I've Never Been to Vegas, but My Luggage Has: Mishaps and Miracles on the Road to Happily Ever After

by Hale, Mandy

  My point to all this is to let you know that it’s okay if you are scared. It’s okay if you have fear. It’s okay if you suffer from panic attacks. It doesn’t make you abnormal, flawed, or weird. And it doesn’t have to control or ruin your life. Fear doesn’t have to be merely your tormentor. You can allow it to become your counselor, and the lessons it teaches are powerful. It shows you how strong you are. It shows you what a fighter you are. And it shows you that there is nothing you can’t overcome.

  If you are struggling with anxiety or depression, don’t let it win. There is help. There is life on the other side of it. I am proof of that. Find a doctor. Find a therapist. Tell a friend or a family member. Seek help. Read self-help books that teach you how to cope with anxiety and depression. Don’t just try to struggle with it on your own. Don’t surrender to it. Don’t give up.

  I am a girl who once struggled with anxiety so crippling that I couldn’t leave the house. And a few months ago I stepped onto a stage and spoke in front of a crowd of ten thousand women, going on nothing but a wing and a prayer and the grace of God to pull me through. And He did.

  If He can do it for me, He can do it for you.

  Chapter 8

  With a Broken Wing

  In the months after my emotional breakdown, I slowly started to rejoin the land of the living, one step at a time. I was back on track with God, which was great. I also began to slowly reconnect with my friends.

  My dad (God bless him) recognized that I needed to feel like I was regaining control over my life and that I couldn’t do that while living under my parents’ roof, so he loaned me the money to get my own apartment. Having my own place again helped boost my confidence even further. I had gone a couple of months without a panic attack, and now, securely settled into a new home, I finally felt ready to start looking for a job.

  Of course I immediately went to the TV production listings, which at that point were few and far between. The TV business in Nashville was going through a dry spell, and jobs were scarce. Still, I was stubbornly determined to return to the career path I was passionate about and knew I could do well. I sent in resume after resume to local news channels, to production companies, and to CMT’s competitor, GAC. I responded to any and every job posting having to do with television in Nashville, even some low-hanging jobs that I was vastly overqualified for. And you know what happened?

  Absolutely nothing.

  I got zero responses. Zilch. Nada. Nothing. Not even from companies in which I had connections and where someone put in a good word for me. It seemed I wasn’t just hitting detours on my career path; I was being rerouted all together. And it took me a little while to realize what was going on.

  God had shut the door on my television career with a resounding thud. It was over. It clearly wasn’t the right path for me, and He was making that abundantly clear. It was time to move on to something else.

  A few months before, I would have fought against the inevitable and banged on the door to my television career until my fists were bloody, but now I had been through the fire and recognized how to let something go that wasn’t meant for me. If it wasn’t in God’s plan for my life, I didn’t want it. So I surrendered my television dreams once and for all with this prayer:

  God, I recognize that working in television is no longer in Your plan for my life—or at least not right now—so I am taking my hands off of it and giving it to You. Please show me the direction in which You would have me go. If You choose to resurrect my dreams of working in television someday for Your glory, so be it, but for now, I accept that season of my life is over, and I ask for Your guidance as I embark on a new career path, wherever that path may lead. In Jesus’ name, amen.

  As soon as I physically and emotionally released my own plans and asked God to have His way with my life, the floodgates began to open. I started getting responses from other jobs I had applied for outside of television, in public relations, marketing, and advertising. Since a great deal of the writing I did at CMT was for teasers and promotional spots designed to encourage people to tune in to various shows, I had developed a flair for public relations and marketing.

  In November 2005, I interviewed for and was offered the position of vice president of communications at an international web-based company just making its move from London to the states. The company provided a platform and hosting that allowed people to create their own websites using simple templates, from celebratory websites like wedding or birth announcements to memorial websites in honor of someone who had passed. I was responsible for handling anything communications-related that came and went from the company, including press releases, customer e-mails, and everything in between. The great thing about the position was, since it was a web-based company, I would be allowed to work from home! I think God recognized that I was still very much in the healing process, and a nine-to-five rat race and long commute into an office every morning wasn’t the best way to ease me back into the working world.

  One of my first assignments at my new job was helping coordinate a major marketing event in Times Square on Valentine’s Day 2006. Since the company was new and needed to gain muchneeded brand recognition, we created the world’s largest virtual valentine for the troops overseas in an effort to generate buzz. We were even attempting to set a Guinness World Record with the endeavor. I loved the concept because it wasn’t just another empty, meaningless promotional gimmick; it was actually serving a greater purpose—honoring the troops. My time as a military girlfriend to Matt made it a cause very near and dear to my heart. My boss, Henry, and I worked our fingers to the bone in the weeks leading up to the launch to guarantee it was a resounding success.

