Around 13 years ago, I played the role of a lifetime. I was cast as Jean Valjean in the musical Les Miserables. And it changed my life.
Playing a hero was never something I expected to do. My specialty had always been comic roles where I could comfortably make fun of myself. But this role was a true hero, and it was a challenge for me as an actor and singer.
Valjean was a man who’d become hardened and bitter from being unfairly incarcerated. But he soon finds the freedom in forgiveness after stealing from a godly Bishop. In his repentance, he sets out to live a life of supernatural kindness and self-sacrifice.
He later finds a prostitute Fantine dying in the streets. With her last breath, she begs Valjean to rescue her young daughter Cosette, who is working as a slave for a treacherous couple. We then see the child working and singing a song of the life she hopes for:
“There is a castle on a cloud, I like to go there in my sleep
Aren’t any floors for me to sweep, Not in my castle on a cloud
There is a lady all in white, Holds me and sings a lullaby
She’s nice to see, and she’s soft to touch
She says, “Cosette, I love you very much”
I know a place where no one’s lost
I know a place where no one cries
Crying at all is not allowed
Not in my castle on a cloud”
Valjean soon arrives and buys the girl from the couple and raises her as his own. After she is grown, he risks his own life to save the man she loves. When they marry, Valjean removes himself from her life to keep his past and her illegitimacy from catching up with her. The show ends with him dying, the girl thanking him at his side. As he enters heaven, he is welcomed by Fantine and the others he has helped throughout his beautifully lived life.
Playing someone so noble is quite different from being noble, but it has a bigger influence on you than you’d expect. In the next year I soon realized that God was using that show as a template for how he wanted me to live. A young unwed mother came in crying at our little start-up church that I pastored one Sunday. She said Child Services had taken her newborn baby girl at the hospital and put her in foster care. She was worried because she didn’t know where the baby was or who would be caring for her.
I still remember seeing my wife talking to the girl across the room while I was in the middle of another conversation entirely. At that moment, I swear I heard God say, “Your life is about to change”. My life had just volunteered for us to foster the child so the mother could be more at peace. In about another year, we adopted the little girl, Ellie. Then about another year later, we adopted her new baby sister, Gracie.
From that point on, as we saw the horrible things children were enduring with both parents and being passed around the foster system, an endless parade of children would come through our home. Most for a few months, some for years. But Dawn and I determined we would always say “yes” whenever God showed us a need we could meet.
Our home would be the “castle on a cloud” little Cosette had dreamed about, where someone was always telling her, “We love you very much”.
This past weekend, we welcomed our latest princess to the castle. Dawn flew down to Florida at 6pm on Friday and flew back late that same night with a 6 year-old girl. She’s been abused and has lived in some horrible conditions, seeing things a child should never even know exist. A few days have passed now, and thanks to Dawn’s kindness and pampering, her crying has turned to smiles and lots of playtime with our daughters. We don’t know if she’ll be with us a short time or for good, but we are fine with giving her whatever she needs.
You may think we’re a little old to have small kids, but that’s really just small thinking. What we’re doing is something you could do too, if you were smart. That’s because we’ve learned that saying yes to God is not really a noble thing – it’s actually the most selfish thing you could do. It’s no exaggeration that the blessings, the fun, and the joy of living a meaningful life give you more true happiness than you could ever horde for yourself. You honestly could not imagine a happier life than the one we live with our princesses in our castle.
We’re on the lookout now for a bigger castle to move to nearby, preferably one with more room. We realize there are probably others God wants us to make room for. There’s a little prince we love who’s been wandering in the far country this past year, and we want to bring him back home where he’ll get the love he deserves. And who knows what other royalty God will send our way. So we’d better start making room for them now.
I’m just worried where we’re going to put all the joy it’s going to bring us. I guess we’ll need a new castle with lots of storage space to hold it all.