Meet Liz, a Jellyfish Labs team member in our Chicago office. Liz writes, reads, researches, administrates, and does pretty much everything else we ask! She’s pretty fantastic and will be blogging fairly regularly about all the behind-the-scenes happenings at the studio. And all of those behind-the-scenes photos on Facebook? Yeah, that’s Liz too.
Here’s some of the Jellyfish Team in Denver. Phil’s on the far left, then Paul (Chief Creative), Liz, and Tim (Business Affairs).
There are only a few of us who occupy the Jellyfish Labs studio so my days are sometimes filled with the most miscellaneous of projects. But my absolute favorite task has been working on the 100+ scripts I’ve gotten to write for JellyTelly and Jellyfish Labs.
The first scripts I wrote were comedy segments like Pirate Etiquette and God’s Amazing Animals. Clive and Ian quickly became my favorite characters to write for–Getting to play both sides of a straight man/funny man duo is such a treat! Then a couple years ago came the assignment to write for Clive and Ian as they talked about faith and values. Not a big deal right? Well maybe not for a mom or an older sibling….but for me, well, I quickly hit a wall.
You see, I’ve almost always been the youngest one in the room. Youngest sibling, youngest student and now youngest coworker. And while being quite childlike myself, I haven’t had much experience with children and have limited experience talking to them, let alone teaching them! How exactly…was I supposed to explain the whys and hows of values and scripture to kids? I was a little befuddled but ever grateful for the opportunity to figure it out.
As I muddled my way through the first few scripts I would often pop into our business manager’s office to ask a question about how old a child would need to be to understand this or that theological concept. And I would often be reminded that I was making it too complicated. We have a funny way of doing that with God, don’t we? Not only was I making the scripts too complicated, but I quickly saw how I had made my application of theology and values too complicated in my own life.
Over the next 20-30 scripts, God simplified things. He slowly re-walked me through the hows and whys of values and the hows and whys of knowing Him more deeply. He reminded me over and over until it sunk in, that we don’t live out values because they always make our lives better—sometimes they make things tougher. He reminded me that we don’t pursue values because they’re nice but because they are characteristics of Christ and we are called to be transformed into His image. And most importantly He reminded me that it was not my job to transform myself and discipline myself to do these values but that it’s the work of the Holy Spirit IN me that transforms me.
I don’t have any children at the moment, but I am thankful to know that when the time comes for kids, that I won’t just have the information to teach them, but also the example to model for them. Not just because of what God is doing in my life personally, but because I am blessed to work in an office where we don’t just try to come up with the right answers—we desire to live out the truths we are sharing. And in the midst of work assignments and scheduling, we are given the grace and space to allow the Holy Spirit into what we do so we all end up transformed.
