I Got Some New Shoes On

JAZZ SHOES!

I've had the same new year's resolution for 5 years. So the 6th January in a row that I've put "TAKE A DANCE CLASS" down in my journal of resolutions, I immediately went and signed up for a 6 week interterm course: M-TH 2 hours a day!

Taking dance class has been a real workout. Two hours of S T R E T C H I N G me... and fun. Spend more than an hour just doing stretching! It's a real confidence builder. I'm walking taller. Dance is great for your self confidence and poise. My mom was always telling me to stand up straight, but all she needed to do was put me in some dance classes (Back then however, nice Christian girls didn't take dance classes).

I would have made a great dancer. You know why? According to what I can see reflected in the mirror, my body bends better/further than most of my teenaged classmates! At nearly 46!

No, I'm going to rephrase that: I'm gonna BE a great dancer! :-)

It's fun to be an encourager to the slower ones. There's even 8 guys in the class. I was saying to them yesterday how great it was that they were in the class, and that I'd told my boys about them.

One guy says, "So, guys aren't supposed to be in dance class?"

"Oh no!" I remonstrated, as the women around me giggled, "Guys are definitely supposed to be in dance classes, it's just that most of them don't KNOW THAT!"

I don't know that I'll take more classes, but my longing to do this for so many years is more than just for the fun of it. Taking a REAL dance class is a kind of symbolic act of healing and closure for me as much as anything.

That the PASADENA CITY COLLEGE baseball team does their batting practice into nets right outside the dance room door makes this class kind of especially healing. All the while I'm getting emotional closure on my childhood jealousy and inferiority to what I believed in my childhood was a preferred-and-easier-to-raise sporty-baseball-brother, I hear the constant thwack of the bats underscoring the music we're using.

Finally I'm in a place where I can celebrate that they're doing what they love, and I'm doing mine, instead of the "THWACK!" giving me a subconscious bitterness that I am wrong, or bad for not liking sports, it instead makes me happy that it is part of my dance class experience.

I feel so blessed to have this year for doing things like this. It's been such a gift to be able to take courses and fill in the gaps of my education. And that I'm doing it all at the Junior College rates so I can go to school without having to take out any loans, or make excuses that it's too expensive, or feel the need to justify it to people who might think my interests are frivolous.

Last night I had dinner with Christie Gill. A dear sister. We've worked on many a production in the past. Writing, singing, directing, acting...It was a great time to catch up with her. At one point I mentioned that I'd recently realized that all those years being a ministry wife in a church, I had an underlying anger toward God and the people I needed to prove my worth to, and that justifying myself - and my artistic endeavors - was part of my motivation for being a perfectionist. And she corrected me: "You've been angry because you feel you had to justify who you are." In the church, people who are good with numbers, or teaching, or care giving or hospitality don't have to justify their giftings. Artists contributions are not seen as essential to the ministry of a church. What we give is the extra, and is often seen as unnecessary by the typically non-artistic ones in charge.

That's part of my calling. To help others like me know how valuable they are - created by God to be just the way they are, and how necessary they are to the church, even if others around them don't get it. To empower them to, under the discipline and love of the Lord, live out of the fullness of who they are no matter what others might say.