Miracle in a Theater

Sometimes I just want a sign that God has not forgotten me. This is the story of how I received one such sign.

In downtown Lancaster there is this beautiful historic theater called the Fulton Opera House. When I realized that they were putting on a production of the musical Once, my heart began to ache. I’d never seen the show, but I have the soundtrack and it is breathtaking.

Let me just insert a couple songs here, for reference.

(Although let me just note, in case you want to go see it yourself now, that there is bad language in it.)

Right. Well. I live off of a very strict budget, because at this point I don’t make a huge amount of money by writing. So there’s not much room for extra things like watching beautiful musicals in historic theaters.

Still, I’d feel the ache every time I walked past the theater, and finally I just prayed about it. I told God that if watching this musical was something that He wanted me to do, that he’d make it work somehow. In retrospect I realize that it was kind-of a weird prayer. Why would watching a musical be something that God “wants me to do”? But nevertheless, that’s how I phrased it.

Today I went to Prince Street Cafe to get some work done, and right across the street was the theater. Looking at the dates I realized that today was the last day I’d have time to see it, before the show ended on Sunday.

It was starting in like, an hour.

So I impulsively went across the street to see if they still had tickets. And they did. They were in the cheap section of the theater where the view wasn’t as nice, but still. I handed them my credit card.

While this transaction was taking place, a girl walked up to the other box office window to pick up her ticket.

“You have two tickets,” they told her.

“Oh, I just need one,” she said. “Give the other one to someone else.” And then she walked off.

I kid you not, that is what happened. So they gave me her other ticket, and I not only got in free, but I got a better seat.

I went in and found my seat. The prelude music started, and it was so beautiful, and I was so moved by what had just happened, that I started crying silently to myself.

Then a girl came in and sat next to me. I recognized her from the box office window. “Are you the girl who had the extra ticket?” I asked.

“Yes!” she said. “Oh, I’m so glad they gave it to someone!”

We got to talking. It turns out that she works as the stage manager at Sight and Sound theater. So I asked her questions about finding a career in the theater world, and we chatted some about our lives.

And then, to top it off, she gave me two free tickets to see the show Jesus at Sight and Sound.

I. Kid. You. Not.

It’s very hard to explain what this meant to me, because it’s hard to explain what theater has always meant to me. I remember the first (and only) time I went to Sight and Sound, and what an impact it made. At that point I’d only ever seen a small handful of “real” plays.

Anyway. I was so excited by this that I had to share the story immediately. I filmed an Instagram live video about it, but the sound was out of sync with the video. So I’m deleting it and making a blog post about it instead.

But just…with some circumstances in my life right now, I really needed to know that God had not forgotten me.

And now I know.