…and A Curl Begins To Twirl (My Personal Testimony pt.2)

If you haven't already, please read Part One of this discussion, "When A Dancer Stops Dancing...," before continuing this post. It will offer much insight into the direction and discoveries of this discussion.

Let's jump back in...

A severed-to-beautiful life looks like so,

1. You recognize that you had assigned a voice to God and now you are able to free Him from the box you created long ago.

2. You discover a truly radical life in Jesus and have a miraculous encounter that reveals the many things that lay dormant inside of you.

3. You find that you were approaching your desires incorrectly and forcing a round peg into a square hole.

4. You have the opportunity to repurpose your life, which includes a healthier relationship to your work.

5. You learn that you do not have to endure such painful spiritual surgery ever again if you practice regular visits with your Life Practitioner.

***I will point back to these answers, by number (ex. #3), throughout the post.

After acknowledging my disdain and confusion with God, I allowed myself to be upset. For eight straight months I didn't force myself to be happy with painted-on faith. I allowed my bitterness to stay; I realized this was its time (Ecclesiates 3:1-8). The biggest takeaway of this time was that in order to truly heal my emotions and how I lived with them, I needed to let them be in the room with me. They must stay in order to settle down and be corrected. I couldn't attempt to prematurely get up and pick up the pieces of my life, that would be equivalent to me trying to stitch myself back together again - which would result in an even longer recovery time.

In settling in with my bitterness, fear, and confusion, it became clear that I had not been believing in God healthily. I had what I call "The Obedient Daughter Syndrome." I was in continual distress trying to live my life to the standards I assumed God had for me and the voice I had assigned to Him (#1):

A) Striving for complete perfection

B) Being told once and acting with no questions or lingering doubt (what we learn early in childhood - do not have your parents repeat themselves)

C) Being numbingly grateful for everything to the point of never stopping to acknowledge my true emotional state

D) Not questioning my life's direction, but taking God's superiority to mean "no talking in class"

E) Believing that pain was a natural part of EVERY chapter of my journey

I see now how these counteract with the answers to a beautiful life, and they take a lot of work to separate from your psyche. This is major surgery! If you go through a severing in your life, you have just gone under the knife on both head and heart, and must relearn how to think, talk, behave, and believe. As bitterness softened into skepticism - and I moved away from these Obedient Daughter thinkings - I found myself warming up to reading the Bible again. I had stepped away from graduate school and found a safe "recovery room," with family. I am blessed to have people in my life who are a true village and army. I did not do any work to prove myself around them; I simply allowed myself to be...fearful, frustrated, relieved, inquisitive, and open. I went from "there is no God" to "I simply don't understand You at all." However, it was myself that I did not understand. Life isn't about serving God to make Him happy, it is about staying next to Him to make me holy. I learned that giving my life to God meant our desires merged and I had a foundation in my free will (#1). I would never again fall victim to misery or lostness - hardship and difficulties, yes but only for my faith's sake.

We should not be miserable for the sake of being obedient. We do not need to ignore all that God has gifted us with in order to live out a calling. In fact, all the many resources I had let sit dormant inside of me for fear that they would be an act of disobedience began to show up beautifully (#2). I rested in the belief that there was a God, a God that wanted more for me than He did from me, and I slowly became stronger.

Curl Check:

If we believe that God always wants something from us, we are in essence believing that we possess/own something to be given away. Not true! That totally negates the fact that everything under the sun belongs to God and He gifts them to us to utilize. I own nothing, but during that time in my life I believed that I owned my dance career, therefore, how good or bad it turned out was all on me (#3). That is what King Solomon discovered to be "vanity and grasping for the wind" (Ecclesiates 1:14) - it's an empty act. I did not attempt to use God's gifts as resources to better my life's calling, I actually thought His gifts were my life's calling and consequently I was trying to take my crooked theology and make life straight (#3).

Curlfriends, you did not buy yourself. When we say "these are my gifts," we have gotten them from somewhere, right? That "somewhere" is God. What He wants for us is an abundant life. Think of yourself as a warehouse stock area, there are thousands of boxes of different items there. You do not own these items, but have partnered up with the Owner to make better usage of them and share them with the world...to make the Owner's business more profitable. We are that stock area. God wants us to be a warehouse of His resources (#4).

So, as my skepticism morphed into curiosity and a desire for better, Jesus showed me what all He had stored away in me. I went from that child who storms away on the playground, bitter and angry because their game wasn't chosen, to relinquishing my upset feelings and realizing that my game choice wasn't the best one. So I asked God, "Okay, what do You have in mind for us?" At that questioning, my warehouse door swung open (#4). I began to get feeling in my hands and feet again. I wasn't yet dancing, but I was writing. I was rebirthing childhood passions. I was hula hooping. I was establishing boundaries. I used the word "no." I was expanding my voice and reintroducing myself to the world and the people around me. BIG ONE: I made choices and did not sacrifice my soul for what looked right or would be nice. I no longer forced a round peg into a square hole, but allowed my desires to be indicators of where I could go and how fearless I could be in life. There is plenty of room in your warehouse for all that God has gifted you (#4).

Dance was the very last thing I asked God about during my recovery. I went the entire eight-month period with no impulse to move at all, but it was my most continual prayer: "God, I believe You haven't totally removed it for my life. If it has a place, You'll restore it and set my heart on doing it. I pray You give me Your answer on how You want me to use that gift. I believe it has some purpose." In the meantime, I got to work on all the other things of my life, such joy was pouring out of me. I spent uninterrupted hours and hours with God and He showed me His face. There's no cheatsheet here. You have to be disciplined. Once my heart was ready to commit to believing in this God again, and learning Him correctly, not as a boss but as a Leader, I had to do the work, the healthy work to stay next to Him. When I showed up faithfully to every task, and I lessened my quiet doubt but instead verbally challenged life, I believe it showed I had been healed in my heart and head. He could begin to reveal one of the many ways that dance fit into my life again. It wasn't the center focus, it was a puzzle piece.

Curl check:

Painful, unnecessary surgeries or self-inflicted wounds do not have to be a part of your life (#5). If we learn to accept and practice healthy challenging of life's direction, God will provide more information 1) for our clarity and 2) for our confidence. Nothing you do and no one you know should be the center of your life. In order to twirl freely in God's great grace, He needs to be the only one at your core. Regular visits with Him can look like searching prayers (I'll talk more about that in a later post), trying new things, consulting and conversing with your army, checking your emotions daily, stopping and pondering when you no longer understand why you are pressing so hard for something to happen (#5).

Dancing can sometimes be too calculated, meticulously choreographed, and desiring to be applauded. Twirling, however, knows no failure and it wants for no audience. Twirling is free from judgement and expectation.

I twirl. I pray you twirl.

Psalm 30:1-3;6-12

I will extol You, O Lord,

for You have lifted me up,

and have not let my foes rejoice over me.

O Lord, my God, I cried out to You

and You healed me.

O Lord, You brought my soul up from the grave;

You have kept me alive,

that I should not go down to the pit.

Now in my prosperity I said,

"I shall never be moved."

Lord, by Your favor you have made my mountain stand strong;

You hid Your face, and I was troubled.

I cried out to You, O Lord;

and to the Lord I made supplication:

What profit is there in my blood, when I go down to the pit?

Will the dust praise You?

Will it declare Your truth?

Hear, O Lord, and have mercy on me;

Lord, be my helper!

You have turned for me my mourning into dancing;

You have put off my sackcloth and clothed me with gladness,

To the end that my glory may sing praise to You

and not be silent.

O Lord my God, I will give thanks to You forever.

Smile, Shine, and Love, Curlfriends!

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I love you, Curls!