WG is trying to get on a television show. I'll be vague here and not identify the show, but I will say it is targeted towards teens, and one must have an "interesting" life story to get on it. I guess I should be glad that she feels her life story is "interesting".

**Disclaimer** If you think this is a veiled prayer request for you all to get on your knees and pray that she gets on this show, you are well-meaning, but mistaken. I do not mind that she is attempting this, but I hope it does not happen. Save your prayer time for something better. If that makes me a bad mother, then sign me up for Bad Mother Monthly.

Her older brother was trying to "help" her with her audition tape. "Look more pitiful!" he coached from just out of frame. "You can't come off bourgeois if you want to be on this show." was his explanation to me after I shot him "The Look".

Truth be told, I love that WG tries new things. I love that when she stumbles or falls, she gets back up and tries another new thing. Some time ago I blogged about her attempt to be a Pom Pon dancer at Pretentious High School; she did not make it, but she discovered something about herself, and went on to become what we lovingly refer to in our house as a Drama Dork. (We also have former Band Geeks, Mathlete Freaks, Brain Game Bozos,and assorted other talented-but-socially-fringey types of activities on our collective high school resumes.)

I wonder if her desire to be on television springs from her older brother's brief experience in the spotlight--his literal fifteen minutes under klieg lights.

When we lived in California my son applied for and won a year-long spot on the Kid Editorial Board of a consumer magazine targeted at 'tweens. Actually, he was a toy tester for this magazine; (which I'm sorry to say went out of publication a few years later) this was the perfect kind of job for the adventurous, articulate twelve-year-old he was. After the magazine sent out the press releases naming the Kid Editors, we soon heard from the local paper, then a San Francisco television station.

Of course he was asked to go live on the local morning show the day I was scheduled to preach in chapel for the first time, so OEH drove him into the city and stayed for the show. Thank goodness for VCRs. It was fun having a minor celebrity in the family that day. Some of my seminary friends even were kind enough to watch it and tell me how cute CTA was that morning, matching the wit of the host, and playing along with the gag at the end of the segment, in which my son was asked to taste-test a bagel from the station's cafeteria against a stale donut from the hallway vending machine. Of course the stale donut got the thumbs up. (CTA later told me that they didn't even prompt him--he just instinctively knew what the host was going for!)

Or maybe she likes the spotlight because of what her mom does every week, though these days she rarely is there to watch me. I recently remarked to a friend that I felt as if lately I've been taking a so-so sermon into the pulpit and preaching the hell out of it. I wonder if its okay somehow to take dramatic license with the Gospel--as if the Good News needs my dramatic interpretation to be believable.

That's my worry this week: what will come of the dramamtic liberties I take with the truth? Can the Good News for the world ring true because of my best efforts, or (thank the Holy Spirit) depsite them?