Just Dance

Sweat plastered my face and my cowboy hat threatened to slide down over my eyes. I punched out kick-ball-changes and pumped my arms to the hypnotic beat.  The stage lights stared me down like an interrogation.  My heart pounded in my temples, my fingers, my chest. I don’t remember breathing the entire three minutes that I was on stage.  I confidently shook my hips and worked the crowd with twelve other girls dressed in the same plaid shirts and too-big, one-size-doesn’t-fit-all, white cowboy hats. I was fully alive and fully uncontainable.  I licked my parched lips and tasted the salt of sweat. I heard the beat of the too familiar song, but I didn’t listen to it, I danced it.  I was pleased to find that my body moved in perfect harmony with the music and the other dancers.  We danced in perfect formation on the creaky, dark stage.  I caught a glimpse of the spellbound audience, eyebrows raised, lips formed into a breathless “O,” but I didn’t really see them.  The dance, the movement, consumed me and for three whole minutes I was totally free.  My doubts, fears, and insecurities vanished.  I danced who I was, but most importantly, I danced who I wanted to be. 

God has a way of speaking to me through visions—not visions I see, but visions others see and boldly share with me.

The visions have ranged from strange to cheesy to downright disturbing. I’ve been lucky enough to be given the visions with a caveat: if it doesn’t resonate or sound like God, then don’t worry about it. And I haven’t.

Amidst the generic and the platitudnal (is that even word?), I’ve been told phrases that speak straight into my soul.  Even writing about it sounds too lavish, too over the top, but sometimes God reveals a vision or a word or an encouragement to others just for me.

Like the one I received a few months ago. A woman from church had a vision of me dancing. She felt like God had a message just for me.

“Lead like you dance,” she said to me.

Say that to anyone else and it may sound cheesy, hokey, or downright terrifying. For a lot of people, dancing is a source of panic, anxiety, and fear of looking stupid (just ask my ex-boyfriends). But for me, dancing is one of the only times I don't feel stupid, when I don't care about whether or not I'm doing it right. Dancing for me is pure joy, pure freedom.

"Now I've never seen you dance, but I get the sense that you know that you're good," she ventured.

Bingo.

Through the tears that betrayed my heart, I smiled and nodded. It was true. It is true. When I dance, I know that I'm good. Not in a conceited way, like I think I'm the shizz, but in a joyful way. In a way that I am so free and filled with joy, that I know the act itself is good. God created me to dance, and it is good.

At the time she told me this, I was struggling with the idea of moving into leadership at church. I felt called to lead a book study on the topic of body image and eating disorders--me, a shy introvert who has never even had an eating disorder. What could God possibly want to do with me?

In the midst of my insecurities and second-guessing, God spoke to me through an image of a dancing girl.

God was calling me to step out in boldness and confidence and joy. And when I did, when I began to leave behind the reservations, I began to transform into the leader that I never thought I could be. The leader that God was calling me to be.

This week this vision has hit me particularly hard. I’ve been second-guessing everything—my job, my life, even this blog. I’m been frustrated, foolish, stuck. I am not dancing.

I picture the dancing girl; I remember the dancing moments like I described at the beginning of this post.  And I ache for that kind of confidence. I want to know that what I am doing is good. This kind of confidence is God-given. It is not arrogance. It is not conceitedness. It is peace. It is contentment. It is resting in God's hands. It is obedience to the unusual things that God calls us to that the rest of the world, our friends, possibly our mothers, don’t understand.

Right now I’m waiting for this calling. For the next step in the dance. I’m praying for discernment. Praying for joy.

And while I wait for a macro-calling, I invest in the micro-joys. I choose to reclaim the areas of my life that I know I am called to. I choose to reclaim them with boldness and confidence and joy. I choose to follow the lead of my God with freedom and abandon.

I choose to dance. 

Basking: The Remix

All last week I was planning to write about how I came to bask in God’s love. But I couldn’t.

I felt silly. I felt like the stories I wanted to share were silly examples of positive self-talk and self-absorption.

I talked myself out of their importance. I started to doubt if I'd really made any progress. I started to doubt if learning to love myself has really helped me love others better.

As I sought to write about these fits of unwarranted compassion, these moments where God spoke to me and set me free, I realized I am not yet fully free.

As I seek to set others free, I am realizing just how trapped I still am.

Am I really better off? The accuser mocks my progress. I've done nothing. I'm no good. Can I really love and serve others better now?

But that doesn’t mean I haven’t had moments of freedom and seasons of basking. It doesn’t mean God isn’t calling me to share these stories of freedom I’ve experienced.

I have heard God. He has spoken to me through words and images, friends and strangers.

And it turns out he’s pretty kind. His words are life-giving. His words are Love.

But this last week I’ve been hearing words that aren’t so kind, that aren’t from Love. Faced with a fear of leading a new book club at my church to share and grow with women struggling with eating disorders, this voice tells me I don’t need to lead because I’m ill equipped. I’m too shy. I’m too busy. I’m too scared.

God must be crazy to want me to lead this book club because I am the least qualified of anyone I know. My friends are friendlier, kinder, more hospitable, more empathetic, better suited to this ministry.

I feel ill equipped to love people, to lead people, and to make an impact.

It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy: I don’t lead, I don’t try, I don’t engage, and then I’ve proven that I was ill equipped in the first place.

As soon as these thoughts flood my brain, I’ve abdicated my responsibility. I’ve lost out on the gift that I am and the gifts that God has for me.

Another thought that’s been plaguing me is that I’m being selfish for starting a ministry within my church community. I feel like I’m taking the easy way out. That somehow this ministry is second rate because I’m not directly serving the poor.

I absolutely believe that God has called me to this ministry. And I still feel guilty.

Where’s the freedom in that?

I’m not so different than I was three years ago when I scoffed at the idea of basking in God’s love. I’m still tempted to base my worth on my actions and efforts. On my poverty reduction and social justice scale. I’m still tempted to earn God’s love.

But I can’t.

I am loved. Period. That is the reality of who I am.

Henri Nouwen said, “Over the years, I have come to realize that the greatest trap in our life is not success, popularity, or power, but self-rejection. Success, popularity, and power can indeed present a great temptation, but their seductive quality often comes from the way they are part of the much larger temptation to self-rejection. When we have come to believe in the voices that call us worthless and unlovable, then success, popularity, and power are easily perceived as attractive solutions. The real trap, however, is self-rejection. As soon as someone accuses me or criticizes me, as soon as I am rejected, left alone, or abandoned, I find myself thinking, "Well, that proves once again that I am a nobody." ... [My dark side says,] I am no good... I deserve to be pushed aside, forgotten, rejected, and abandoned. Self-rejection is the greatest enemy of the spiritual life because it contradicts the sacred voice that calls us the "Beloved."’

As a response he says, “The great spiritual task facing me is to so fully trust that I belong to God that I can be free in the world--free to speak even when my words are not received; free to act even when my actions are criticized, ridiculed, or considered useless.... I am convinced that I will truly be able to love the world when I fully believe that I am loved far beyond its boundaries.”

This week I will share the silly stories of positive self-talk and revelations that have speckled my journey of learning to bask in God’s love. I really do believe this basking, this experience I've had with God's unconditional, unconventional, unfathomable love, has shaped and formed me to love others better.

Let the basking begin.