Five Minute Friday: Dance

Most Fridays in a month I head over to Lisa-Jo Baker's blog to join in the Five Minute Friday fun. And though today's participation got extended to the wee hours of Saturday morning (and broke a few rules in so doing), I'm so glad I jumped in. So, for five (and twenty) minutes...Dance.

GO!

Some days FMF is exactly where I am supposed to be.

Today is one of them.

Just a handful of hours ago I found myself dancing with my favorite 2-year-old to the Kidz Only Music Choice channel on Comcast. It's one of our favorite past times and I will gladly take a majority of the credit for her love for dance. She's been watching me goof off and love life through dance for nearly two years. And who can resist, now that she's talking up a storm, when she says, "Tadie, I wanna dance wiz YOU!!" Everything stops, all of life, whatever it is we were doing before, and we dance. We run in circles, we do ballet, we wobble our knees and we just don't stop. We dance until we're sweaty and thirsty and drag ourselves to the kitchen for a drink.

Glorious. Truly.

I cannot fathom how it's fair that I get paid to spend my days this way, but I do praise Jesus for it.

Today though my thoughts were drifting into tomorrow's dance party, the wedding reception of a dear friend from high school. I so look forward to cutting loose with my mom, old church friends, and maybe if I'm lucky my dear-old-dad too. 

But I have to admit that, unlike any other reception anticipation, I'm feeling just the tiniest bit anxious.

Ok, that's a lie.

I'm way more anxious than I want to even admit to myself.

STOP.

But clearly I cannot stop here. So if you wanted only a Five Minute read, feel free to abort now as I am unsure where this ship will land. My feelings won't be hurt.

But whether alone or with company, I need to dig this out.

It's not my dance moves I'm worried about. They flow naturally, and often uncontrollably, and tend to leave people smiling, a win whether it's laughter or awe-inspired.

It's not that Stephen won't be here, per say. I danced the night away at a wedding last Saturday without him. In fact, this will be the 6th wedding I've flown solo since he deployed last year.

It's not the forecast of outrageous heat. A stifling high of 106 is reportedly up and coming for us tomorrow.

Nope. It's not any of these things. It all boils down to one word, one tiny word, one high school word I wish I knew nothing of.

The beautiful, Christ-loving, glory-giving bride-to-be was popular.

There, I said it. And believe me it looks even shallower now than it sounded in my head all afternoon.

But she was...and is, I suppose, in that crowd of cheerleaders, football players, well-dressed, super-"cool" kids who called me Smart Girl if they needed to call me anything at all.

{Now, as a disclaimer, they were not all this way. Some were delightful altogether and precious friends to me.)

Still, what was a fun and lighthearted dance party with my friend, JuBe, suddenly felt the weight of worldly insufficiency come crashing in in an instant. Not crippling, but still anxious. Not debilitating, but still present.

Ugh, insecurity! I should be over you by now.

But the facts I want to flaunt defensively against the onslaught of imagined inferiority have nothing to do with the issue, not at the root. Nothing I have accomplished solves the problem. Nothing I can show alleviates the shyness. Nothing that has changed in the last seven years gives me any sure footing on which to stand when Satan tempts me to despair. 

The issue is still comparison. And the answer is still that I am found in Christ.

Nothing else truly matters. Period. Paragraph.

I was then. I am now. Freedom.

Underneath my lingering people-pleasing, fear-of-man, self-loathing, underneath it all is truth. That everything about Katie died with Jesus, and I am raised in His new life, living His identity. At war with sin, oh yes! Sin is outraged by the turnover and fights against it constantly. But the truth remains.

I am found in Him

Complete in Him.

Validated in Him

Accepted in Him. 

Lacking nothing in Him.

Free in Him.

Full in Him.

Alive in Him.

Hopeful in Him. 

Loved in Him.

The joy of Truth is liberating and captivating all at once. My heart enthralled by the outrage of His love. My heart set free to live so fully.

The joy fuels the dancing. And all I want to do is dance this life in Jesus.