, the orchestra. She loved watching the other actors from the wings. Every night she watched as the hero, Don Quixote, would sing the main song of the musical: The Impossible Dream. She loved the word even if she didn’t believe them. She hoped that there were people who were so noble, but she knew none.
[singing]
To dream the impossible dream
To fight the unbeatable foe
To bear with unbearable courage
To run where the brave dare not go
This is my quest
To follow that star
No matter how hopeless
No matter how far
To fight for the right
Without question or pause
To be willing to march into hell
With a heavenly cause
And I know the world will be better for this
That one man, scorned and covered with scars
Still strove with his last ounce of courage
To reach the unreachable star (Leigh and Darion 2001)
Every night the end of the song found her moved to tears.
Her song, by contrast was eerily similar to her life’s situation. Singing as a prostitute who was mistaken by Don Quixote as a lovely maiden
[singing]
I was born in a ditch
By a mother who left her there
Naked and cold and too hungry to cry
I never blamed her,
I’m sure she left hoping
That I had the good sense to die.
I’m told that young maidens
can point to their father’s with heavenly pride
Mine was a regiment here for an hour
I don’t even know which side (Leigh and Darion 2001).
The play was performed eight times over two weekends and was hailed as a great success. After the set was struck and the last cast party was held, Paula sank into the darkest depression of her life. She missed the practices. She missed the opportunity to not be available for Mr. Lungreen. She missed the community of actors and stage hands working as a team toward a common goal. She mostly missed the applause.
Three weeks after the play, during a fourth period study hall she suffered a nervous breakdown. Out of nowhere she began to cry uncontrollably. Her body went limp and she was unable to move. The school nurse and the guidance counselor were able to help her to the nurse’s station where she continued to weep for another hour until she lost the strength to continue.
With much patience the school counselor talked with her and asked her delicate questions. After thirty minutes, authorities were contacted and Paula was taken to a safe house. Jerry Lungreen was taken to jail. Paula never saw him or his wife again.
After a week in the safe house, Paula was again placed in another foster home. She stayed in this new home for a total of two days before running away. She had a friend make her a make birth certificate and driver’s license that gave her an extra year and the ability to move about as an adult. She took a job waiting on tables and tending bar. There she met Adam and after three weeks of his undivided attention she was convinced that this was her knight in shining armor and ran away with him.
Adam was a supervisor of migrant workers and traveled each season to different parts of the country to harvest the fruit and vegetables that were in season. In the winter, they lived in a small travel trailer in Georgia and Florida. In the summer and fall, they traveled throughout New England and the Midwest. Paula never stayed in one place long enough to make friends. She was totally dependent on Adam who became increasingly abusive to her.
One September night in Duxbury, Massachusetts after a long day of cranberry harvesting, Adam severely beat Paula before falling asleep in a drunken stupor. After he fell asleep, she snuck out of the little trailer and walked down the street in a dazed confusion. The police picked her up and when they learned her story they took her to a safe house and had Adam arrested.
After living in the safe house for a month, she moved in with a single mom name Phyllis for several months. She found a job in a laundry mat and slowly began to mend both physically and emotionally. Once Phyllis heard Paula sing while working around the small apartment, she urged Paula to take her talent seriously. Phyllis encouraged her to do something bold like move to New York to pursue the stage. The more Phyllis encouraged her, the more she began to think that this would be a wise choice.
She moved to NYC after living with Phyllis for ten months. She answered an ad in a local newspaper and found two girls looking to share a small loft apartment. She landed a job in a laundry mat and another at a small diner. When she wasn’t working, she attended every audition she could find. After nearly two years, she had not been cast for one part, not even a chorus part in an off-Broadway production. When the New Year rolled around, she made a resolution that she would give it all she had for two months, and then if nothing happened, she would leave the city and go to college somewhere.
Six weeks into her resolution, she was invited to a callback where she read for a part in an off-Broadway comedy. To her utter amazement, she was selected for the five member ensemble cast.
She showed up early for the first read-through and met the other actors. The director, a recent theater graduate from NYU named Barry called the meeting to order. “I hope you’ve had time to read the script.” They all nodded affirmatively. “As you can see, each of you is a handicapped or misfit. Jerry, your character is blind. Sonya, you are suffering from Alzheimer’s. Terry, you’re going to have to learn to use a wheel chair. Molly, you’re deaf. And Paula, you are a painfully shy introvert who fears ridicule and criticism to the point you have become paranoid. Your scar there will probably give you some experience with this.”
