Apr 27, 2015

The Beacon

By Elianna Chroniger

I recently finished up the musical season at school. Our high school put on the show “Mary Poppins” during the second weekend in March. I played the role of the much loved nanny, Mary Poppins. In this role I was tasked with the job of learning lines, songs, blocking, and choreography for a lot of scenes. As we read through the script for the first time, my costar and I were joking about how the director must have type-casted our lead roles.

In the Broadway version of the musical, Mary Poppins sings a song about being practically perfect in every way to the Banks children. As I read through the words I realized that the absolutely perfect character of Mary Poppins was going to be an extremely difficult one to fulfill. After a week of rehearsals I was entirely overwhelmed. I cried to my guidance counselor almost daily about how I was going to ruin the show, and about how I couldn’t be practically perfect. I became so stressed out that eventually I was on the verge of quitting. I went to my director with every intention of telling her that I couldn’t handle the part and needed to step back from the role.

I walked into the room to find a frazzled Miss Karr. I sat down and words started flowing out of her mouth. Things like “the accompanist quit” and “I need a Miss Andrew” were among the steady stream of words. I realized that if I were to give up on her at this point in time, there would be no show for not only me, but the entire cast. My director is a devout Christian and was glad to have another sister in Christ to talk to. We both called on the verse found in Philippians 4:13. It reminded us that we can do all things through Christ who gives us the strength. That verse gave me the daily strength to pursue the practically perfect character of Mary Poppins. The show ended up being a smashing success.

Each night something small went wrong, but we pressed on and have received raving reviews. Every teacher at school refers to me as Mary Poppins. I have new-found fans of all ages. Every time I see the joy on one of their faces, I remember that day of meltdowns. I remember that I could only have gotten through the chaos of a musical with the grace and peace that Jesus Christ gives to us daily. In the words of my beloved character, “Anything can happen if you let it, sometimes things are difficult, but you can bet it doesn’t have to be so, changes can be made. You can move a mountain if you use a larger spade.” In the words of my creator, “All things are possible through Christ who gives us strength.”