Dancing

A couple of years ago,  I started tap dancing. I know, I know it sounds girlie but, it's always something I've wanted to do. And... I really enjoy it! I thought when I began a course that I would shuffle around the floor a little, do some little kicks (that's an Elaine move for you Seinfeld lovers, like me) and learn a bit. I had no idea that we would be choreographing whole pieces for an upcoming show! We begin each class by warming up our ankles and our feet. We do these repetitive taps where you focus primarily on just lifting your foot, at the ankle and brushing the ball of your foot across the floor to create the tap sound. After that we move on to other, more intricate steps until, by class end, we are actually dancing. There are some folks in this class who are just so good. I mean they just shuffle their way across the studio floor like they were born to do this. I, on the other hand, was not born to do this. "How will I keep up?" I think to myself? So I signed up for an additional, more basic level of tap to learn more. And this class just so happens to only be offered right after my first class. Great... 3 hours of tap. I leave class, my feet aching from the tight tap shoes and my knees arthritic from the constant weight shift from one leg to the other. But somehow through the aches of my out of shape body, it seems worth it.

As I was reading this passage below this morning, I was reminded of my struggle in this tap class. My struggle to keep up. My struggle to find the other side of aches and pains. This exerpt comes from Donald Miller's Through Painted Deserts:

"I was raised to believe the quality of a man's life would greatly increase, not with the gain of status or success, not by his heart's knowing romance or by prosperity in industry or acedemia, but by his nearness to God. It confuses me that Christian living is not simpler. The gospel, the very good news, is simple, but this is the gate, the trailhead. Ironing out faithless creases is toilsome labor. God bestowes three blessings on man: to feed him like birds, dress him like flowers, and befriend him as a confidant. Too many take the first two and neglect the last. Sooner or later you will figure out that life is constructed specifically and brilliantly to squeeze a man into association with the Owner of heaven. It is a struggle, with labor pains and thorny landscape, bloody hands and a sweaty brow, head in hands, moments of severe lonliness and questioning, moments of ache and desire. All this leads to God, I think. Perhaps this is what is on the other side of commercials, on the other side of the curtain behind which the Wizard of Oz is pulling his levers. Matter and thought are a canvas on which God paints, a painting with tragedy and delivery, with sin and redemption. Life is a dance toward God, I begin to think. And the dance is not so graceful as we might want. While we glide and swing our practiced sway, God crowds our feet, bumps our toes and scuffs our shoes. So we learn to dance with the One who made us. And it is a difficult dance to learn, because its steps are foreign."

Pondering this, I think of myself and this dance class and this dance of life the author speaks of. I think of how I wish I had taken a beginner tap course sooner so that I may be more up to par with the others in my class. I think of how dumb I feel in my remedial class, with me, a near 30 year old man and five 9 year old girls. And I think is this worth it?

I relate my tap class story to life. I am stumbling around, sometimes in darkness, and tripping and falling and getting back up. Am I missing something? Should I have prayed harder? Should I strive more to be like Johnny or Susie so that my story of life may turn out a certain way? I read further and Donald Miller writes: "There is nothing I am missing. I have everything I was supposed to have to experience the magnitude of this story, to dance with God." And so, I extend my hand to the father, asking him to lead me in this dance that He choreogrphed, this story He wrote for me, knowing that scuffed shoes, tired kness and all, I am here to dance in him.