  All our hard work paid off in a big way. We wound up breaking the Guinness World Record for the world’s largest virtual valentine created for our troops overseas, and I got to travel to New York City for the first time in my life with my parents to celebrate the milestone in Times Square on February 14 (we drove, as I still had regular flashbacks of my meltdown on the flight to Vegas and wasn’t quite ready to try my luck at flying just yet). The network news stations heard about what we were doing and invited us to hit the early morning news circuit. I got to meet Diane Sawyer, Charles Gibson, and Robin Roberts at Good Morning America, and was even briefly interviewed by Al Roker on the Today Show! My love of television news came full circle that day in such a special way. Where once I had been the producer writing the news, now I was the one making the news.

  I also fell in love with New York City on that trip. I loved the hustle and bustle and excitement everywhere you looked. I loved the energy, the exotic fashions, the endless choices, and the variety of opportunities. And I literally stood in the middle of Times Square and twirled around in circles, breathless as I took in all the colors, flashing lights, and massively tall billboards. It was like nothing I had ever seen. It was a whole new world—one that inspired, challenged, and energized me.

  When I returned home to Tennessee, I took a good look at my life. My career was flourishing once again, my anxiety was in check, I was back on my feet, and yet I felt like something was missing. I was still working to repair friendships from CMT, and I hadn’t dated anyone in a really long time. I felt as though my personal life needed a major jump start, but I wasn’t sure where to find it.

  A couple of weeks later a friend quite serendipitously invited me to join her at a ballroom dance class. She had just gotten into ballroom dancing and had fallen in love with it. Quite coincidentally (or not, since coincidences never are), one of my New Year’s resolutions had been to take ballroom dance lessons, so I quickly accepted her invitation. And I can’t lie—since Dirty Dancing was my favorite movie growing up and I had seen it at least 2,347 times, visions of stepping into Baby Houseman’s dance shoes and executing the perfect routine in the arms of a strong, mysterious Johnny Castle were also dancing in my head.

  The first class consisted of learning the very basic steps to three popular dances—the waltz, the rumba, and the East
Coast Swing—but by the end of the hour, I was hooked. I loved everything about it, particularly the simple charm and sweet nostalgia. After the difficult past few months of my life, getting transported back to a time of innocence like my childhood adoration of Dirty Dancing was simply magical.

  I signed up for private lessons and was assigned a very patient and kindhearted dance instructor named Travis. Over the next few weeks, Travis took me through the basics of ballroom dance. It felt great to be a beginner at something again, to step out of my comfort zone, and to build the foundation of a new life’s passion. I learned so much about life and myself just from the dancing. Who would have thought that the rumba would reconnect me with my vulnerability? That I would lose my inhibitions in the steps of the salsa? Or that I would find a beauty and grace within myself that I never knew existed in the waltz? But I did. All the months of grief, sadness, and turmoil were exorcised on that dance floor, and I held nothing back. And as I started to empty my heart and my emotional reserves of all the dark times I had been through, I started to make room for uninhibited, unfettered, and uncontrollable joy. That’s the main thing dance represented to me: joy. It bubbled up in my spirit and flowed out of me, impacting every area of my life. I grew more social, making new friends at the dance studio and attending weekly dance parties that allowed students to practice their dance moves with one another. Soon my life began to resemble the East Coast Swing I loved so much: carefree, joyful, and wildly unexpected.

  A couple of months into my dancing journey, Travis and I were invited to participate in a charity dance competition that would raise money for needy families. I was thrilled. On top of getting to help people and provide food for families in need, I would get to learn a complete dance routine to the song of my choice!

  I knew instantly what it would be.

  What better, more perfect song to dance to than “(I’ve Had) The Time of My Life”?

  This dance felt like my victorious comeback, my chance to redeem the past few months of pain with a joyous routine to the soundtrack of my childhood. It was absolutely perfect. My lifelong dreams of reenacting that legendary dance were about to become a reality!

  But not without a great deal of hard work first.

  Travis and I kicked our training into overdrive. Dancing requires you to step out of your comfort zone on a number of levels, particularly when you’re prepping for a competition. You have to be willing to first and foremost risk making a complete fool of yourself, both during training and during the live performance. And you have to be willing to dedicate the time and discipline to training so that you don’t make a complete fool of yourself during the big night. You have to trust your dance partner immensely—trust him to train you, to catch you, to lead you, and to push you to do your best. Since I knew what having the rug pulled out from under me felt like, trust was something I struggled with, and I carried that struggle onto the dance floor. I overthought every single move and turn and instruction Travis gave me, instead of just trusting the dance in the hands of the professional. (See the obvious parallel here to trusting your life in the hands of God?)

  One day Travis and I were working on a turn that I just couldn’t seem to master. Actually, when I stopped overthinking it and allowed my body to take over, I mastered it just fine. But for some reason I was really stressing and sweating this turn. I was firing off questions at poor Travis a mile a minute.

  “Mandy! Stop!” he boomed. “Why are you overthinking everything? Stop thinking, let me lead you, and just dance! You got it right the first time!”

