This time of year is when TV watchers all over the country feel the rush of participating in live entertainment from the comfort of their homes.  The America’s Got Talent (from here on in referred to as AGT) Live Shows will wrap up their quarter finals this coming Tuesday on NBC, and I know I’ve got my app ready to go when vote time goes live!  If you aren’t familiar with the show, AGT is a talent competition where people from all over the world go to Los Angeles to showcase their talent.  They perform in an auditorium in front of an audience and 4 celebrity judges—the most notable and most popular of which is Simon Cowell.  Often times, a short video package will be cut in to be played for the television audience that gives a little backstory to the act.  If the performance receives a “yes” from at least 3 out of the 4 judges, the act goes on to the next round of auditions.  After two audition rounds, the remaining acts perform live, and the folks at home have an opportunity to express their opinion of the performances in the form of voting for who they want to see again/who they would like to see win.  There are Quarter Finals, Semi-Finals, and then The Finals episodes for America to vote for their favorites.  The winner receives one million dollars and a headlining show in Las Vegas.  During the performances, if the judges greatly dislike a performance, they can press a button to light up a Red X and produce a very negative buzzer sound.  If an act has all 4 judges hit their Red X, the act is automatically over.  On the flip, each judge is allowed to hit a Golden Buzzer once each season.  This Golden Buzzer is for an act the judge absolutely loves, feels deserves the opportunity to skip over the second round of auditions, and go straight to the Live Shows.  It’s a big deal.

Okay so now that we have the background out of the way… In the last few years that I have been into watching the show, my favorite AGT act so far is an incredibly talented musician.  A couple of years prior to seeing her on AGT, I was in the car with some friends and they were playing a CD of one of the best singers I have ever heard.  I listened for a few minutes because I didn’t want to miss a moment of this amazing voice, then I asked who this person was.  They told me the name of this remarkable musician is Mandy Harvey.  More remarkable still, they told me, is that she cannot hear a thing—she is completely deaf.

Mandy never aspired to being a performer.  On the contrary, she was incredibly shy and even threw up before her first time speaking in public.  She wanted to be a music educator, desiring mostly to work with collegiate level choirs.  But when she lost the last of her hearing during her freshman year of college, she discovered that she was destined for another course in life.

A friend of Mandy’s convinced her to try out for AGT.  She had never watched the show, so she didn’t know much about it.  In her contract/agreement for the show, it was required that the judges not know in advance that she was deaf because she did not want them to have any bias for her performance.  She was among the first acts to perform during the evening session of the first day of filming.  Simon Cowell made it very clear to everyone in attendance that he was not going to use his Golden Buzzer on the first day. The crew decided to test all of the Red X’s right before Mandy’s soundcheck, then tested them again just before she went out on stage to perform.  I would have been a nervous wreck with the timing of all of that going on, but she was ready to go on out there and do her thing.

Watch this clip of her first AGT audition here.  Even if you’ve seen it before, watch it again, then come back here and keep reading.  😜

Again, Mandy had never seen the show, so she didn’t know what exactly the Golden Buzzer was, only that everyone was freaking out and it was obviously a wonderful thing.  People kept telling her that she was going straight through to the Live Shows, but she didn’t know exactly what that meant, either.  She found out soon enough, and made it all the way to the Finals!  She is also one of only 5 people up to that point who the producers allowed to perform their own original music.

Watch this clip of her performance in the Finals, then come back and finish reading.

You’d never know that she was desperately ill with pneumonia during the Live Shows, would you?  Some time spent in the hospital, very high fever, etc.  I wish I could sing that well period, and here she was sounding awesome despite being insanely sick!  There were lots of medics and staff around to help her so that she could still participate in the show.  Before one performance, she was laying down and had to be woken up to go out to perform.  The crew had chairs set up all over the place so that she would not have to walk too far at one time.  All the video packages were also filmed while she was ill, so crew members made sure to dab the sweat off of her and such so she wouldn’t look sick in those clips.  Then after her last performance in the Finals, she went off stage and cried because she didn’t know if any sound came out due to her throat being so inflamed.  She obviously did produce sound, and took 4^th place that season.

Mandy is very witty and funny, and incredibly wise, so I’m going to share a bit of her wisdom with you.  After first losing her hearing, she said that she never lost her faith in the Lord, but she did become bitter and stop talking to Him for a while. She felt like she said all that could be said on the matter, so there was nothing left to say to Him.  She said that we so often try to manipulate God into doing what we want and on our time, but when she changed the focus of her prayers from asking for what she wanted (bring my hearing back, make me “normal” again, etc.) to asking for what she needed (strength, wisdom, etc.), she had new things to say, and things began to change for her.  I love that she eventually told God, “I don’t need this to be the same; I just need to know what to do from here.”  Wow…

“God will use your life, so let Him.”  Allowing God to use your life makes you successful.  Even if there is no money or great public attention attached to it, you are still successful and better than you were before.  Mandy says that she wants to push people to be better, and that she wants others to push her to be better as well.  Shouldn’t we all want that?  Proverbs 27:17 says, “Iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another.”  Our conversations and interactions with each other are very important, and should be used to improve ourselves and others… to push one another to be better, to help us see how God desires use our lives, to be successful.

The full-time job that Mandy worked and depended on for 9 years let her go after her Golden Buzzer moment aired.  They told her that they didn’t think she would have time for them anymore.  She had to take a leap of faith and trust the Lord to provide.  She said that she had to make so many leaps of faith so often that they eventually stopped scaring her.  She stopped worrying about falling because she knew that even if she did, God was right there with her and it would be okay. God is right there with you, too. Let it be a comfort to you that we are never truly alone.

Being an encouragement to people was all Mandy really wanted out of her AGT audition.  She said that even if she didn’t get the Golden Buzzer, even if she got Xed off instead, someone would still have been encouraged just by the fact that she was there that night; and you never know who may see you and be encouraged by you in your general day-to-day life.  She once said, “I have a certain amount that I can give, and I don’t want any of that stuff left over when I die.” What if we all lived that way? Would anything be different in your life?

What do you have to give?  What are you doing or what can you do to be an encouragement to someone today? Who can you reach out to this week for some tandem sharpening?  What leaps of faith are you needing to make?  Or what leaps are you currently flying through the air with?  I’m making a big leap of faith next week, myself.  Trusting God isn’t always easy, but it is always worth it.  Read Romans 5:3-5.  Are you walking a difficult path right now?  Are you struggling with something, or have a crazy situation going on?  How you handle what life throws at you is your decision, but remember Romans 8:28.  Mandy once said in an interview, “don’t allow yourself be your biggest obstacle,” and isn’t it so true that we do so often allow that? I know I do!  Turn your focus away from what you cannot do (or can no longer do), and focus on what you CAN do. Gosh, that is so hard to do sometimes, but perspective is a wondrous thing. Will you allow God to use your life, even if it doesn’t look the way you think it should?