Testimony Tuesday: Painting sunsets with God

By Bella Agnello

“When I imagine heaven, I picture painting sunsets with God, whether that’s on the actual sky or on a canvas. Artists and storytellers will still be creating things in heaven.”

Eliana Wiseman is a storyteller at heart. Her whole life, stories captivated her – stories of mythical worlds and Authurian legends. Now a sophomore Broadcasting, Digital Media and Journalism major at Cedarville University, she is exploring new ways to draw out the Gospel through storytelling.

Wiseman’s heart for stories began when she was a little girl watching an Easter pageant at her church. A man playing Jesus walked down the center aisle as little children threw down their robes to light his way. Later in the play, she saw the man on a cross, delivering the words Jesus spoke on the cross two thousand years ago.

“I think just being super young and seeing that I thought, ‘This is wild,’” Wiseman said. “It was such a vivid depiction at such a young age that it really helped me understand the Gospel better.”

When she was 6 years old, she asked her parents to pray with her.

“Never had we ever knelt down by our bed or by anything,” Wiseman said. “I think I had been sitting in the chair and they had knelt down to get down on my eye level. Then they said, ‘Come sit down here with us.’”

Though she was still young, Wiseman considers this the moment of her salvation.

“I think that a child’s prayer is heard in heaven,” Wiseman said. “Maybe your understanding is a little different, maybe you have to rededicate or maybe you have to realize it was not exactly what you thought it was when you were little, but you can’t discount your childhood prayer as not being saved just because you didn’t really get it.”

Wiseman grew to know that her life was but a piece of a grander picture that God was painting since the beginning of time. This understanding grew her reliance upon God in more ways than she could ever imagine.

From the time she was 4 years old to when she was 8 years old, Wiseman suffered from nightmares that woke her up in the middle of the night, paralyzed and unable to speak.

Two dreams recurred during that time. In one dream, she was unable to speak – a shadow of herself – and watched on as people made fun of her intelligence. This particular dream took place over years at a time.

“I would wake up and I’d be confused that I was the age that I was,” Wiseman said.

In her other dream, she and her family were stranded on a rock floating in space. When they were inevitably attacked, her family left her behind thinking she would have the strength to follow by herself.

“As a kid, I knew that dreams in the Bible meant something, so I kind of attributed it to my childhood imaginings of how my family dynamic was even though it was not like that at all,” Wiseman said. “I just always feared that there would be something that would happen where I’d be left behind.”

Wiseman’s perception of these dreams led her to be mistrustful or doubtful of her relationships with her family and friends. One day, when she was 7 years old, she began to talk to God about her dreams.

“I think I would just talk to God about that a lot, like, ‘No one gets it – you get it,’” Wiseman said.

Prayer was the turning point for these night terrors. Wiseman began to imagine creatures around her bed protecting her. Among these creatures was Jesus, sitting in the room with her.

“I would just talk to him and explain my dream to him,” Wiseman said. “I’d say, ‘Thank you for all these good things in my life, thank you this isn’t real.’ I would talk to him for an hour. As I was drifting off, I would pray that he would take the nightmares away.”

God freed Wiseman from her dreams once and for all. Though Wiseman can still remember her dreams in vivid detail, she perceives his faithfulness sewn perfectly into the details. Though her vivid imagination once terrorized her in her dreams, God redeemed her imagination and set her heart on fire for stories.

What once harmed her now drew out of her passionate creativity and a deep love for those around her. She did dance her whole life, but most of the friends she made from it were cliquey and shallow. Though quitting was hard, moving on from these friendships made the transition a little easier.

A few years later, she decided to try her luck in theater and found Inspiring Art Productions, a Christian community theater company, in Hamilton, OH. There, she instantly made five friends who she continues to do theater with to this day.

“In the world of art, a lot happens and there can be a lot of legal issues and moral things,” Wiseman said. “But everyone there is so supportive and everything just works out, which makes me think that God has his hand on it and knows that what we’re performing and the family that we’ve built is going to be really helpful for a lot of people.”

Even for herself, Wiseman saw the impact the Christian theater community immediately had on her faith.

“I don’t even think I realized that I had taken a back seat to my faith,” Wiseman said. “Every single person there is just so on fire for God and is willing to talk about anything. We would end rehearsals, sit out in the parking lot and just talk for hours about whatever theological issue or why we needed prayer in our lives.”

Wiseman said that community prepared her well for the type of community she would find at Cedarville University. At first, coming to Cedarville meant that she would be attending her older sister’s school. She still decided to attend but her doubts carried over until halfway through the summer going into her freshman year of college.

Wanting to stay home but not wanting to be disobedient to God, she asked God for something that would push her to leave home and see the world. Through an incident over the summer, God answered her prayers for peace and discernment, and he sent her to the cornfields of Cedarville, OH.

Now, Wiseman is pursuing a Broadcasting, Digital Media and Journalism degree with a concentration in Audio. She is also the promotions director for Resound Radio. Though she does not know the specifics of what she wants to do in the future, she knows that it will be something that enables her to share the Gospel.

“I have a really hard time discerning what God has for me and a really hard time dealing with how much I should be feeling and how much I should have faith,” Wiseman said. “Part of it is just having faith and saying, ‘I’m not really getting a clear sign, but maybe one of these is more supported biblically.’ I know I have strengths in my faith and in evangelism, so I’m gonna go into a more secular workfield.”

Even before heaven, Wiseman is painting sunsets with God. He continues to allow her to take part in telling the grand story he has already planned – plans that Wiseman never could have dreamed of.

“We don’t know the effects we have on people – I don’t do it for the recognition,” Wiseman said. “I know that there’s some sort of impact I’m having on the world because everyone has an impact on the world, and I just need to make it as positive and as filled with the Spirit as I can.”

Bella Agnello is a junior Broadcasting, Digital Media and Journalism major with a concentration in Journalism. She enjoys thrifting, listening to records and reading classic Russian literature in her spare time.

*Photo provided by Eliana Wiseman