The Pivot: Trusting God in New Directions

by Pat Immel, Guest

It's good to be here and I'm grateful for this opportunity to share a few thoughts with you today. So, you see, after 27 years as a theater professor, I'm retiring. And let me tell you, the word retiring has been sitting with me in some funny ways. On one hand, it sounds like reward, like you've done good. Now go relax.

But on the other hand, it feels a bit like being tossed into the deep end of a pool you didn't know you were standing next to. For almost three decades of my life, my life has been filled with scripts, costumes, tech rehearsals, and opening nights. I spent years helping students find their voices and watching stories come to life under the bright stage lights. And now, the lights go dim, the curtain falls on this chapter, and I'm asking, what's next?

Maybe you've been there. Or maybe you're there right now, facing a change, a crossroads, a moment where the path ahead looks different than the one you've been walking. Today, I want to talk about those moments.

I want to talk about pivoting, those times when we change direction, sometimes by choice, and sometimes because life gives us no options. And through it all, I want to explore how God shows up in the middle of it. Because friends, if there's one thing I'm learning, it's that while life changes, God stays constant.

I have three parts, or scenes, and there is a short Bible verse eventually associated. So this is scene one, when the story shifts. Let's talk about pivots. In theater, a pivot might mean a major change in blocking, where the actors walk on stage, a last-minute rewrite, or a scene change that alters the tone of the entire show. Some of these are planned, and some come out of nowhere.

I have a couple little stories where this sort of happened. I was in grad school at the time in Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, go Salukis. In the summer, we had a playwriting program, a master's degree in playwriting, and I was the scenic designer. So, every summer, we had an evening of new plays or a couple evenings of new plays. I was doing the scenic design for one of my buddies who had a full-length play and we were at the night before opening. It was probably a Wednesday night. And he comes in with a real sheepish look on his face.

He said, “I've added a scene.” My response was, if you could imagine getting lemon juice squirted in your eye, was like, “What? You've added a new scene, have you? OK.”

Well, I was taught to never say no in an instance like that. I was taught to say “Yes, but.” And so I went through all of my buts. I used all of my buts. And we added the scene. And it was not a scene that was like, we can move out some chairs and do a couple things. I believe we had to add a diner.

Yeah.

We worked all night. We had a quick rehearsal in the morning, the show opened, and nobody knew the better. That was a curveball. But we worked together, and we pivoted, and we got through it. It was a lot of work, but it made the show better. I begrudgingly admitted that. Life has those same scene changes.

Retirement is one. But so is starting a new job, moving to a new city, losing someone you love, becoming a parent, or receiving news that shifts your world. The book of Proverbs gives us a bit of wisdom for moments like that.

Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways submit to him, and he will make your path straight.

It's that phrase, lean not onto your own understanding, that sticks with me because so often we want to have the whole plan, the whole script, but God says, “Trust me with the next step. I'll take care of the rest.” And that's hard for me, because I have to have everything right in front of me. Sometimes it's hard, but I trust.

Scene two, the presence in the wings.

Let me share something you already know, or maybe know. The most important people in a production are often the ones you don't see. A theater production is sort of like a big iceberg. There's a little bit on top, and then there is probably 4/5ths more underneath.

Or if you watch a swan or a duck just kind of paddling across the water. The duck and the swan look so serene, but underneath, that thing is going like a million miles an hour. So yeah, the most important people are backstage. And the ones you don't see, the stage manager, the tech crew, the folks in the booth, without them the show doesn't happen. It could be a show of 50 cast members, or a show of two. We still need those people backstage. They're in the wings, behind the scenes, making sure everything runs smoothly.

I want to share another story with you about things running smoothly. And I guess it would be about having miracles happen.

We were doing a show at Northwest here, and it was in our studio theater. I think my family and I were out of town, and I get a call from a student who was not using words. It's like, “All right, slow down. What's going on?” There was the sewer, and the water was backing up into the dressing room and it was a mess. That's all I'm going to say. I'm not going to elaborate any further. But needless to say, it is in Northwest Missouri State University Theater Department lore as Poo-mageddon.

And so those kids, they worked. And I mean, this is Yeoman's work. They did things that were pretty hard. They called in a couple of people and they had to delay the start of the show for a little bit because it was in their dressing room, but they got that fixed, and the show started. And then in the second act, probably an hour and a half into the show, all the power goes out. And I just thought to myself, “Seriously, is there a candid camera someplace for these kids?”

Somebody nearby didn't realize that there was an event going on in the theater, so they were going to do some work, and they shut the power off.

In the theater, when the lights go off, it is dark. It is dark, dark, dark. So there was a moment of like, “OK, what are we doing?” But the stage management crew, took charge, and since they didn't have a microphone, they used their big kid voices and their outdoor voice, and they said, “OK, folks, as you can see, we've had a power outage.”

Somebody called immediately the campus police department and found out that, yeah, somebody did turn off the power, and within about 15 minutes, the power came back on. It took a little bit of time to get everything working, but some of the kids went out on stage in the dark and sang show tunes. They're theater kids, so they knew how to entertain an audience until they could get back to their show.

That was all in one night. That was a lot of crap to handle, literally and figuratively. They did an amazing job with horrible conditions, but they persevered, and they took care of it. That's how I think of God in times of transition.

