Sometimes we accept defeat too soon.
There needs to be a push back.
But sometimes, we just feel too nice. We feel that we would step on toes, but instead, we forget we may be liberating someone, something, and a cause.
And sometimes we just feel choked out. We feel as though we just can’t breathe.
It’s all become too much.
These are the stories around us, and these are the stories of us.
I’ve watched the wave of the grand Overwhelm drench over the faces of the meek and the mild. Of the faces of those that I love.
And I begin to rise up.
A fierceness in me begins to grab hold and I demand truth, I demand justice, I demand the better ending of the story.
You are not shallow. You were made for the deep.
Take off your masks and dance with me.
Someone leads, and someone must follow. Or there’s no dance.
Rather there’s no common purpose found on the dance floor.
With that type of unity must come a surrender and a press.
A seeming paradox.
There’s a direction as to where we are moving and cascading across a dance floor.
It’s not longer solely about where I want to go, but where he leads and in turn, where we are able to go together.
There’s a surrender and a press.
I have to be present in my own body. I have to hold the agency of my own body up. I have to respond as an individual to the leading. He cannot do that for me.
So in many ways, I am called to rise up in the midst of this submission.
Another paradox.
Great force is not needed for me to feel that my dance partner wants to subtly turn right instead of left.
And true, I don’t always catch the small gestures. But now, after a great deal of practice, I usually do. It also helps to dance with the same partner over and over again. A beautiful short hand emerges and it all becomes quite dreamy and magical.
Most of you know, I love dancing, in all of its forms. I’ve danced freely since I was about 4 years old. And now, in my thirties I’ve migrated to the form of dance I was most afraid of doing growing up: partner dancing.
I just didn’t understand it.
Like how do two people go in the same direction simultaneously without talking about it first? I mean, how??
I knew it looked magical. But like most, didn’t quite understand how the mechanics could turn into something transcendent.
And yet, it does.
The press and the surrender.
And a little-favorite-something I like to call muscle memory.
And you know what--- that’s exactly how I want my spirit to be.
To easily recall a memory of home, of God, that fills my senses with the truth of love, justice, and mercy, unmuddied by the culture of our day.
That my soul would choose love over fear in every circumstance.
That I would rise to fight for the weak and brokenhearted.
And that I would be true salt and light during my time here on this earth.
In spite of our circumstances and the bleakness of our current world,
It’s always been time for us to choose faith, to choose joy, to choose hope, and to choose love.
You and I are not defeated.
Nor shall we ever be, as long as we are on the side of Christ.
Not merely my romantic words to you, but His words of promise to us.
So press on my dear friends, for the song has not ended and the dance is surely not over just yet.
Wisdom’s Knocking:
“I have told you all this so that you may have peace in me.
Here on earth you will have many trials and sorrows.
But take heart, because I have overcome the world.”
- John 16:3