dancing solo

This week I'm at a large homeschool conference and yesterday evening I was sitting in the grass talking with a dear friend that I have not seen in quite a while. It's a rare friend indeed that you can talk with and feel like not a day has passed. We've kept up here and there through the marvels of Facebook and instant messaging, but that is simply not the same as seeing the unsaid things in her face and picking up on all of the non-verbal stuff! She truly warms my heart and makes me smile. :-)

This conference has been really rough because I have not felt like I belonged all week.  My family has gone to every conference since 2003, and so this makes number 21. I enjoy being out there with all of the little guys who participate in the program my family hosts, but it's a lot of work. Each year we get to work with some amazing staff, and at this conference two amazing young ladies who work in our office back in Texas came along. But it's hard when you come from college life and are suddenly and totally immersed in an atmosphere of large homeschooling families. I realize that my friends have not changed that much and I see how much a year away from home has grown and stretched me; and that's hard.

I start summer school in a week, and physics 1 and 2 will consume my life.  It's back to the grindstone of homework and tests and lab reports and late-night studying... but at least that schedule is familiar. School is consistent and I know exactly what is expected of me. See, my friends are posting pictures on Facebook of their study-abroad experiences, their family vacations to the Caribbean, and camp counsellor experiences, and I am home doing school so that I can take Anatomy & Physiology this fall and thus graduate on schedule. I ask myself where I fit--at home helping out with my family's ministry or back at college--and the answer is not easy because it's neither.

A few days before the group of us left to drive here to Nashville I went running on the golf course there at the ALERT campus. It's out in the back part of the campus and it's really quiet once all the golfers are done for the day. I took my music phone, turned the volume up till it drowned everything else out, and just ran the hills of the back 4 or 5 holes. And that's when I realized that it was OK to let down with God and tell Him just how much I already miss Chara. How much I miss dancing corporately and publicly for His glory . How much I miss those 12 other girls who were so likeminded. I would watch them even warm up or run through a dance in rehearsal and see their faces light up. At home very few, if anyone, understands what dance means to me. I'm realizing that I worship through dance. Yes, I worship through singing because I can't play more than the right hand of Yankee Doodle on the piano, but I have a hard time doing anything more than singing a bunch of nice words... Ballet was always something I did because I liked it and for once I felt like I wasn't completely gangly and clumsy. It was about performing for the audience's enjoyment. It was about finding my body's limits and making myself go farther, faster, higher, and "perfecter" until sometimes I ended up hurting yourself. It was all about me.

And then Chara changed everything. Not dancing for almost 4 years was extremely hard, but I think it really broke the cycle I had gotten myself into. I was so desperate to dance again, but scared that God would take it away again if I started making it all about me again, and I was unsure if I would even make it through auditions for Chara. Dancing with those girls and spending a year watching them make each rehearsal a personal time of worship, the end-of-the-semester all-worship nights where we worshiped God together through improv dance and singing really showed me that God gave me this gift for a purpose larger than I had even thought of!

I understand that some people are not comfortable with the idea of using dance as a worship tool, or with dance being a part of a church service. I understand and to some degree, I agree. However, most college students are interested in some form of dance, whether it's hip hop, swing, breakdancing, club, or a Texan favorite of two-step.  Dance is a huge medium at Texas A&M; each time we performed for a public event or the plaza of the student center hundreds or even thousands of students stopped by. The speakers playing those contemporary Christian songs were audible from a good distance away and attracted students to see what was up. And I know for a fact that God used Chara's dances to tug strongly on several students' hearts.

Anyway, so here I am running on the golf course back home and I almost burst into tears. Because I will not be going back to Chara next semester. And so it seems like that's over. But it feels like a carrot being dangled in front of me. See, when you've been on the mountaintop, anything less seems so low. When you've experienced such amazingness, everything else seems petty. How am I supposed to fill that hole of using dance to worship God with a random 1-credit hour beginning ballet PE class this coming fall? I can't. But I have to keep worshiping God through dance.

And that's when God was like, Well, what's preventing you from dancing solo? Uh, nothing I guess. Solo is different. Improv is different. Dancing wherever I can be alone is different. Gold course hole number 13 curves around in the forest by my house, and I may spend some time out there in nature worshipping... I guess God used Chara to teach me that I can worship through dance. And now He may be using this time without Chara to teach me that it's OK to go solo. Take that invisible spotlight and learn to dance for an audience of One.