Photo: common.wikimedia.org
The worship team at the front of the church played music and it felt like time stopped. There was the sound of a flute winding its melody in between a piano, guitars, and the voices of a few singers. I wasn't sure what to do when I felt a strong inkling to dance. The worship team had been playing songs for over an hour. Most of the church sang along passionately with their arms in the air. I was new at this worship thing.
I stood surrounded by my peers on the far, left side of the church. We all had seats up front. There was a discreet corner nearby. If I went over there, probably my weird urge to dance would go unnoticed.
Even though I hadn’t taken a dance class in years, I placed my foot in front of me and pointed my toe. I shaped my arms the way I used to a few years before in ballet class. My body moved to the beat. I had steps in my head.
The pastor's wife came over and whispered in my ear.
"You have taken ballet classes, right?"
"Yes," I said. I think she wondered if my knowledge of ballet came straight from God. She took a deep breath and walked away.
The love of the movements grew. Each time I went to church, I found myself in that corner dancing. There was a freedom in my whole body that I had never experienced before. I closed my eyes, something one never did in class or performance. Dancing and singing along to the songs, I began to have specific moves for certain songs.
On a mission trip to South Korea, a friend and I worked on a dance that I choreographed. It was really simple. Nothing that required elite dance training, but people cried when they watched. We danced in a few churches and near the end of our trip we danced on the sidewalk. It was getting dark and the street lamps left us in an atmosphere that felt mysterious. A woman from the crowd came up to me and asked, “Have you heard about that group of dancers in New York City that have all Black dancers?”
“I’m not sure,” I said.
“They are really good. You should audition to dance with them.”
I think she was talking about The Dance Theater of Harlem. I kindly told her thank you for the compliment. My friend looked at me and smiled.
Being a dancer in the church was different. Our youth group went to various church events and I didn’t bump into anyone else who danced the way I did. Our church had conferences once a month and brought in speakers. One of them was known for “reading people’s mail.” He would look out into the crowd and pray for specific people based on what he heard from God. When he pointed at me, I didn’t know if I felt queasy or excited.
"You will have a dance troop someday and you will take them all over the United States and into the Nations." I felt my heart floating in my chest. It was similar to the butterflies one feels when a crush was near, but this was intense. There was a sense of power in these words, but I had no idea how this vision would happen.
Something powerful was happening to me. One day, I felt strongly about unplugging the phone I had begged my parents to buy me. It was attached to a separate phone line that I was sure my parents agreed to give me so they could make calls. I lived on my phone anytime I was home. This week, I got out my journal and wrote a song. The words just appeared on the page without me thinking much about them.
I sang the songs I’d learned at church and prayed a lot. That Sunday, the pastor preached a sermon about prayer and fasting.
The Christian experience opened up a part of my life that I didn’t know existed. I went off in search of a college that could provide me with a similar kind of Christian community I had in high school. My parents were not Christian, but they let me visit two of the colleges on my list provided I look at a range of other liberal arts schools as well. I walked around Whitman College, a school that seemed out of my reach due to my poor SAT scores, and felt like I already lived there.
On the campus tour, we wandered past brick buildings and a duck pond. The sound of a creek made me feel like I was on a camping trip in the middle of nowhere. I went back to my hotel room that night thinking that maybe my parents and I could be happy with my choice of college.
It was that day that I felt something solid and dense like a rock in my left breast.
Weeks later, sitting in a doctor’s office, I wondered if I was going to die of cancer. When the doctor examined the lump she said, “It’s rare to have cancer at your age.” I took a deep breath. “Sometimes those teen hormones cause some trouble and you can get something called a fibro adenoma. It’s really just some funky tissue that is harmless.”
“Will she need surgery?” my mom asked.
“I would recommend it, just to make sure everything is fine.”
It was strange to think about having surgery for something that was supposed to be no big deal. It was also nice not to be imagining what my grave might look like.
I told people at church about the lump, my surgery, and how it wasn’t a big deal. They insisted we pray right away. “God can heal this,” a woman on the prayer team told me. She placed her hand on my shoulder and prayed with lots of passion. I closed my eyes and imagined the lump disappearing before I had surgery. I hoped this prayer was all I would need to be healed.
The lump was still there after several minutes. Maybe God worked on some kind of delay. I went home thinking about waking up with no lump. This didn’t happen.
I woke up the morning after my surgery to the smell of crêpes. My friend’s voice blended with my mother’s and soon enough a tray was put in front of me with a plate of the crêpes, orange slices, and a cup of tea.
The lump was sent away for a biopsy. My follow-up appointment a few weeks after my surgery seemed like overkill because the little wound where my lump was removed already looked almost healed.