God doesn't always shout directions from center stage. Sometimes God whispers from the wings, guiding gently, holding steady, and making sure we don't miss our cues. Isaiah says, when you pass through the waters, I will be with you, and when you pass through the rivers, it will not sweep over you.

It doesn't say if you pass through hard things. It says when. But it also promises that God is right there in the middle of it with you. Maybe not front and center, maybe not in a booming voice, not a burning bush or anything, but there always.

Scene three, improvising with courage.

I don’t know if you've ever been in a live show, or if you've been to a play where something kind of crazy happens, and something falls over, or something like that. It happens all the time.

When I was in college, I went to a rehearsal of the national tour of Phantom of the Opera. And we sat and watched it, because there were some people that we knew. And there's a scene where the Phantom looks in a mirror, and during this performance the mirror just fell out of its frame and smashed into a bazillion pieces.

And we were like, “Oh, thank you, Lord. It happens to even the professionals.”

So yeah, things can go sideways. Someone forgets their line, a prop breaks, glass shatters into a million pieces, a cue is missed. In that moment, you don't freeze, you improvise. The Phantom kept going with their scene. There was a blackout. They came out and swept it up. We didn't even see them come out and sweep it up. You improvise.

It was probably my second year at Northwest and we were doing a show called And They Danced Real Slow in Jackson. It was a Sunday matinee and I was backstage, because we were getting ready. After the show, we were going to strike the set and take everything down and reset the theater. So I'm backstage, just kind of hanging out, bothering the stagehands. I shouldn't have been, but that's what I do.

All of a sudden, we get a call from backstage that the main door fell off its hinge, and Hannah was holding it up. Hannah was one of the actors, and she was supposed to be onstage all the time. Pretty much everybody was onstage all the time. All the technicians, they all had jobs, because there were just a few people backstage. Everybody had jobs that they couldn't stop doing.

So I ran back and got under the stage. It looked like a house, sort of, but it was all backstage. It was all just two by fours and things like that. So I got backstage, and Hannah, her eyes were like saucers, and she's holding the door. This is probably about 10 minutes into the show. And I felt kind of bad, because I built the door. So, it was fitting that I had to go back and do something with it. It was an hour and a half show, no intermission. It was like, “OK, I'm holding this door.”

I stayed backstage, holding the door. I'd watched the show probably 30 times, so I knew when the doors were opening. I opened and closed the door for the rest of the show.

Another show that I was working on, I was in undergrad, and we did a musical called Gypsy. It was a story of Gypsy Rose Lee and Gypsy. There was a scene near the end of the show where Mama Rose, she sings this number. And there's a little platform that Rose gets on and she's singing a song. And the platform starts moving by itself out over the orchestra pit. So at the end of the song Rose is right out center, and she's belting it.

Well, during the second act, the musical director, he called backstage, and he said, “Hey, the track is coming loose.” The track is what holds the platform as it's going over their heads. And again, I built it, so I felt a little responsible.

You're thinking, “Wow, Pat, you're awful.” I’m sure there's probably more.

Anyway, I ran downstairs, crawled up through a little hole into the orchestra pit and I brought a two-by-four. So, I'm holding this track up with the two-by-for. And then it’s Mama's turn, she's coming out on that platform, and I'm just holding it as hard as I can. And she's singing, and she's giving it her all. That's what she's supposed to do for like 10 minutes. It's a long song. It seemed like an hour when I was standing underneath holding it up. But if I had let go, it would have been a mess.

So again, we had to improvise. Life is like that too, and I think you all know that. We make plans. We rehearse. We think we know our lines, and then something shifts.

That's when we're called to trust not in the script, but in the story. Ecclesiastes says, there's a time for everything and a season for every activity under the heavens. Sometimes the season changes without warning. Sometimes it changes with a lot of prayer. But when it does, God invites us to keep stepping forward, to improvise with courage, knowing the director is still at work.

Now we've come to the curtain call, bowing out and stepping in.

So here I am, about to step out of the role I played for 27 years. I have some papers to grade, which are going to go really fast. I've got to get grades in, and I have to empty out my office tonight. Not because they're making me, but because there's building things going on. I have a lot to do. And then I'm done. I think my official retirement's later on, but I'm done.

Honestly, there's some sadness in that, being with my buddies. There's a little fear too, but there's also a sense of peace, because I know the director of this story, and I trust that this next act, whatever it looks like, is part of something good. And I hope it's going to be part of something great.

Maybe you're in a pivot of your own. Maybe you're facing something unexpected, or maybe God's nudging you towards something new. If that's you, I want to encourage you today.

The God who brought you this far is not going anywhere. The same God who walked with you through the last chapter is already waiting for you in the next one. The curtain might be falling on one scene, but the story is not over, not even close.

And I, for one, am excited to see what God writes next.

Can we pray together? Gracious God, we come to you with hearts full of gratitude for the stories we've lived, for the people who have walked alongside us, and for the ways you've been present even when we didn't see it. As we stand in moments of change, whether planned or unexpected, help us to trust you with what's next.

Give us the courage to pivot when you call us to something new. Help us to release what has been and to step into what will be, with open hands, with steady hearts, and with faith that you go before us. Like a faithful stage manager behind the scenes, may we feel your quiet direction.

Like a loving director, keep shaping our lives into something that is meaningful and good. For every person navigating a new chapter, a fresh start, or even just a subtle shift, may they know your presence, your peace, and your promise that the story isn't over. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.