When we’re given signs or answers to questions we send heavenward, is it not endlessly intriguing to ponder their sweet deliveries?

Even when I didn’t ask for answers, God, Mary, or angels and saints, I believe, have sent unmistakable—sometimes literal—messages. I noticed they come during times of great anxiety or crisis; but sometimes they come simply when I have heartfelt concerns or am downhearted. They are gifts I treasure.

In the summer of 2007, my short film, “In this Wood,” was in production. The story about a young orphan who discovers she is not motherless (because Mary is her mother) should have been released the following year; but it’s only now truly close to completion.

I could never have predicted the chain of significant challenges I’d face to reach this point. For years, I didn’t know if the film could be satisfyingly completed, and it languished in limbo.

But when I reflect on events surrounding the project, I wonder at how many little but incredible miracles and signs were gifted to encourage me during these years.

Here, in the order they occurred, are five incidents tied to “In this Wood.” Some occurred years before the story was written. (I included two others that are not in the order of occurrence, because they are not directly related to the film, but still relevant.)

The Statue Incident

My best college buddy, Debbie, was a mechanical engineering student at The University of Texas at Austin. A logical Methodist, she viewed miracles with a skeptical eye. But she terms what happened one night at our home a miracle. 

Debbie and I refer to it as “The Statue Incident,” and it partly inspired a pivotal scene in “In this Wood.”

She had experienced a traumatic breakup that day. It felt more devastating than the day she lost her father as a child, she later told me. 

“Nobody sees me,” she’d kept thinking. 

It was very late when we arrived at my house, and everyone was asleep. In a niche above the landing of our staircase is a beautiful statue of Our Lady of Fatima—almost three feet high.

Debbie, who’d been to our home many times, looked up at the statue as she walked around the foyer. “I never noticed your statue has trick eyes that follow you,” she said.

The eyes of this statue are dimensional and expressive, but very clearly gaze in one direction. I told her it definitely did not have “trick eyes,” but it took several minutes of emphatic convincing before she realized I was not kidding. 

No matter where she walked, she saw Our Lady’s eyes follow her. I remember feeling chills as she kept asking me, “Can you see her eyes? She’s looking at me.” I didn’t see anything but the same rightward gaze the statue always had.

Debbie walked up to the landing and looked closely at the statue. Its eyes had changed; they were not like a statue’s eyes—they were alive, she told me.

It was the middle of the night, but Debbie stood motionless and silent for what must have been an hour or longer, looking intently into Mary’s eyes. 

Later, Debbie told me she’d heard no words, but felt a deep peace. “I felt like I should be saying, ‘Yes. Yes,’ and that what was being said was, ‘You’re not alone; you are seen.’”

The first time Debbie visited our home after that night, she wondered if the statue would be the same. But it would never be again.

Impossible Odds

Filmmaking was never part of my life plans. I’d been very uninspired at my day job working mostly in print design, so I attended a seminar on motion graphics presented by Macromedia (a company later purchased by Adobe). That was my introduction to video.

About 100 people—maybe more, maybe less—attended. The presenters asked everyone to deposit their business cards into a box for prize drawings at the conclusion. 

The presentation piqued my interest but inspired no light-bulb moments. As it came to a close, just before the first business card was drawn, a thought came from nowhere and surprised me:

“Mary, if they draw my card, I’ll know I’m meant to do this.” (“This” meaning video.)

Immediately, my name was called. 

I won a mousepad and t-shirt. A few other names were drawn after mine, around four; which makes the probability of my card being drawn about 5%. 

The clarity and resoluteness of that thought—despite my mediocre interest—and then the immediate response to it—having my name called—were a shock. It was as if it had been spoken for me as if it had not originated from me.

I went to two more seminars—video and film-specific—presented by Adobe and Autodesk. Each had about 100 people attending, and the drawings were conducted the same way. The prizes were nice training packages. 

My name was drawn at both of those, too.

I went to a fourth one. This time, before the drawing was held, I told Mary, “I understand now. I don’t need to win anymore.” My name was not drawn.

Later, I entered a national drawing (held online) by publisher Focal Press for a new book on visual effects cinematography. I’m guessing at least 100 people entered. Again, I was one of five winners. I feel this was a wink from Mary.

To sum up, my name was entered in five drawings, each with about five names drawn from around 100 different names. My name was drawn in all of them but one: the one I told Mary I didn’t need to win. 

I wondered how likely this series of events was and made some calculations.

The chance of someone’s name being drawn four times (when there are five names drawn out of 100) is 1 out of 160,000. 

The probability of this occurring is 0.000006%

In case my memory is unreliable and there were only 60 people at each event (a conservative estimate), the chance is 1 out of 20,736. 

The probability of that occurring is 0.00005%.

Shortly after this, I enrolled in an evening filmmaking class where I learned I love the craft. The first script I wrote after the class was complete was, “In this Wood.”

“In the designs of providence, there are no mere coincidences.”

—St. John Paul II

“The score will take care of itself.”

During pre-production and production, the script had many changes made (by others) on the fly without much thought, and as I realized in horror as I tried to build the edit, those changes destroyed carefully crafted narrative threads and made the once-nuanced story quite shallow. 

The only way to fix these fundamental issues was to rebuild the story and create new scenes, which required pickups and visual effects—unexpected and significant expenses.

I also became increasingly anxious about the film’s musical score. Would the composer create the tone and aesthetic I was searching for? How could I communicate them to him when I wasn’t sure of what I wanted yet? 

Additionally, how would I fund this recording? 