No sooner had the director said this that she began to feel a buzz and dizziness in her head. The other women in the cast looked at her with sympathy. Paula slowly stood to her feet and walked numbly toward the back entrance of the theater, when she was half-way up the aisle, the tears came violently and she ran the rest of the way up the aisle and into the night.
Barry was grabbed by the other women in the cast and followed her out into the night. They found her in front of the small theater trying to hail a cab.
Molly, who went to NYC with Barry and was familiar with his insensitivity said to him: “Go ahead and apologize you big lummox.” To Paula she added: “Don’t pay him any mind honey. He’s a nice guy really, he just doesn’t have a clue.”
“What? What did I say this time?” A confused Barry stammered.
“You see, honey, not only didn’t he mean anything by it, he doesn’t even remember what he said. Come on back in, honey, you’re going to be fine. I’m looking forward to working with you, sweetie.” Molly was so comforting and affirming that Paula returned to the theater.
The cast practiced intensely for five weeks and went on to have a successful eight week run. Many of the reviews were quite favorable. Oddly enough by the end of the show, Barry and Paula had become an item. Barry, with his degree and his ambition was destined to become a very salable commodity in the theater community of the city. Paula was flattered by his attention. When he invited her to move into his apartment after the show closed she didn’t think twice.
In the next couple of years, Barry went on to act in and direct a variety of shows. Paula, was able to find bit parts here and there, but most of them because of her relationship with Barry. One February night she collapsed in tears and could not be consoled. When finally Barry was able to get any words out of here she poured out her heart.
“All my life I have been cursed with this hideous birth mark. I can sing, and I can dance with the best of them, but I’ll never get a chance because of this curse.” When she said “curse” she pulled on her birthmark so violently that her skin erupted in blood.
Barry looked on with sympathy and suddenly was struck with a thought. “Wait a minute. Wait a minute. I don’t know why I hadn’t thought of this before.” Paula stopped crying. He continued: “I don’t know why I hadn’t thought of this before. My favorite uncle is a plastic surgeon in Albany. I bet he would help us.”
“I don’t have any money, Barry. How could he help us?”
“I’m going to call him. I’m sure we’ll be able to work something out.”
Three weeks later, Paula had a skin graft. After two months the swelling and the discoloration was gone. The results were dramatic. You would have to look very hard to see any sign of the incision. With makeup, one would never know that she had had plastic surgery.
The surgery had an interesting effect on Paula. She was able to land bigger roles on the stage and her career took a noted improvement. But personally, she became very depressed. She had thought all of her life that the cause of her unhappiness and fear was the horrible birthmark. Now that it was gone, she was left with the realization that her pain went much deeper than the skin on her face.
Barry began to treat her differently as well. He became jealous of her new-found success in casting calls. She seemed to be more independent and didn’t look to him for constant affirmation. He became more possessive and demanding of her. One night after a long argument he said:
“You know, we never came to terms with how you were going to work out the payment for the plastic surgery.”
“Barry, you know I don’t have any money.”
“I know. I’ve thought of a way to pay for it without money.”
“Really, how’s that?”
“I own you now.”
“You own me?”
“Yep, from now on you can’t go anywhere, do anything, talk to anyone without my permission. I own you.”
Paula didn’t answer him. She went to bed and cried herself to sleep. She had no where else to go. She never agreed to the loss of her freedom, but she never again tried to assert herself. She became in effect a selfless slave of an insecure and insensitive man.
Later in the summer of that year, Barry and Paula were traveling in a summer stock production. The show went from town to town mostly in resort areas. They played each town for a week or two and then moved on. In August, they were in Northern Vermont where they were playing in a ski resort lodge. They were staying in a little artist’s enclave in Johnston, Vermont.
In the small downtown district of this bohemian town there is a natural spring that flows out of a rock wall. The city built a small concrete seating area in a semicircle around the spring. People from all over the area would bring plastic jugs to fill up with the natural spring water. No matter how hot the temperature was outside, the water was just a few degrees above freezing.
Paula woke up in a dorm room at Johnston State University about noon. She looked across the bed at the bottle of sleeping pills on the night stand. “I must not have taken enough. I’m still here.” She thought to herself. She pulled on some shorts and a T-shirt, laced up some running shoes and began to run into town for a bite to eat. Barry was up and gone long before this.
Upon running into town, Paula went to a gas station and bought the last of the breakfast sandwiches at a discount since it had been sitting under the heat lamp for three hours. She asked for a styrofoam cup and walked across the street to the little amphitheater surrounding the fresh water spring. She filled up the water bottle she carried and the cup and began to eat her sandwich and drink the water.
