The Role You Wanted vs. The Role You Got

Once upon a time, I was an actor. Before I was a Christian, before I was a wife and mom, before I was a teacher, before I was a writer … this goes way back—high school and early college.

During those formative and tumultuous years, theatre was just about my whole life. It got me through high school in one piece, and it gave my life purpose and meaning. The stage was home to me.

After auditions, we actors would wait breathlessly for the cast list to be posted. We all had an idea of the role we really wanted. Sometimes we wanted the lead role, but not always. Sometimes we yearned for the smaller but more interesting role, or the role that would be more “fun” to play.

The “fun” roles were, as you might suspect, quite often the role of the villain, the antagonist, the person who causes friction or trouble of some kind. The person who has deep troubles or desires or motivations that are not … nice. Those roles are interesting, and if I were a psychologist I could probably write an article on why those roles are so interesting, but instead I’m just going to tell one story about one role in one play.

The story is mine, and the play is The Crucible, by Arthur Miller—a classic of American literature. This play is about true events surrounding the Salem, Massachusetts, witch trials of the late 1600s (it’s also a scathing allegory about the “Red Scare” McCarthy hearings of the 1950s, when it was written). There was the role that I wanted, the role that I got, and something that God taught me through both of these things, years later.

The role I wanted was Abigail. Miller wrote about actual historical figures, but he raised Abigail’s age to 17 so he could introduce an adultery plotline to create dramatic tension. Abigail doesn’t have the biggest part in the play, but it really packs a punch. As a teenage girl who is suffering the effects of a fleeting romance with her married employer, she is dramatic (fully hysterical at times), devious, conniving, manipulative, and even murderous. Oh, it was a fun part, all right. I would have loved the chance to play Abigail.

The role I got was Elizabeth. Elizabeth is the wife of John, the man who had a one-time sexual encounter with Abigail. It was meaningless to him, but unsurprisingly, it was very much not meaningless to Abigail. Elizabeth, a good, Christian woman, is caught in the middle. During the course of the play, John and Elizabeth each confront their own flaws and shortcomings (in John’s case, this includes an excruciating public acknowledgement of his adultery—in Puritan New England, no less). Elizabeth, on the surface, is a subdued, upright and godly Christian wife … and I did not particularly want this role. I was 16 years old and frankly, it paled in comparison to the fun and exciting role of Abigail. But Elizabeth was next to my name on the cast list, and it was Elizabeth that I played.

I knew Elizabeth had more lines than Abigail. I knew she was in many key scenes, wrestling with tremendous, life-changing questions of faith, loyalty, affection, secrecy, guilt, forgiveness, and fidelity to God. I knew that it was she who delivers the closing line of the play—after making a heart-wrenching, agonizing decision that reflects her depth of trust in both God and her husband. I knew that audience members wouldn’t leave the theatre saying to themselves, “I wish I were more like Abigail,” but instead, “What would I have done if I were Elizabeth?” But I was 16, and I envied the girl who played Abigail.

I envied her because the role of Abigail seemed more interesting and fun, and I saw it as more of a challenge to me as an actor. I didn’t have the life experience yet to understand that Elizabeth’s role as a steadfast and courageous Christian woman was incredibly challenging and satisfying to play—in a more subtle, nuanced kind of way. It was, in many ways, more of a challenge to honestly and effectively render Elizabeth’s strength of presence to the audience while sharing a stage with hysterical and accusatory young girls, as well as the grown men who, in the name of God, are tragically held captive in their spell.

I recently reread The Crucible in preparation for my son’s English class in homeschool this year. I was blown away by the quality of Arthur Miller’s writing and the lasting power of this play (thanks to the persistent human condition, it will never go out of date). And I began to view it not only through the lens of having performed in it long ago, but also through my life experience as a Christian.

I began to think about what role I had wanted long ago in my own life—my real life—and the wisdom and mercy of God for not giving it to me. In the long term, what purpose, and whose purpose, would it serve for me to have an exciting, “fun” role as perceived by my teenage or young adult self? I’ve shared parts of my testimony before; for a long while, God let me have my own way with my life, but oh, how grateful I am that he didn’t leave me there.

What makes our roles interesting as Christians, as players of God’s own script, is not our natural desire to keep on sinning, even if that makes for a more exciting or intriguing-on-the-surface character. What makes us interesting in an even more powerful sense is our long-term faithfulness, obedience, and bending to God’s will for our lives. It’s our uniquely Christian attitude toward the hand we’ve been dealt in life (our given role in this play) and our trust that the Director made the right casting decision. It’s our firm belief that if we are teachable and open ourselves willingly to that role, that the Director can pull out of us something we didn’t even know we had—something that will shine before others with the glory of the One who wrote the script, in a portrayal that is both original to us and true to the Author.

I sometimes struggle even now with my role, just as I did back before I was a Christian. I look at other people’s parts in this play we call life, and some of their roles look much better than mine. But when I do this, I risk completely missing the Director’s vision as he gently but firmly pulls out of me what he knows I’m capable of, in order to fulfill his purpose for my life, played out on his stage.

Heavenly Father, help me to shine in the role that you’ve wisely and graciously given to me, for all the days that I am on your stage.

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“All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.”

—William Shakespeare, As You Like It

Photo by Antonio Molinari on Unsplash

***Podcast: Listen to a conversation I had on this topic with the Kurt and Kate Mornings Show (Moody Radio Florida) here.***