Dance your dance

If you had to choose one genre of tv to watch for the rest of your life, what would you pick?  I would pick reality dance shows. I adore watching people live out exactly what God created them to do, and dancing illuminates that so clearly. I also love watching people overcome the struggle of learning to dance because they are driven and have an amazing coach. 

My favorite stories are about someone overcoming an obstacle that should have sidelined them. There have been dancers/contestants with different life circumstances to overcome. Some of these obstacles to dance are prosthetic legs, death of a loved one, cancer, hearing impairment, and many more.  This past week, I watched a blind skier (yes, a downhill skier) who took the stage as a dancer. Her name is Danelle Umstead, and I was in awe and so inspired.  I sat and bawled through her story and through her entire dance. She danced that dance so beautifully, and trusted her partner so fully. I have not stopped thinking about this dance since I watched it the other night. 

As I processed, I thought of Danelle’s mom when she first got her diagnosis. I can’t imagine all of the thoughts and worries that went through her head. If it were my daughter, my thoughts would have been taken over by worries. I would wonder if she was ever going to live a “normal” life, if she was going to ever live on her own, if she was ever going to dance, if she was ever going to understand the height of a mountain (let alone ski one), and so many more.  I am not Danelle’s mother, but I have my own kids with their own diverse needs. Watching Danelle dance last night reminded me that my kids needs and diverse-abilities are their springboards to what God is going to do in and through them. 

Having 6 kids means we have a lot of needs here.  Some are big and some are small.  Some of these needs make me lose sleep, and some of those needs are easy fixes. I think watching Danelle reminded me of the bigger story.  Our Big God is so worthy of trust. He holds our hands and leads us through this dance of life.  We can trust Him to lead us through these steps. We can study Him with our unique abilities and trust that He’s using each one to write out our beautiful dance. I want to remember for myself, and encourage you, that we can learn to dance with our imperfections.  What is that obstacle in your life, or your child’s life that is causing all of the worry and loss of sleep.  How can you trust that to Jesus? Picture yourself (and your child) dancing that beautiful dance through this tragedy/obstacle/hurt/lie/addiction/pain/loss to get to the other side.  Some of our biggest obstacles are choreographing the most beautiful and impactful parts of our stories.

Refocus your eyes with me, friends. Lift them up and see the One leading you on this dance.  The beauty isn’t in the obstacle, but our in wonderful Savior. He will make this dance beautiful...we just need to trust Him. 

Perfection...the pressure is off

Perfection is sneaky. Sometimes it disguises itself as ambition, structure, checklists, anxiety, good intentions, work ethic, and so much more.  The world we live in is driven by perfection, but sadly, it isn’t attainable.  Perfection becomes our unintentional goal. We try living under this huge burden that we were never meant to carry. 

Several years ago I came to the realization that I had an unrealistic expectation of perfection on myself, and for everything in my life. When something wouldn’t meet this expectation then I would fall apart.  I held myself to a standard that didn’t even let God in, because (obviously) I was doing it for Him.  Not very realistic, right? My kids did everything in their power to remind me that there is no such thing as perfection in parenting, or life. God was using these little ones to help me to depend on Him. Through the unrealistic expectation of perfection, I kept looking at my inadequacy and claiming myself a failure. My life didn’t look like a Pinterest board, and my heart and emotional state looked even worse. I put so much pressure on myself to keep the perfect schedule, to be the perfect wife, to dress my kids perfectly, to keep the house perfectly clean, and to make sure my kids behaved perfectly. I thought that if I did all the right things, then my kids would turn out to be perfect.  I didn’t overtly say these beliefs, but I operated out of them.  It wasn’t until I truly looked at my heart and my motivation that I realized what I was actually doing. I was making myself crazy!

I find myself thinking about how many of us go through hard things and just want it to be perfect, taken care of, fixed, or over. It doesn’t matter how hard we try to hold it together: life just isn’t perfect. When my biggest fears became my realities and we went through seasons that were really hard, I found a faith in Jesus that only could have been born in the depths. Desperately hanging on to this faith got me through when I didn’t even want to get out of bed.  Looking for the good, the sweet things, the places of joy is what refocused me, not perfection.  

Our imperfections don’t make us “less than,” they actually make us depend more on Jesus. I want to grow in those moments that are trying to shape me. I don’t want to be like a toddler that is kicking and screaming as my Abba Father is walking me (through the yuck) to something so much better? 

Anyone else want to join me in taking the burden of perfection off of our shoulders?

Matthew 11:28-30 “Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.” msg

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