Coming down the street towards her was a man that she hadn’t taken notice of. But as he got closer, she heard him hum a familiar tune. He was humming The Impossible Dream. She closed her eyes and instinctively began to rehearse the words in her imagination.
[humming]
To bear with unbearable courage
To run where the brave dare not go.
The humming stopped and she turned to see the man sitting next to her. He smiled politely and then asked, “I don’t have anything to get some water. Can I have a sip of yours?”
She was about to tell him to go across the street and get a cup from the gas station, but thought better of it. “Here, I’ve got a water bottle, you can have this cup. I’ve only taken a sip.”
“Thanks,” he said politely as he lifted the glass and drank it all in one long swallow. He then turned and looked intently at her. She blushed and felt uncomfortable.
He broke the uncomfortable silence. “You know, I liked you just fine with the birth mark.” She looked at him incredulously and then jumped up and took a couple of steps away from him.
“Buddy, I don’t know who you are, but that is the lamest pick-up line I’ve ever heard in my life.”
He began to move towards her to say something but she uncapped her water bottle and threw the water at him as she backed into the street.
“Who put you up to this? Did Barry?”
“No, Paula.”
“How’d you know my name? Who are you? Get away from me.” With that she looked down the street and saw a man coming their way. She thought quickly. “You see that guy coming down the road? That’s my husband and he is going to kick your butt.”
The man with the soaked T shirt said, “No, that’s not your husband. You don’t have a husband. You used to, but Adam beat you within an inch of your life.”
Paula wanted to run, but her legs wouldn’t listen. Her mouth hung open as she stared at this strange man.
He continued. “Paula, you need to ask me for living water.”
“I’ve got all the water I need.” She struggled to say.
“Water for your body, yes, but your soul is parched from fear and shame.”
Paula couldn’t help staring at this man. His eyes spoke with tenderness and the complete lack of criticism. He continued, “You’ve tried to quench your thirst in every way you could. You’ve sung. You’ve danced. You’ve tried to fill your void with men, with approval, with applause—even with surgery—and you’re still thirsty.”
Paula couldn’t move.
“You’ve carried so much that isn’t yours Paula. When the Bartholomews returned you to the agency it wasn’t because of you. Their hearts were just too small. When Jerry Lungreen used you, it wasn’t your fault. I was there. I know. I saw the whole thing, every time. When you cried yourself to sleep, I cried next to you. Adam was too broken to love you. And Barry’s heart has no room for you.”
The stranger took a long pause before continuing. He looked deeply into Paula’s eyes. Tears were now streaming down her cheeks. He continued: “do you know what saved you? Do you know why you couldn’t reach that bottle last night? Charity Phillips. Do you remember her? You couldn’t possibly remember that as an infant you had choleric. Charity would walk you through the night helping you to calm down and go back to sleep. She would sing to you. She would talk to you. She would pray for you. Mostly she would pray that you and I would meet. And now we have. You have finally gotten to the point where you would be ready to meet me.”
Paula took a step closer to him. She looked deep into his eyes. She noticed that she felt an incredible peace washing over her.
“Living water, Paula. You soul doesn’t have to die of thirst. The mirror can’t quench. The applause can’t quench. Men can’t quench. I can.”
She began to cry. “Can you stay here? Don’t go anywhere, O.K.?” He nodded affirmatively. She took off running up the street where she saw several other cast members coming out of a small diner. She yelled at the top of her lungs: “Hey, you guys, come here quick. I want you to meet someone. C’mere. C’mere.” She ran to greet them.
At the other end of town a low rumble could be heard. About a quarter of a mile away the sound of a dozen Harleys could be heard coming towards the middle of town. The Harleys came up to the spring and their riders shut off their bikes and dismounted. One of the big burly riders threw a Wendy’s bag at his friend with the wet T shirt. His eyes said “what happened to you?” But his voice said “Here, we brought you something to eat.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“But you haven’t eaten anything all day.”
“Pete, I’ve got food you know nothing about. Why don’t a couple of you guys ride down to the little motel at the edge of town and get a few rooms. We’re going to stay here for a couple of days.”
REFERENCES
Jensen, Richard A. Thinking in Story. Lima, Ohio: CCS Publishing Co., 1995.
Leigh, Mich, and Joe Darion. Man of La Mancha. The original Broadway cast recording on CD; New York: Decca Broadway, 2001.
