

I’d often wake in the morning with an anxiousness that had no immediate source. Yet he wonders… Can I? Will I? When the going gets rough, when it really matters, will he pull it off? For years my soul lived in this turmoil. Regardless of whether he knows the biblical account, if there’s one thing a man does know he knows he is made to come through. A man bears the image of God in his strength, not so much physically but soulfully. The dream has nothing to do with acting that’s just the context for my fear. This is every man’s deepest fear: to be exposed, to be found out, to be discovered as an impostor, and not really a man. I don’t know what part I’m supposed to be playing I don’t know my lines I don’t even know my cues. A play is under way and I’ve got a crucial part. The house lights are low and the stage lights full, so from my position onstage I can barely make out the audience, but I sense it is a full house.

This is how it goes: I suddenly find myself in a theater-a large, Broadway-style playhouse, the kind every actor aspires to play. In spite of the fact that my memories of theater are nearly all happy ones, I keep having this recurring nightmare. I tell you this so that you will understand what I am about to reveal. My wife was part of the theater company I managed, and we had many close friends there. I was young and energetic and pretty good at what I did. They were, for the most part, joyful years.
