“Get off the floor, get out of your head, and create something beautiful with your life.” If I could sum up a series of motivational lines my mother has given me over the years, it may be that statement. And like most situations that I have grown to realize, she was unquestionably right. You’ll get nowhere in life if you ache over it all the time without moving forward.

I love people who enjoy their lives. I love watching them, dancing through the uncertainty of time, tasting the bitterness of life and not giving up, and breaking open the inhibitions of it right in front of us for all to see. It’s like those people who dance in fountains in the middle of town or play music behind an open instrument case with their eyes shut tightly, never knowing of your existence, just hoping you’re there taking it all in and finding God somewhere as the notes fall.

When I used to be a dancer, ballet became something sacred to me. It was a place I would go, whether it was after school, or between softball practices, or after night classes in college. It never mattered what happened that day, the highs and lows, the mundane moments, the fights and break ups, the insecurities, new friendships, tough assignments, or utter failures. When ballet class was in session or a performance/competition taking place, the atmosphere was a white mist, a cloudy net that captured all of those busy thoughts in the fog and held them at bay until the music stopped.

It was a place where I moved freely, with intention, with feeling, with ease, and with satisfaction. Every down beat cast a new shape on my heart for what was to come, and I anticipated the challenge of it all. I am in love with ballet. And like most things in life, there came a certain point where it was not possible for that love affair to continue. Working full-time, having children, new priorities and commitments, and, to be completely honest, the act of aging does not lend itself to such a demanding art when you cannot maintain your level of consistency day-to-day.

I still have never found anything to replace the way that ballet made me feel, but I have fallen in love with new areas of life in the process of searching. The point is to get out there and learn. Get to know yourself. Learn your limitations, coax your insecurity out into the light, and dance with it in a fountain. Everything you try may not be a success. The things you love may not work out, but the first attempt also may not be the final answer.

 

 “’Though the mountains be shaken and the hills be removed, yet my unfailing love for you will not be shaken nor my covenant of peace be removed,’ says the LORD, who has compassion on you.”

Isaiah 54:10

In my first week of attending college courses at a university, I was new to the English department and completely naïve to how I thought my college experience would be as a whole. One of my professors, one of the toughest in the department, made me cry the second day of class by pushing me to a point where I felt humiliated in front of everyone about all of the things I didn’t know but felt I should at that point.

My midterm assignment was centered around a subject that involved me denouncing a certain truth about the life of Jesus and the written narratives in comparison to Jesus that came with Indian captivity narratives and early Christian writing.

I couldn’t write that paper. Everything in my body ran wildly against it. So I didn’t. I wrote a different paper, one that identified the critical questions in the assignment but from an angle that didn’t question the foundations of Christian values. I knew I’d fail it, but I didn’t care. When he passed the midterm papers back out, he never gave me mine but asked me to see him in his office (which we all know is never a good sign).

He dropped the graded paper on the desk in front of me and sat back in his chair. At the top, circled in red ink, was an A+. I looked at him, stunned, and he said, “You’re only one of two students in the entire class who pulled an A out of this. And I thought you were so quiet in my class you were about to fail it. But now I realize that you’re just a quiet thinker, and that’s interesting to me because very few people surprise me.” He eventually became my favorite professor in the entire department because he saw capability in me, and he continued to push me to become a better writer.

 “And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”

 Philippians 4:7

Sometimes, you have to make the choice to stop living scared of whatever the outcome may be and just follow your instincts.  A few weeks ago, at church, the sermon was about how important environment can be and when it’s time to stop learning, how life, sometimes, “spews you back out, ready or not, and you have to survive the seasons and cultivate your own atmosphere.” I thought that was brilliant because we all live those moments where we have to stop looking at ourselves a certain way and shift the focus. Challenge what we are becoming and what we have the potential to become beyond anything we can even imagine.

 

“But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.  That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”

2 Corinthians 12:9-10

 

   

Also, as a new student in the English department, I had taken my first creative writing class, where everyone sat in a circle and critiqued each other’s work, and you had to remain silent while they tore your writing apart until the very end. Then you could speak and defend your soul that was poured out on those few lines of college-ruled paper. I was mortified when I first saw this and understood what was coming for me.

On the first day of class, the professor outlined what we would do throughout the semester, and as she spoke, I could feel my throat tightening and the formation of potential hives on my neck and chest. My breathing also increased, and getting out of that situation was all I could think about in the moment. So I gathered my things, stood up, and walked out the door to my advisor’s office to drop that class, feeling like a coward but not caring in that terrifying moment. I was too insecure of a writer for that class, at least that was what I told myself. “I’m here to learn, I’m still learning. I can’t do that.” It was a graduation requirement, so I would have to take it again, but it was not going to be that day. I had already made up my mind.

When I came back to take the class later, I was more seasoned in the English department, I had survived many other difficult courses, and mentally, I was ready. The truth was, I was ready to take that course 2 years prior, but I didn’t believe it about myself, so I couldn’t picture it. I struggled in my first year finding an identity that made sense, navigating challenges to the identity that I brought to college with me, aligning my belief system somewhere among people who didn’t empathize with it at all, and it’s easy to feel lost in a new space that feels challenging and empty.

 “Cast all your anxiety on Him because He cares for you.”

1 Peter 5:7

 

 

 

They told us to stop looking at ourselves as students, that we had made it this far, that we hadn’t given up through difficult courses, published material, and critiques that were gut-wrenching and much-needed.

They told us to start looking at ourselves as peers in the industry we’d fallen in love with, and to be confident in that realization.

I never forgot that because it changed my entire outlook about my academic career, my life, and my ambition.

Today, I’m still searching for new areas of life that I fall in love with and want to delve deeper into understanding, like music, embroidery, editing, cooking, business, Mexican culture, and writing. The point is to never stop falling in love with life. Even when you have a hard time, or like last month was terrible for me, from experiencing a dislocated rib, a broken toe, a sinus infection, and bronchitis all at the same time. Life happens. We can lay on the floor and cry about it, or we can find a way through it.

God never intended for us to suffer uncontrollably throughout life, despite the twists and turns, the heartaches, and utter blows to our existence. God is love, and He gave us life out of love with the capability and capacity to truly love other people. So that’s what I intend to do, and I’m loving myself in the process because that is equally important for anyone to compassionately understand and cultivate love for someone else.

Stop overthinking your life and just live it. Enjoy those moments with your kids, put your phone away and talk to your spouse, get into nature more and breathe in some fresh air. Listen to the sounds it makes, the life all around you, and embrace the world where you exist. If you don’t love things about your life, then change it. Show your children what it looks like to fall in love with life and to live it, learn from it, experience it, taste it, and pursue it purposefully.

Take hold of God as you do it, talk to Him, share those moments with Him, too, and love Him for everything He created out of absolute, unfailing beauty. The parts of humanity that hurt, the misgivings, the failings, the disappointments, the unexplainable—they exist, but stop living in those moments like they determine the life you have and the one you continue to live.

You’re phenomenal, and you have something unique and important, and when you see that in yourself, you can build an empire.

 

Let God change your life in the most beautiful ways because He has the most incredible ideas.

 

God bless,

 

M