I had experience having music professionally recorded and hiring instrumentalists, so I didn’t worry about recording the score during preproduction and production. But now, the unplanned expenses, paired with a growing realization that recording a film score with a small orchestra is much more complex and much, much more expensive than recording a few instrumentalists, have me feeling overwhelmed.

As I was decluttering my studio one weekend (a procrastination tactic), music-related thoughts flooded me with anxiety. 

“What am I supposed to do? There’s so much I need to figure out!”

I came across a bright blue binder I used to collect inspirational quotes in. I hadn’t seen it in years and had forgotten about it. It was thick—jammed with papers, but I opened it to a random page where my eyes landed directly onto a line:

“Do what you need to do. The score will take care of itself.”

I was pretty sure the “score” was a sports reference, but the wording was too perfect in my context. 

I knew the next step was to figure out how to rebuild the story and find a visual effects artist, which was an incredibly challenging task at the time. But these words were just what I needed to see to give me a shove and get me on track again. 

Incidentally, I tried to find the line again in that binder full of quotes but couldn’t. A Google search revealed that it was a summarized version of something written by football coach Bill Walsh.

Much later, as the edit was close to its final version, the film’s composer, James D. Norman, sent a MIDI (virtual instrument) mockup of the first draft of the score. I was blown away and emotional. I knew it was special and better than I could have imagined. He knew what was needed to support the story’s arc; and he not only captured the film’s tone, he’d nailed it.

Now is the time to address the funding for the orchestra, so this looms in my mind. But I often think of that incident and that line I read, and it provides peace and assurance it will also be taken care of at the right time.

“You are not a loser.”

To raise the funds I estimated I needed for the tasks at hand, I gave my best efforts to two fundraising projects. Each had the goal of raising $10,000. 

One was a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign and the other was a grant application. I was feeling very hopeful one would end successfully. Kickstarter featured “In this Wood” as a “Project We Love,” and I felt my application was strong. 

But a thought kept running in my in mind that I addressed to God:

“If neither pans out, I‘ll know I’m a loser. I’ll know I’m lame.”

A few days before I was to learn the outcome of both endeavors, a friend and I met for lunch to celebrate my birthday. This friend handed me a birthday card, and in it was an envelope containing a cashier’s check for $10,000. 

The shock I felt at the amount made me feel physically ill. My friend is not rich and had no idea what I’d been thinking; or if either project would succeed or not. 

Not long afterward, I learned neither the crowdfunding campaign nor the grant application had successful outcomes. Had I not received the gift, I would have been gutted. But the timing of that gift—before I learned the outcome of my efforts—spared me that experience. 

And I believe the exact amount of the gift was God’s response to me: “You are not lame, and you are not a loser.”

A Sign From Beyond the Veil

During pre-production, it was critical to cast a young woman for the role of the “Beautiful Young Woman” (Our Lady) who was not only ethereally beautiful, but also unspoiled by the world and embodied grace, dignity, and purity. You don’t run into people like this every day. I prayed for someone very special for the role.

I’m sorry to admit that during Sunday masses, I’d discreetly scan the congregation for someone who could be the one. It was my mom who recognized her at a First Saturday mass at the cathedral. Theresa Hodapp was seated with her large family catty corner and several pews ahead of us. After mass, my mom poked me and said something like, “There’s your Mary! Run after her!”

Theresa is the most beautiful depiction of Our Lady in film I’ve ever seen. But her interior beauty emerged during the most difficult days of her life. Not long after pickups were shot, Theresa was diagnosed with osteosarcoma. She died at only 18 just a few years later. I recall her mother, Kathy, wrote in her blog about how Theresa had said if her suffering would help just one person, it would be worth it.

What happened the night she died I regard as a miracle. I’ll let an email I sent to her parents explain.

“Kathy and Steve, 

I’ve been meaning to tell you something that happened the night after Theresa died…

Before I went to bed the night of the 7th, I asked Theresa to “give me a sign.” I don’t remember exactly, but I believe it was for letting me know that she knew how much I cared for her—and that she was okay…

[That night, there was a storm and ] we had a blackout…and went to bed in darkness. 

In the middle of the night, I awoke to what sounded like great bells. I heard two strikes—very distinct, clear and loud—like they were being rung for a purpose, spaced apart and ceremonial. I lay awake in awe for a long time, feeling very strongly it was the sign I’d asked Theresa for. I knew I heard them physically in the house, but couldn’t figure out how in the world bells could toll in our home…

The next morning, I told my parents what happened, certain it was a supernatural sign. I was very excited. 

My dad said he’d awoken in the middle of the night because our power came on. He’d…  set his electric clock to the time on his watch. As he was doing so, he bumped a big Tiffany floor lamp in his room. The lamp has two pull chains with brass sphere ends, and a tall hollow metal pole supporting it. He told me that when he bumped it, the brass pull chain balls hit the pole. 

He also remembered the time that he set the clock to: 4:20 a.m. 

My dad and I went upstairs to check the sound the lamp makes when the pull chain hits it, and it was the same sound I’d heard—but I couldn’t understand how the sound I heard was so loud and clear to me that night—it jolted me out of bed. It didn’t sound like a little brass ball on a pole—it sounded supernaturally clear and mystical, significant. 

The time my dad mentioned sounded somewhat familiar to me, so I looked on your blog to see what time Theresa passed away. It was exactly the same time the “bells” rang. My dad and I were stunned and realized that none of what happened was a coincidence. Theresa was telling us she heard my prayer, and that she was in heaven.”

My family believes the sign Theresa sent in answer to my prayer was a metaphor: when the power returned and restored light to our home at the exact time of her death, it was like her passage from darkness into light, and “giant church bells” were heralding her passing from darkness into light.

Learn More About The Short Film “In this Wood”

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