Dance

            I love to watch my daughter dance.  Picture if you will a little 5 year old girl stretching out her arms, hands extended, fingers pointed with large movements twirling around the room. She is always dancing. Whether she has an audience or not she loves to dance and puts everything she has into her dances.   She is not concerned about making mistakes or looking silly, she just wants to express herself through her dancing. 

I love the simplicity she shows in those moments.  Her little voice saying “I can’t help it Mommy, I just have to dance.”  It just warms my heart.

  I think about how often I long for that kind of simplicity and then make a plan to achieve it that is beyond any semblance of simplicity.  To liken it to a dance, I have to watch the video/teacher, make sure that I have everything in the right place and positioned correctly.  I have to make sure that the music I am dancing to matches the dance I am doing.  I get so caught up in details that I forget to just enjoy the moment. 

Just like in dancing, there is some practice and preparation that has to be done sometimes in orderfor everything to come together.  To be honest, I don't really have much of a problem with that part of life.  I need to work on just "dancing because 'I just have to'"  So today, I am committing myself to just dance just for a little while.

Happy Birthday to Me!

Happy Birthday to Me!  I am now officially 39.  Oh how that number scares me.  I don’t know why, but it does.  I think I am finally hitting what I always thought of as the “old age”.  I know that is just not true, but old beliefs tend to hang around even when they are proven wrong.

            So here I am on my Birthday and I have started a list of 39 things I want to accomplish before turning 40.  I am not going to go into all of them, but I will say that it starts with actually getting on and writing in the blog that I set up a year or so ago.  I promised a good friend that I would start even though I have many concerns about doing so.  Mostly things like, “what if no one reads it?” “What if I write something stupid and reveal that I am not really all that smart?”  “What things of substance do I really have to say anyway?”  These are the things that I lose sleep over!

My friend reminded me that we are all in the process of growing and that I am not expected to be perfect.  Another friend reminded me that everything I do should be for an audience of One and, well, that pretty much put all of the concerns into perspective for me.  I want this blog to be a source of encouragement and enrichment to the readers, but more than that, I want to Glorify God.  I am far from perfect or even together, but I do love the Lord and want to share that with others.  I do hope that you will journey with me and we can navigate this crazy world together.

So what does all this have to do with my Birthday?  Well, this is my present to myself.  I am moving beyond the idea stage, putting away my excuses, facing my fear and moving forward.  Who knows what will come of it, but I am glad to be doing it.