the dance

My last semester of my senior year of college I still needed to take a humanities course. I signed up for Intro to dance, like a dance history course. I loooooved that class, especially my teacher who was so weird and so cool. I don’t remember learning that much about dance itself...

It was a class room setting most days, our teacher would lecture… or inspire:) As well as break out into random tap dance or begin to sing the words of his lecture to us. Hahaha he was so serious, but it was hilarious.

One day he took us to the stage of theater to teach us some basic dance moves. We all, with our partners tried to follow him. We stumbled all over ourselves. He called on a random girl in the class to demostrate with him. She was not a dancer, she had been stumbling just like the rest of us.

As she danced with the professor she began to look like a dancer… she just followed his lead and he made her shine. She didn’t know what she was doing. But he did. She let loose and trusted in his movements. He knew exactly how to lead her, give nudges in her back, hold her, push her and pull her in order to make her look like a dancer, to show off his expertise and to make their dance beautiful. He came to her beginner's level and worked with her pace, until she began to get it. It was like she forgot we were all watching and got caught up in the flow, the rhythm, the movements and enjoyed dancing with our professor. It looked fun.

And so that image comes back to me often whenever I am at a place when I don’t really know what to do, what voices to listen to, or what decsions to make. That is the image that comes back to me when God has me in a place of waiting on Him. When I learn to want Him more than the answers, when I learn to enjoy him more than I do the clarity in the decisions to make. His timing. His movements. His voice. The music becomes louder and the voices of people pleasing fade away. The false sense that I am in control fades away. There is a trust and a letting loose in the uncertainty and my "not knowing what I am doing”. He knows what He is doing. He is patient with me. And the steps I am learning turn into a dance, and it becomes fun.