Written on August 15, 2022
As most of you may know, I've been a dancer for pretty much my whole life. Any dancer can tell you that it's a tricky relationship to navigate and a hard world to be in. It breaks you and then builds you up from that brokenness. It has its good, bad, best and even worst days of your life. Dance can be so beautiful and so ugly all at the same time. It's easy to focus on all the imperfections of ourselves and only the wrong things with dance but do you know what else Dance is?
Dance is freeing. Dance makes us feel fully alive. The way I can move the audience with my movement on a stage all by myself is one of the best feelings in the entire world. The way time flies when I dance, how dance doesn't feel like a job, how I go to bed with butterflies after a class, how dance so naturally and relentlessly shows up time and time again in my life.... Dance is a gift. Dance is my gift...
I've been suppressing this gift for too long. Actually, worse. I've been RUNNING AWAY from this gift of Dance. Imagine someone who loves you with only the kindest & most tender love- like a Father- hand you a gift that he knows you need...and you turn the gift away for YEARS. He tries to keep giving you this gift because he knows it's good for you, but you say No. Time and time again... How it must break the Father's heart to see His daughter run away from home, from such a good thing. How it must hurt his heart to see his daughter run away from the one place he knows she will fly free.
One of the many beautiful things about God, is that he lets us run away because He loves us. He is our Father. He lets us discover the truth on our own because free will is one of the greatest gifts a father can give to his daughter or son.
Right now, I feel like I'm in the midst of revival and it's wild because as I ask, beg and chase God to open doors and grant me different opportunities, he brings me back to the root. The one gift that I've been running away from... and he's been waiting for my full and unapologetic YES.
It's not acting, theatre, fashion, or even ministry opportunities that he brings to me, it's dance ones. I've declared time and time again "I'm done with Dance. That's not really a part of my life anymore." and boy did I believe those words with ALL MY STRENGTH. God wants me to be open to His will, not my own. He wants me to die to the ideas and plans I have for my own life because HE WILL MAKE DREAMS COME TRUE THAT I DIDN'T EVEN KNOW I HAD. But I have to be ALL in. I have to TRUST HIM with EVERYTHING, not just some things, but with every detail and dream. God has to become my dream.
Dance is His gift to me and Dance beholds my mission. It's what I've been created to do. It is all beginning to makes sense now... When I pray, I literally feel tingling in my legs and it's always been this way.
A long time ago, as a teenage girl, I was taking a drive to North Carolina, where I prayed to God, asking if I should continue this scary career path... and a minute later I saw a billboard that read "You Were Born to Dance." These words stuck with me for 7 years, there's got to be a reason I never forgot them. I've been saying No to God for too long, and it ends now. I will be an open tabernacle, allowing the Holy Spirit to DANCE FREELY within me and through me.
I have retuned to my Father's arms, and I am ready to give him my whole self again, with this gracious gift of Dance. YES, Lord. YES, Lord. YES YES, Lord. Amen.
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