Uptown Funk

I have mentioned before that I attend a dance class at my local gym a couple of times a week. What started out as an exercise in humility turned into a real workout where I have the opportunity to move in a way I rarely do in life. The instructor is my age but she’s that woman you know who is always the right color of tan, and looks great in ridiculous workout clothes and a huge scarf on her head and she’s sunny and enthusiastic, always happy. Probably because she gets paid to dance.

Anyway, we were dancing recently, she faces our group of 30 or more women and performs hip hop, salsa, the mambo and other dances I cannot name. Our only job is to mimic her. It took me weeks to get out of my head enough to even enjoy the class, and then I was able to look around and see the others. We are a ragtag crew; some women obviously took dance for years when they were younger and slip easily from one move to the next, anticipating the next step as it is being called out over the pumping music. But then there is that group of us who always vie for the back row, clumsy and a beat behind with the wrong leg moving. From time to time the instructor will leave her perch and shimmy right up next to us, encouraging us to make up our own moves. My freeform signature move is to freeze as she gets near me because I have forgotten everything I’ve learned. Every time.

What I like most about this class is that the leader of this group is so beautiful and talented, and she treats us as if we are too. She encourages us and laughs with us, and calls us to keep going, even places a belief in us that we can move like that. The parallel is so obvious in my walk with Christ; I am a sad representative, a faint echo of my Savior who is ahead of me, encouraging me to keep moving and to keep growing. God could laugh at my attempts or make it clear a hundred different ways that I’m just not cut out for this, but instead He is always there, cheering me on and instilling a belief in me that I can be more, that if I show up and mimic Him, I can get outside of my own head and maybe even find a signature move in this world.