Holy Spirit, Thespian Trips, and the Year 2000

"[D]o not worry about how or what your defense will be or about what you are to say. For the Holy Spirit will teach you at that moment what you should say" (Luke 12:11-12).

It was the most suspenseful moment of my junior year. The moments after I had auditioned for a Shakespeare competition that sent students from different regions of the United States to New York City for the weekend of a thespian lifetime. I collapsed into my seat in the auditorium, sweaty and shaky.

The year prior I had auditioned and received very frank feedback. All of which said, "You sucked" in the way only nice English teachers can say without totally crushing you.

This year would be different, a year when my older sister had moved off to college and left me adrift in the high school whose small walls we had shared for two years, a year when I lost friends to partying that I was too timid to take part in, a year when I was determined to be authentically me in the year #2000.

When I reached out and tried something again, something I had failed at miserably before, I was asking the Holy Spirit to give me a chance to stretch my passions into gifts. To not worry about how I came off, the Catholic girl from a big family who had sucked last year. To simply continue trying to be me, all of me, and give honor and glory to God in doing it.

Sometimes evangelizing looks less like handing someone a Bible or inviting them to a small group study and more like getting up and trying again to pursue what God has put on your heart. It's all of that, really.

And that weekend in New York? It was epic and I couldn't believe I won and got to go. Thanks, Holy Spirit.

Where can you ask Him to help you either defend the faith or live your life giving honor to it? Especially if you've failed and are trying again. He wants to help.

The Holy Spirit is the third Person of the Blessed Trinity—see what more the Catechism has to say about Who He is.

Nell O'Leary is a recovering lawyer turned blogger, speaker, and sewer of baby goods while tending to her husband and four kiddos in the great city of Saint Paul, Minnesota. She serves as Managing Editor for Blessed is She and can down a hot cocoa in no time flat. Find out more about her here. She is the editor of our Blessed Conversations Series and guide for the Gift of You course and contributing author to our Advent devotional book, All the Generations.