Because Christ Says I Can
You know God is faithful when you spend two and a half hours learning to dance and still wake up the next morning.
It wasn't until long after I posted these words, decorated with hashtags, that I realized how true they were. I posted them, partly in jest, so others could share in my melodramatic triumph. But as I reflected on them later, a little "whoosh" of awe ran through me, because Monday night I had stood looking up at Goliath's face--and today I found he was only a phantom.
The Father of Lies likes to parade such ghosts in my path. I find them in the mirror, sneering in my own voice, "You're ugly," and "No one likes you." They whisper to me as I interact with people: "Are you really gonna let her do that? You have a right to be angry at him!" They obstruct my very view of God, until, when I think I'm looking at Him, I see a creature that steals, kills, and destroys. But only if I consent. I have chosen to be a person easily lied to, and as I stood trembling before the Giant Monday night, he declared one lie long seared into my self-perception:
I. Can't. Dance.
The last time I had danced for an audience, I was four. It was my first and only ballet recital, given after a couple of months--if that long--of lessons. I have no recollection of the performance. Sometime between now and then, I obtained a control-freak personality that hindered my dancing more than a physical injury. I didn't know how to dance and stay in control. I figured I'd only receive glances of pity and masked giggles. To face that kind of judgement was to face one of my biggest fears, and so, whenever possible, I avoided dancing, and the "I won't" subtly transformed into "I can't."
It was only natural, then, that I made sure I was signing up for a play, not a musical, when I agreed to play an elf in a local theater company's Christmas production. I had worked with the company before, made dozens of friends, and was thrilled to be invited into one of their excellent Christmas shows--as long as I didn't have to learn choreography. Granted, I had auditioned for their summer musical, but a conflict had kept me from getting a role. No one had any proof that I could dance, and I wasn't about to commit to something I couldn't do.
Sometimes I think God laughs at me. I take pains to ensure I'm not leaving my comfort zone, and He says grandly, with His big, perfect plans for me, "A play is it? With no choreography? Think nothing of it, my dear! We will add it in anyway!" Then He hands to me on a silver platter one of the six roles performing the only dance number in the whole show. I'm tempted to role my eyes. Don't even try to tell me God doesn't have a sense of humor. You'd be wrong.
Not only does He have a sense of humor, but He knows me far better than I know myself. He knows exactly what I can and can't do; in fact, He said it:
"You can do ALL THINGS through Christ who strengthens you!" (Philippians 4:13, paraphrased)
There went all my excuses, blown away in the shock wave of God's truth. So I stood on a stage Monday, sick to my stomach with icy dread...and just a little excited. God took care of all the details. He supplied a wonderful choreographer, who reminded me of every godly woman who had ever taken me under her wing. She set me instantly at ease. The five other girls-turned-elves were also immensely helpful. Where I had expected judgement and pity, there was none. There was no impatiently waiting for me to catch up, no rolling of the eyes as if to say, "Who invited this one?" On the contrary, I suspiciously enjoyed the feeling that, truly and sincerely, no one was judging me. I was a little inexperienced, perhaps, and unaccustomed, and shy. But those girls and that choreographer saw me as just as capable as any other--no less valuable, no less worthy.
Such miracles continued. Later in the week, as I drifted off to sleep, I specifically prayed over my feet and my brain, that God would help them learn to dance. I think that was a prompting of the Holy Spirit, because the next morning I awoke buzzing with energy, with images of dance moves in my head. When I rose from my bed, I could do them better than ever before.
All that day I basked in a new kind of confidence, buoyed by the little secret God had let me in on: I can dance. I felt like a butterfly released from her chrysalis, still wrinkled and wet, but on her way to beauty--on her way to soar. In less than a week, God had turned Goliath's ghost into testimony. If God could make me dance, He could do the same for others, and more! I saw myself saying to future non-dancers, in all honesty, "Believe me, if He can make me a dancer, He can make you a dancer." A new world of possibility had opened up, a ripple effect of miracles--all because God, like one of elf-girls who commented on my post, said, "I knew you could do it!!" And He, in all His power over the Enemy, would never tell me lies.
It wasn't until long after I posted these words, decorated with hashtags, that I realized how true they were. I posted them, partly in jest, so others could share in my melodramatic triumph. But as I reflected on them later, a little "whoosh" of awe ran through me, because Monday night I had stood looking up at Goliath's face--and today I found he was only a phantom.
