Stop. Being. Victimized.
You have a choice. Here's why. Here's How.
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HOLLYWOOD: High School with Money
As a performer from childhood into acting professionally through adulthood I can tell you that I’ve experienced many ups and downs. I have talked about it here and there over the course of this blog.
I have never been “surprised” at the news in the past decade regarding the travails of women in the entertainment industry but can say without reservation that the deeper the rabbit hole the more shocked I’ve been. I’d be lying if I wrote that I had not been truly humbled in hindsight when I think of all the unanswered prayers that blessed me then and doubly now, now that I am aware of what I “missed”.
Spending over a decade in Los Angeles I remember moments now where I turned away or didn’t show up or didn’t go out that night or simply didn’t fit in. Some doors opened. But more stayed firmly, other-worldly, shut. I now realize I was being shown the door for my own good. Oh, how I thank God!
I remember doing a musical in Los Angeles – a workshop about Lucille Ball. I played a young ambitious Lucy (before and just meeting Desi) and there were some up and comers, some TV stars in that cast. One day we all met on the weekend for a swim party. There were about five to eight of us as I recall.
Suddenly, someone said quite seriously, “Now, who are the cool people in the cast?”
Say, what? I was catapulted back to eighth grade.
I felt a hush move over the group as everyone a) thought about who was cool, b) feared they weren’t cool, c) wondered if they should consider this at all because it was immature separatist nonsense but went along with it because no one wanted to appear “not cool”.
My past self said nothing. Oh boy, if I could go back. I’d have a truck load of words. I wonder if you’ve been in a startling and ridiculous Hollywood style high school moment like this in your adult years?
But I want to get to why I’m reminiscing about this particular memory of LaLa Land.
Spiritual Intercession and “Assignments” - The Story of Rachel’s Struggle to Stay off The Casting Couch
I have over the last few decades of my life coached and prayed and guided those who I feel “show up” and need spiritual intercession in a particular season. Usually women who are in a season that I’ve already experienced and come through. That makes sense doesn’t it. That God would “assign” to you someone who can benefit from your spiritual formation. I consider it a sweet, quiet, personal ministry. It’s not something to get rich quick if ever at all. It’s assignment from God. I take it seriously. I watch and listen. It ebbs and flows. These sisters in Christ appear when God sends them in ways that can be surprising. There are times I realized I almost missed it. The assignment. Sometimes it’s already in motion before I realize it’s an assignment.
Currently I’ve noticed a someone, a precious someone who has been for a long time lamenting over her entertainment industry journey. (Because it really is a journey, a long game. Some folks who aren’t in it but are mere observers will never get it. But that’s like anything in life. You are not bound to “get it” if you aren’t living and working in that arena. Whatever the arena may be. But It is especially difficult to explain the creative calling to “civilians”.)
But I can speak to her travails with all my heart and experience.
This young woman, I’ll call her Rachel, is lovely, beautiful, graceful, talented. She is in a season of life where the enthusiasm of Peggy Sawyer getting off the bus at Times Square has faded and the threat of hopelessness is ever watching, looming, waiting to pounce on her dreams. She’s right at that season. That stage of life where doubt weighs heavier by the hour. She is successful. (But what is success?) She works. But the slog is getting sloggier.
I’ve been there. The thing I see her experiencing more fully though, to her detriment, is the all too familiar story we have heard in the news. Stories of the lies and seductions. The threat and shock of “casting couches”. (They are very real). Passes. Stealthy, smarmy, snake-like smokescreen invitations to “get the role” veiled by flowery adornments.
She admittedly “knows better” when the glance, the suggestive talk, the innuendos come. She ignores, pacifies, pretends to misunderstand, tells herself she’s making it all up (every time), and giggles her way out the door deflated and demoralized. And no one gets reported because they won’t believe her (and haven’t when she does) or worse in her mind, she’ll be “labeled”. “Labeled what?,” you say? It doesn’t matter. Blacklisted is blacklisted whether you’re telling the truth or pigeonholed a loon.
“Oh he’s just like that.” “You misunderstood.” “I can’t believe he’d ever.” “You’re flattering yourself.” The perfidious list is long and goes on and on.
