Blog : Give Me Grace

For months I planned and prayed about what I’d share at Jumping Tandem. I wanted to talk to the attendees of my session about grace and movement and wrap it up in a story about finding a space for dance as part of worship. I wanted it to be profound and poignant and the words…although I kept jotting them down never found a home close enough to my heart. They were good, but I wasn’t surprised when God suggested something else. 

The night before I left NYC to fly to Denver for the first leg of my journey, I remembered something. In the warmth of a much appreciated shower I closed my eyes, leaned back, and let streams of water soak my head. Hair washing as a ritual is therapeutic. Beyond the obvious benefits of hydrotherapy, there’s the scrubbing out of a weeks worth of styling products. The meditative massage and release of things I put away without realizing it…frees me to remember. 

I remembered a pair of shoes. Black and white leather. Hard and stiff with soft cotton strings for laces. The kind of shoe that can’t be broken in. The kind of shoe that pinched and hurt. My feet didn’t like them. I had to wear them. But why? 

I was busy with last-minute packing, kissing my littles, and doubting my 5 day long leave from the trenches of motherhood. I needed space to ask. I needed space to remember more. I called my sister when I got to the airport. She’s the sibling who’d know – the sister who’d remember the details. 
She helped me pull together the pieces God helped me put away.

All I remembered was dreams of being a dancer – but the shoes were mine. 

The physical limitations I faced as a child, my perfect imperfection told a different story.

I wasn’t supposed to be a dancer. 

I was born with a hereditary deformity. The 4th toe on my right foot is severely displaced. I had to overcome in-toeing (pigeon toeing) and tibial torsion which probably began in the womb. I wore corrective shoes for two years.

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Before I had language for what I wanted to be the enemy had already stepped in to thwart gods plan.  
The enemy can attack your dream before you’ve given it a name. 

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Ballet classes were suggested to my mother as something that might help when I stopped wearing the shoes. We didn’t have the money for that. Somehow I heard and remembered the word. Ballet. I let it have its way in my head and sealed it as memory until I got to the only place my siblings and I were allowed to go unattended. The library. In the library I found and connected with the word God used when he called my name. 
I didn’t have the language for what I wanted to be. But God did. 

He gave me the word and I forgot the shoes. I taught myself the basic positions and much of a 1st year curriculum holding on to the bannister in the hallway of our 3rd floor walk up. 

God graced me with spiritual amnesia so that I would move forward. I didn’t remember the shoes when I purchased my first pair of ballet slippers. I didn’t remember the shoes when I walked into The Dance Theater of Harlem to audition for a pre-professional training program.  I didn’t remember the shoes when I danced as a maiden alongside Stephanie Dabney in Firebird at Lincoln Center. 

I remembered it to share this weekend with a room full of women who may have been afraid to move. Women who, for any number of reasons may have felt they weren’t good enough or qualified.  Women who may have felt shame or insecurity based on age or body image or a destructive word spoken over their lives.

God uses physical limitations. Trekking through the landscape and history of a body is a physical pilgrimage.  And it’s what I’ve seen God use to get my attention. But it isn’t always physical. Your perfect imperfection can manifest in any number of ways. It might be the end of a relationship or a painful family history. It could be a devastating financial crisis. Imperfection is part of life. 

What we yield, God will use. But we have to move. Movement is important. We have to trust him to move beyond what we think we’re capable of. We have to trust him to use our imperfections. 

Yield to the imperfection of your brokenness. Your imperfect body. Your irregular past, your deformed finances. All the things that somehow went wrong – God will, God can … make right. 

“Christ has no body but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks with
Compassion on this world,
Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good,
Yours are the hands with which he blesses all the world.
Yours are the hands, yours are the feet,
Yours are the eyes, you are his body.”  – Teresa of Avila

A word and a yielded body are all God needs to change the world. 

Let your handmaiden find grace in your sight…#GiveMeGrace

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