The Father of Lies likes to parade such ghosts in my path. I find them in the mirror, sneering in my own voice, "You're ugly," and "No one likes you." They whisper to me as I interact with people: "Are you really gonna let her do that? You have a right to be angry at him!" They obstruct my very view of God, until, when I think I'm looking at Him, I see a creature that steals, kills, and destroys. But only if I consent. I have chosen to be a person easily lied to, and as I stood trembling before the Giant Monday night, he declared one lie long seared into my self-perception:
I. Can't. Dance.
The last time I had danced for an audience, I was four. It was my first and only ballet recital, given after a couple of months--if that long--of lessons. I have no recollection of the performance. Sometime between now and then, I obtained a control-freak personality that hindered my dancing more than a physical injury. I didn't know how to dance and stay in control. I figured I'd only receive glances of pity and masked giggles. To face that kind of judgement was to face one of my biggest fears, and so, whenever possible, I avoided dancing, and the "I won't" subtly transformed into "I can't."
It was only natural, then, that I made sure I was signing up for a play, not a musical, when I agreed to play an elf in a local theater company's Christmas production. I had worked with the company before, made dozens of friends, and was thrilled to be invited into one of their excellent Christmas shows--as long as I didn't have to learn choreography. Granted, I had auditioned for their summer musical, but a conflict had kept me from getting a role. No one had any proof that I could dance, and I wasn't about to commit to something I couldn't do.
Sometimes I think God laughs at me. I take pains to ensure I'm not leaving my comfort zone, and He says grandly, with His big, perfect plans for me, "A play is it? With no choreography? Think nothing of it, my dear! We will add it in anyway!" Then He hands to me on a silver platter one of the six roles performing the only dance number in the whole show. I'm tempted to role my eyes. Don't even try to tell me God doesn't have a sense of humor. You'd be wrong.
Not only does He have a sense of humor, but He knows me far better than I know myself. He knows exactly what I can and can't do; in fact, He said it:
"You can do ALL THINGS through Christ who strengthens you!" (Philippians 4:13, paraphrased)
There went all my excuses, blown away in the shock wave of God's truth. So I stood on a stage Monday, sick to my stomach with icy dread...and just a little excited. God took care of all the details. He supplied a wonderful choreographer, who reminded me of every godly woman who had ever taken me under her wing. She set me instantly at ease. The five other girls-turned-elves were also immensely helpful. Where I had expected judgement and pity, there was none. There was no impatiently waiting for me to catch up, no rolling of the eyes as if to say, "Who invited this one?" On the contrary, I suspiciously enjoyed the feeling that, truly and sincerely, no one was judging me. I was a little inexperienced, perhaps, and unaccustomed, and shy. But those girls and that choreographer saw me as just as capable as any other--no less valuable, no less worthy.
Such miracles continued. Later in the week, as I drifted off to sleep, I specifically prayed over my feet and my brain, that God would help them learn to dance. I think that was a prompting of the Holy Spirit, because the next morning I awoke buzzing with energy, with images of dance moves in my head. When I rose from my bed, I could do them better than ever before.
All that day I basked in a new kind of confidence, buoyed by the little secret God had let me in on: I can dance. I felt like a butterfly released from her chrysalis, still wrinkled and wet, but on her way to beauty--on her way to soar. In less than a week, God had turned Goliath's ghost into testimony. If God could make me dance, He could do the same for others, and more! I saw myself saying to future non-dancers, in all honesty, "Believe me, if He can make me a dancer, He can make you a dancer." A new world of possibility had opened up, a ripple effect of miracles--all because God, like one of elf-girls who commented on my post, said, "I knew you could do it!!" And He, in all His power over the Enemy, would never tell me lies.
Epilogue
In the weeks before the play opened, the number of times we rehearsed that dance number with every single elf, including the understudy, came to a grand total of once. Yet somehow we still managed to perform it in front of a collective audience of over two-thousand. God still works miracles. The phrase "I can't" began to shrink from my vocabulary, along with the ghosts that had haunted me for so long. The struggle continues, but daily He is teaching me that I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. And that means, dear reader, that so can you.
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