So I had to opportunity to operate in my gift of dance last night. It was amazing and wonderful. It has been about 7 years since I danced publicly. I used to dance in church several times a week and then I participated in a dance ministry that traveled to different churches. We taught worship through movement and ministered in the dance. I enjoyed it tremendously. When I begin to sing and worship, my body wants to participate so badly. There is almost nothing I enjoy more than worshiping God will my whole being: body, soul and spirit. I long to dance before God as David did with no regard to looking foolish. I lay dance down about 10 years ago and have only performed a couple times since. Dancing last night brought back to me one of the greatest lessons God taught me about dance. It was a wrenching lesson that I will never forget. Not long after the lesson, I lay dance down.
As I stated I used to do quite a bit of dance ministry. When I first began to dance, I had never been formally trained as dancer. I had done gymnastics for a few years, but that is it. When I began to dance, it was truly a gift God has given me. I would begin to worship and then dance. I could feel God presence so strongly when I danced. I would just get lost in the worship. Then people began to tell me how much it touched them to see me worship and I realized that God was not only ministering to me while I dance, but He was ministering to others also. He would well up in my and begin to pour out and onto others. I was very young in the Lord and I have to say pride, vanity and self was a real struggle for me. What began as a worship that flowed organically out of me, became an object of pride and searching for more approval. I am not saying God did not use it in me and in others still, but it changed. The purity was not lost, but somewhat contaminated. I did try to fight the thoughts of pride and ego, but it was definitely a struggle.
I have to rewind a minute and add a side note. Even reaching the place where I could worship had been a struggle. I still have yet to tell the story of how I met the Lord (someday I promise, I will. would make this post way too long). I can say I walked into a church 7 months pregnant, wearing a very short mini dress, Doc Martins, a leather jacket and a pink mo hawk. I prayed and asked Jesus into my heart that night. Everyone was pretty surprised; my mom was shocked. She was even more surprised that I kept coming. We had church on Fridays and Sundays; I was at every service, and to add more emphasis, I worked nights at Water burger so I showed up on Sunday morning after having worked all night long. Needless, to say mom was shocked. I can tell my from my side, I loved going to church. I could not wait to go every week. I was truly hungry to know more about this Jesus who loved me enough to die for me. From every body else's perspective, they couldn't understand why I kept showing up b/c I would come in and stand with my arms crossed. The praise and worship at this church was pretty wild. We would sing for a long time; there would be fast songs and then slow songs. For those who haven't been to a charismatic or "Spirit filled" church, things can get pretty wild. There were tambourines, flags, dancers, people laughing, running, and all kinds of wild things. I really loved it. I can remember the first night I attended what struck me was that everyone seemed genuinely happy. I had never in all my days known happy so I wanted some of what I saw in them. It was wild, but everyone just seemed like they were so happy worshiping God. As I watched, the first night, I can remember tears started streaming down my face. I never ever cried. People who knew me knew me as really hard. My mom hadn't seen my cry in many years. I remember being so mortified and annoyed that these tears kept coming out of my eyes. I kept wiping them away hoping that no one saw them. As I kept coming back, I can remember standing there during worship and seeing everyone worship. I wanted to worship, but I could only stand with my arms crossed. It's like something was sitting on my shoulder telling me, "You can't sing, if you start singing now, everyone will wonder why you are singing now, when you didn't sing before." Now I can look back and see how ridiculous that was to believe that lie, but it had power over me non-the-less. Then one day there was a something said, I can't remember if it was sermon or what, but it spoke to me. It was something about just taking a small step and God meeting us at that small step. The only thing I could do was tap my finger. I began to tap my finger on the chair in front of me to the music. It was such a small step, but boy did God meet me there. The tap became singing, then clapping; it wasn't long before I was dancing with all my might before him. I loved praising him and dancing with my whole being. It is so interesting to think about the girl who couldn't even bring herself to sing would become a dancer for Jesus.
So back to the lesson. From the finger tapping to dancing in a ministry all over the Metroplex, what a journey. So one day I was with my troupe visiting a church to minister when I ran into a friend. I had met him a few years before; his life had been very hard. I met him in the first church I attended. Prior to meeting him, He had attempted suicide. He did not die, but managed to blow open the side of his face. He was such a sweet guy who had had an extremely hard life. When I ran into him at the church we were ministering at, he had just been released out of jail. He was so excited to see me and asked me to call him so we could hang out. He reiterated to me several times that he was trying to get on track and needed some good friends. I said I would call him, hugged him and went back to what we were there to do. I was really busy at that point in my life doing "ministry". Being in the ministry made me feel so important and gave me an "identity". I did not make time to go see him b/c I was busy doing things that I thought were more important. I few weeks later, while hanging out drinking with friends he found b/c the "good" friends did not really have time for him, he fell out of a moving vehicle. He lived on life support for a short while, but he never came back from the accident. I remember so clearly realizing that my worship meant nothing when I could not even take a few minutes to love on someone God put into my path to love. He was so desperately looking for someone to care enough about him as a friend that they would take little time to be his friend and love him. I never forgot that lesson. My dance was so ugly before God with a heart that couldn't take time to love someone in need. I don't feel guilty now; I don't feel condemnation. He probably would have made the same choices. I just realized that no matter what I give God, without love it means nothing.
Dancing last night was such a wonderful experience. I love to dance; my heart has changed a lot in the last ten years. My hearts capacity to love has increased more than I can say. God has caused me to desire for love to motivate everything I do. I don't always operate that way, but every day I walk with Him I get closer. I am less concerned with pleasing man or even what they think of my dancing. God has brought my pride down several notches. I still have more than I should, but making daily progress. Even as I prepared to dance and prayed that God would show up and do what He would like, I dealt with some new areas relating to dance. Not being a trained dancer, sometimes I doubt my ability and worry that what I choreograph doesn't look good. When praying and dealing with that doubt, I came to the conclusion, that it is not about me at all. It doesn't really matter what I do; its about His Spirit and anointing me. I could stand in stork position while music plays and He could minister to people b/c it is not about me; it is about him. I didn't really worry about how it looked or what people thought. I just worshiped God and let God handle how it impacts the people watching. It was great. I hope that God opens more doors up for me to dance. I knew He told me it was time to pick it up again. We will see where things go from here.
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