“Well, our fears of this lump being cancer are over,” the doctor said. “You remember how I told you it wasn’t a fibro adenoma after all.” I looked at my mom for some kind of acknowledgment that she had heard this conversation because I had not. My mom’s gaze was pasted to the doctor.
“It appears you have a rare breast disease called fibro mitosis of the breast. There are only twenty-seven cases. This kind of tumor usually occurs on the ribs or the stomach.”
“Is it malignant?” my mom asked.
“No, but it is aggressive. We will need to operate again because I need to make sure she has clean margins.”
So basically, my parents hadn’t told me I had a mystery lump. God did not make this thing go away. I was going to have more surgery. Glad to catch up.
I had one more appointment six months later to make sure everything was still okay. My nipple never recovered from that surgery. It was a weird shape and I wondered if scar tissue weighted it down. It only took a second of examining for the doctor’s confident look to transform. “It’s back.” This was three months before I planned to start attending college miles away from New Jersey in Washington State.
Freshman year of college, I signed up for beginning ballet. The class was like a dream back to my past. I knew all the words: plie, tendu, ronde de jamb, grand battement. Standing at the bar was still familiar. I liked the security and the routine.
“You have taken ballet before,” my teacher said.
“Yes,” I replied.
“How many years?”
“Six and a half.”
“Maybe you should try my intermediate or advanced class.”
I picked intermediate because I had not taken a ballet class for years. There was my freshman year of high school where I tried a dance studio because my friend went there and after my spontaneous church dancing, it seemed important I relearned some ballet. That year hardly felt like a refresher. I was a mess. The teacher promised me ballet was like riding a bicycle. She was wrong. I knew I wasn’t engaging any of the right muscles.
The college intermediate class was what I needed. The pace was faster than the beginning ballet, but not so challenging that I was lost.
This class helped me forget that in the past few months, I had lost my left breast and gained a new one filled with saline solution. It let me be a college student.
Dancing in the study room of my dorm was a form of survival. I pictured Jesus holding me and carrying me. People probably thought I was crazy, but I didn't care.
On Sunday mornings, I carried my Bible, journal, and pointe shoes to church. There was an unused balcony and I adopted it as a place to dance. The cords on the keyboard guided each step. I closed my eyes and felt like I was floating. God carried me through losing a body part so easily. Instead of hate and shame for the ways my breast had failed me, I still felt beautiful.
What I didn’t know then was how much dance was a part of my being. That summer I went to Bangladesh. We visited a church where there was a woman on the worship team who danced up front and the entire church followed her moves. "Did you know that Bengali people are gifted in dance?" She asked me. “No,” I replied.
There I was, surrounded by people who moved. Sitting still during music just wasn’t a part of the equation. They sang a song in Bangla that I knew in English by Darlene Zschech.
Shout to the Lord
All the earth let us sing
Power and Majesty
Praise to the King…
Though I didn’t know the language, those words echoed in my mind years later.
The lump was gone. The purpose of dance replaced the moment I was wheeled into the operating room with cheeks moisten by tears.
My husband told me about the night he knew he wanted me to be his wife. We were at a weekly college led worship service. He asked me to sing in the band, but often I left my microphone to dance.
The chapel was on his college campus. Only a few people joined us. The lights were dim at night. We played music as if the room was full. During an instrumental section, I danced down the aisle to get to the back of the room. I pictured rain falling from the ceiling. Tim looked over and saw me feeling completely free. He says that was the moment. We got married a year and a half later.
I was offered a chance to dance at Easter for church. My first baby was due that August. With a small baby bump, I danced to CeCe Winans’ Alabaster Box. I stepped out feeling the pain and shame for the woman who washed Jesus’ feet with her hair. It was one of my favorite stories in the Bible.
Thoughts of feeling undeserving traveled through me. I was married to the man I think I loved the second I saw him. We were expecting our first child even though neither of us had all our ducks in a row. I had been far from perfect.
Even though my story didn’t match this woman’s, it was a timeless tale of how Jesus met her with grace.
The baby about to be born would find that grace in dance. Even though his sister Ellianna was the one who begged to take a dance class, they both embraced their gifts. I watched their desire to get lost in movements.
The love for this art form made its way to all of the siblings one by one until everyone danced with distinct ballet moves starting as soon as they perfected walking. When God made clear through the guest speaker at my church years ago that I would have a dance troop, I never thought the people in it would be my children.
I wrote this post to support my daughter Ellianna’s dream to become a professional ballet dancer. Please consider donating to her summer intensive fund.