I believe one of the biggest sins in the world is the crushing of a spirit.
Everyone “knows better”. But the allure of that false hope, that dream of “Me!”, of fame and fortune, beckons like a spark shot up from hell high into the sky dropping as a counterfeit beacon from heaven. Could it be a sign? No. It assuredly is not. It is a false prophet.
If you are not in this arena, you must resist the urge to criticize. This isn’t only about the Entertainment industry. This is the dark side of the world. This is every single industry happening any and everywhere and if you have not understood the spiritual power and protection you have or could have, you will be fooled for life. They gotcha.
Taking Authority Over Treachery
I was once told by a spiritual director that there is God and there is Evil. Both are very real whether you believe in them or not. And one of them experiences more success the less you believe. Can you guess which?
You need to make a choice now. Because if you don’t, a choice will be made for you. A seductive deceitful snake preying upon your vulnerability as the unconscious victim, now in a partnership with you, chosen by default for you because you refused to choose for yourself a God that will fight for you.
When you choose God and understand fully through a commitment to spiritual formation, you begin to encounter what true calling encompasses; the sevenfold gifts of the Holy Spirit: wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety, and fear of the Lord. The last one is hard for many because we do not understand the word fear as the ancients did. Awe. Reverence. Kingship.
When you begin to understand this calling and you make a choice to be in partnership with that, you know what you must do – or more importantly know Who you must follow and where he would not call you.
When you understand Kingship, not putting anything above the Love that created you for a beautiful purpose, then you don’t think twice about slamming a door in a predator casting director-agent-director-producer’s face and reporting their treachery.
Because you do not fear them because you do not worship them (i.e. fame), you do not praise fortune, you know you are meant for something more that cannot be quantified by this world: Something beautiful and unique that matches your remarkably made substance.
I believe that this precious talented spirit, Rachel, will not see change until she stops partnering with the lure on any level. I know that sounds harsh. I can even hear the defenses rising. “You’re blaming the victim!”
Stop. Being. Victimized. Stop allowing it to continue by pretending its not happening or by “keeping the peace” allowing it to continue for the next unaware potential prey walking in the door after you.
Raise your voice. Look Up. Make a bold and holy choice. Turn right or left but stop tight roping the middle because of your fear of what “man” can do to you. Confess to your beautiful self and God that you’ve been participating by playing the game just to get a leg up. Stop. Full stop.
Get a new crew that will sharpen your spiritual growth and formation. Drop those, like the dead weight they are, who subtly pull you back into believing that “this is just the way it is”. I can just feel the slime of these raiders as I type.
My mother use to say to me, “take back your power.” I knew what she meant but it always felt like I’d done something wrong. Like “remember who you are”. What if I don’t know in the first place? And how exactly does one “do” these things? Ultimately through time it seemed to me a shallow directive for the Truth that I came to understand:
TAKE AUTHORITY OVER YOUR SOUL.
You’ve been given full authority. Stop allowing ANYONE to take authority over the soul given to you. In this you are an untouchable child of God.
I hear Rachel’s inner voice, her spirit, declaring: You have no authority to speak to me that way. You have no authority over my spirit, soul, body, choices, or direction in life no matter who you (think) you are to do so.
Remember, Friend, I am speaking into the heavenly places. The invisible. Our God-given power.
It is much more powerful to STAND IN YOUR GOD GIVEN AUTHORITY OVER YOUR SOUL than to “take back your power.” Womp. Womp. “Taking back your power” speaks of a relinquishing something you had not the strength to hold. STANDING FIRM IN YOUR AUTHORITY OVER YOUR SPIRIT AND SOUL means they never had a chance because you are the daughter of the Most High King, and it cannot be taken from you. They don’t have the power, right, influence, weight or clout to touch you. Those doors are barred. You’ve been given that freedom and it’s yours for the living - right now.
And isn’t that so much more powerful than “putting up boundaries”? When you understand spiritual authority in Christ, “boundary talk” loses necessity really. That doesn’t mean you won’t be tested. But knowing your own authority means the predators will never prevail against you. And, good news, eventually you’ll never meet them again, or if they meet you they’ll not see you. Your light blinds them. This is God’s law. The law of Love.