Holly Day's Inn

Sometimes in life things work out despite our worst efforts.

Growing up I went to a very small church, and that meant that the youth group was small as well. One year the youth group put on a Christmas play called Holly Day's Inn. The story was about a man, Hollister "Holly" Day, who owned a hamburger stand called Holly Day's Inn. On Christmas Eve several unhappy people visit the stand, including a young minister and his wife, but they leave with their questions answered.

My incredibly handsome twin brother Ron and I were the only teenage boys in the youth group, so Ron played the minister and I played Holly Day. Despite my desire to be the center of attention, being in a church play was not something I wanted to do. So I complained constantly. I was sullen and moody. I purposely made very little effort to memorize my lines. In the acting world, I was what they call "difficult."

My older sister was also in the play. At the time she worked at a bank, and a few weeks before the play a bag of quarters fell off a table, landing on her foot and breaking it. I was ecstatic, not because she broke her foot, but because I thought we would have to cancel the play. But, she was a trooper and played her part on crutches. Darn it! :)

Despite my worst efforts, the play went off mostly without a hitch. Somewhere in the middle I accidentally skipped a few pages of dialog, which almost caused my sister to miss her cue to enter. Luckily, the people back stage noticed my mistake and were nice enough to push her onto the stage at the right time. In hindsight, that probably wasn't a good idea since she was still on crutches.

Also, my brother's duet of Silent Night with his "wife" was a little off-key (he blames the "wife"), but because of that, my line after the song made me chuckle to myself: "That was beautiful!"

So why did I not want to be in the play? I don't know. Our lives are filled with things that we don't want to do or that we think will be difficult, but the right thing isn't always the easiest thing. And sometimes we learn that it wasn't nearly as difficult as we imagined. Despite our worst efforts.