Not too long ago, I was going through a very
discouraging “four-month funk.” I was so
stressed and depressed about life. I
felt like I couldn’t do anything right, and yet I kept trying and trying to
accomplish something, anything. All day, I would
ruminate on all the things that were wrong, all the ways I was failing. And I would plead with God to show me what
more I needed to do to succeed. My
shoulders ached from being tense all the time.
My head hurt. And the tears were
always ready to burst forth.
And one day, as I stood in my kitchen
doing dishes, I asked God to help me. To
tell me one thing that He wanted me to do.
Whatever it was, I would do it. I
was failing, failing, failing … and I just wanted His leading in my life
because I couldn’t do anything on my own.
What else did He want me to try?
What did I need to give up? What
needed to be pruned from my life? What
did I need to do to make things better?
What more could I do?
Please,
God, just tell me!
And do you know what He said? The big advice that He gave me in such a
quiet whisper to my heart?
“Turn up the music and dance!”
Turn
up the music and dance! As soon as I heard it, I knew that this is
what I really needed to hear, what I really needed at that moment. I didn’t need to keep trying so hard to
accomplish something, to reach for something just beyond my grasp. I didn’t need to try to make things better,
to do more than what I was doing.
I just needed to relax, to breathe, to
celebrate the moment that He gave me as a gift.
And so I did. As the kids played outside, I turned up the
music in my kitchen and just danced. I
shook out all of the stress and the ache, and I let the music fill me with
delight and joy. For a short time, I let
go of my fears that I would fail and I grabbed onto the blessings of the moment
instead.
It filled me with joy to know that God
knew what I really needed, that He cared enough about me to remind me to slow
down and relax and enjoy the journey. To
breathe. To smell the roses. Pick a daisy.
Laugh with my kids. Talk a
walk.
Sometimes, I make it harder than it
needs to be. I overwhelm myself with the
idea that everything God asks us to do is going to be stressful and hard work
and sacrifice and dying to self.
But sometimes …
He just wants us to dance.