  I stood frozen in my own muck of fear, hesitation, doubt, and paralyzing indecision for a split second before we both burst into uproarious laughter at the complete nonsensical mess I was making out of something as small and insignificant as one dance turn. One turn, in an entire routine! Talk about missing the forest for the trees. And you know what happened? When I exhaled, shut off my mind, stopped asking questions, and just acted, allowing my gut, my instincts, and my body to take over, I executed the turn perfectly.

  Isn’t that such a perfect metaphor for life?

  We can bring our lives to a screeching halt with overthinking. Lord knows I did that during my post-CMT meltdown. I almost drove myself mad with overthinking. When we overthink, we stop acting boldly and hide behind our endless streams of questions, objections, and insecurities. We drive away people and opportunities that are meant to be in our lives by overwhelming them with our expectations, stipulations, and worries. We shut off our hearts and allow our minds to work overtime, essentially turning ourselves into hamsters in wheels—endlessly grinding but going nowhere.

  You just can’t think your way into your destiny. More often than not, you have to feel your way there. Overthinking takes the very magic out of life because you’re too busy planning the party to enjoy it. Trust me: the world will not screech to a halt if you step off the conveyor belt of overthinking. In fact, I’d venture to say it will spin a lot more peacefully on its axis.

  Eventually we made it to D-day. I had a beautiful sparkly pink costume and silver dance slippers and felt like a princess. After months of training, Travis and I were ready to take the competition by storm!

  Instead, we took dead last.

  Since I pride myself on my dancing abilities, and since I knew Travis was a dance superstar, it was a bit of a blow to the ego. But you know what? If my post-CMT emotional wasteland had taught me nothing else, it taught me that sometimes a bad day for the ego is a great day for the spirit. I knew that Travis and I had done our very best. We had worked our butts off and challenged each other and pushed each other and poured our blood, sweat, and tears into that routine, and we still didn’t make the cut. That’s just the way it goes sometimes. Disappointments and failures are all a part of the process that makes you into the person you are meant to become. You can allow them to cause you to become bitter, angry, and hard, or you can accept them gratefully as the lessons that they are and use the experiences to be better the next time around. The choice you make will define whether the failure becomes a stepping-stone or a stumbling block.

  For me, regardless of the trophy we lost, I had found so much more on the dance floor than I ever imagined possible. I found my way back out of my shell—the protective covering I had built around my heart after the disappointment at letting go of my television career. I found the ability to trust again—and not just someone else, but to trust myself. I reclaimed my belief in myself, my happiness, my fire, my spark. And I found the courage to accept my failure with the grace of a woman instead of the disdain of a child. I was learning on this journey we call life that failure is just a sentence in our stories. It doesn’t have to overshadow the whole book.

  Besides all that, dancing was just fun! It had opened me up to the magic and joy and possibilities of life again. For the first time in years, I felt brave enough and hopeful enough to believe that since I had rediscovered my ability to dream, maybe love wouldn’t be far behind.

  Chapter 9

  Flying High

  I can remember so clearly the first time I saw him. He danced by my table and into my life. Poof! There he was, as though he had always been there, just waiting for me to open my eyes and see him.

  It was December 2006, and I had gone out with some friends from dance class to hear a band play and to practice our dance moves. We were sitting at our table, laughing, cutting up, and having a grand old time, when a very attractive guy with a fedora pulled down rather mysteriously over one eye walked by our table and shot us a grin. My heart instantly leapt, surprising me. It had been a very long time since I had any sort of butterflies over a guy.

  Throughout the course of the next hour, as my friends and I danced, giggled, and sang along to the band, the mysterious guy kept shooting glances our way. He was with a large group of his own friends, obviously eclectic, colorful, and creative types. At one point he took to the dance floor alone to show off his solo moves, sliding across the floor with the agility and grace of Justin Timb
erlake. Who could this guy be? Nashville wasn’t a huge town, and I knew I had never seen him before. Plus, the fedora and the dance moves made a very powerful yet enigmatic impression.

  “What do you think his deal is?” I whispered to my friend Victoria.

  “Who? Oh, you mean Mr. E?” she asked with a mischievous grin.

  “Mr. E?” I asked in confusion.

  “Mr. Fedora Guy. Mr. Mysterious. M-Y-S-T-E-R-Y, aka Mr. E. That’s who you mean, right?”

  I laughed, realizing what she meant. “Oh, that’s perfect! Yes, Mr. E. Have you ever seen him before?”

  She shook her head. “Nope. And I can’t remember the last time I saw you so interested in a guy,” she teased, both of us turning to watch him lounging languidly against the booth his friends were sitting at. “I think you should talk to him,” she went on.

  I blushed. “What? No! I can’t. I don’t go places and ‘pick up guys.’ That’s not me! Besides,” I said, shooting another look in Mr. E’s direction, “look at him. He probably has a girlfriend.”

  “Only one way to find out!” Before I could object, Victoria strode over to his table and was greeting him and his friends enthusiastically. Then I saw her gesture over to our table. Oh no. I slid down in my seat a bit in embarrassment as he looked over my way with a smile. The next thing I knew, Victoria was pulling him over to our table.