What Is Being Revealed?

I firmly believe that every trial, struggle, and difficulty has lessons to teach us if we will only choose to find them. No matter the size of them in reality or the size they appear to be in our mind, there is a message in them.

We’ve been ballroom dancing students for 10 months now and we’ve learned a lot.  We can competently dance steps to about seven different dances – Waltz, Tango, Foxtrot, Cha Cha, Rumba, East Coast Swing and are learning steps to two more.  But competency isn’t what makes anyone want to watch someone else dance, nor is it the end goal of our lessons.  The goal and what makes dance grab your attention is the beauty and grace of the dancers.

In order for a dance to be beautiful and graceful, the dancers must create that picture on the floor.  Our instructors remind us that the gentleman creates the frame, but the lady creates the picture and this spring our studio began to offer “Guys Night” and “Ladies Night” classes to help us do just that.  I’ll be honest, I HATED most of those Ladies Night classes.  It was irrational how much I hated them, and after several of them, I literally drove home in tears. For several weeks, I couldn’t even explain why I hated them so much, but something made me keep going back.

At the same time, I had been studying Brent Curtis’s and John Eldredge’s book, The Sacred Romance, with a friend.  We were in chapter ten, when I found this:

“In the day-to-day pattern of things, our journey is shaped more often by dragons and nits–crises that shake us to the core and persistent troubles that threaten to nag us to death. Dragons and nits: Are they tragic events and random inconveniences, or are they part of the plot through which God redeems our heart in very personal ways?” (p. 150)

They go on to tell the story of Mary, a woman who lost her permanent teeth in an accident and had trouble replacing them for years with a permanent solution.

“Her teeth were a source of shameful arrows lodged deep.  A seemingly irrelevant nit that God refused to take away became an opportunity to face a fundamental question the heart of every woman asks: Am I lovely? Without the nit, the deeper issue of her heart would never have come up. Once it did, the real battle began.”

Why were these classes so difficult for me?  It was because the whole point of them was to help me create a picture of beauty and grace which ran counter to a core lie that I had believed for most of my life – I am not beautiful, I am not graceful, I am less than.

There are a few times that I could point to in the last 40 years where I felt beautiful. They were fleeting and usually tied to some sort of event, but day to day, more often than not, I believed that lie. Even now, looking at pictures of those events, that lie colors my recollection of those events. I nitpick every picture and find fault with myself in nearly every one.

“Both dragons and nits take us into the deep places of the soul, uncovering the sentences we have long lived by.” (Curtis and Eldredge, The Sacred Romance, p. 154)

My nit, Ladies Night, revealed the “sentence” that I had “long lived by”, and I began to want to believe something different.

I don’t remember where I found this verse, but it’s been helping me counter that lie every time it pops into my head.  Psalm 45:10-11 NIV says:

“Listen, daughter, and pay careful attention: Forget your people and your father’s house. Let the king be enthralled by your beauty; honor him, for he is your lord.”

God doesn’t see me the way I see myself.  He sees me as his creation, “fearfully and wonderfully made”.  He is enthralled by the beauty of whom he created me to be.  As I repeat this verse over and over, I am beginning to see myself through his eyes.  And this last Ladies Night?  Well, I danced to enthrall my King, because he finds me beautiful.

 

What long-held belief might your “dragons and nits” be attempting to reveal?

 

 

 

How is your connection?

Back in March, Brian and I attended a dance camp held by Fred Astaire Illinois and taught by legendary dancer Corky Ballas. We learned a lot, but most memorable for me was a lesson on connection. Corky had us stand facing each other with our palms touching and sway back and forth. He said that the most important thing in ballroom dancing is knowing where your partner’s feet are and the only way to do that and dance at the same time is through the hand-to-hand connection.

I knew that the connection was necessary, but I did not realize that through it, I can feel Brian’s feet moving and the transfer of his weight from foot to foot. The transfer of weight from foot to foot tells the other where the foot will be next.

That connection must be firm and strong, but not overpowering and dominating. It must be matched by each partner so that each can feel the movement of the other’s feet. If one partner overpowers the other, then there is no knowledge of where the weaker connected partner’s feet are.

If you are connected rightly, you move as a couple as though you are one.

Jesus said this of marriage in Matthew 19:5-6 5 And he said, “‘This explains why a man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife, and the two are united into one.’ 6 Since they are no longer two but one, let no one split apart what God has joined together.”

In ballroom dancing, the couple must move together as one. In marriage, the couple must become one.

Becoming one requires a deep, strong and intimate connection with your marriage partner. As your marriage moves across the ballroom floor of life, you must move as one being.

If you have allowed the connection in your marriage to falter, why not spend some time together this weekend, just the two of you?

#ballroommarriage
#stayconnected
#whereareyourpartnersfeet
#followmylead
#leadyourwifewell
#ballroom
#marriage
#dancesport

Waltz, Tango, Foxtrot

Waltz, Tango, and Foxtrot are all dances that travel widely across the dance floor.

As the dance travels, that frame I referenced earlier  (#BallroomMarriage – The Frame Matters) truly matters. With many other couples on the floor, the man must be able to communicate to the woman that obstacles are coming and that we need to maneuver around them. If the man’s lead or the woman’s reading of that lead falters, the beauty of the dance will fail. A collision can occur, a toe or toes gets stepped on, or the dance stops altogether.

In the frame, the couple does not look at each other because of this need to navigate the floor and avoid other couples. Each looks to the left and by doing so, half of the floor can be seen. The man sees what lies ahead and the woman sees who is coming up behind. Then through unspoken communication in the frame, adjustments are made and the dance continues unhindered.

In a way, the couple has each other’s backs.

How is your frame with your dance partner these days? Do you have each other’s backs? Are you looking out for obstacles in the path of your dance? Is something coming up quickly behind you?

Spend sometime in the “frame of your dance” with your partner this weekend!