Behind the Stage
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He had the audience curled tightly around his little finger. One minute they were laughing mischievously with him, the next they were silent as the grave, intent on his words. Gone was the anxious feeling in the pit of his stomach. Although his head still faintly ached, it was with pleasure not panic. His dark hair curled in a few tendrils around his ears while the rest framed his handsome face and dark blue eyes.
Just a half hour before, Joshua Allen had waited in the room behind the stage. Coffee had sloshed around in his stomach as he had gotten up to get a cheese and apple danish. It was always harder when he didn’t know a soul in the audience other than his wife and was somewhere he’d never heard of before. It was easier after the first laugh, he reminded himself. After all, this wasn’t his first time in front of an audience. Then, the band had started the song that was the signal he was next. He got up from the overstuffed chair he was sitting in and headed for the black stairs leading to the stage.
He had walked on the stage and shared a little joke. “We all hope to go to heaven someday, but if you ask most people they tend to prefer later rather than sooner.” After the laughter died down, he added, “Hopefully, that means you are living your life here for God so you feel like you’re a part of something bigger than yourself and God’s not done with you yet.”
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About the Book
What happens when Pastor Josh Allen is transplanted from Seattle to the Deep South and discovers his daughter is involved with a sexual addict? At the same time, one of his congregants deals with age discrimination, and he and his wife, Leah, discover a problem that will change their lives forever. As his world falls apart around him, Josh must build a new life in a town far from his Boston roots. Allen’s Christian faith upholds him while he endures attacks on his simple life of helping others. Each week on the church’s stage, he leads his flock, while behind the stage he fights the good fight for his family and his church.
About the Author
Anne Sanders became a Christian when she left America and went to work in a country whose population is less than 1 percent Christian. Having attended Harvard University at sixteen and Emory University for her Phi Beta Kappa English degree, she found intellectual pursuits more important than her spiritual life for many years. Living in a small Japanese town for a year, she pursued Buddhism, but when she got alone with God, she accepted Jesus as her Savior. Having written for newspapers, magazines, and websites, Sanders got inspired to write fiction with Behind the Stage. Anne’s website, Helping Hearts, is for the volunteer and charity-giver in all of us. It includes fun, easy, free, and more involved ways to help others. Her blog of the same name has had over 12,000 views and can be found at blog.annesanders.net.