When I think about dancing, it’s the same as if I were thinking about aspects of my own personality, or my eye color, or my height. Dancing is a part of me. I was born to be a dancer. God knew that the musical genetics of my family, combined with the creative brain He designed me with, were going to need to channel themselves through a full-body experience. Dancing. I am SO THANKFUL I was given a family that was all about the arts! Aside from my brother playing Little League baseball, I can’t think of a single sport the 3 of us really latched on to. Our life revolved around music and stories. Our family of 5 sang side by side in church every week, and we learned to sing in just as many harmonies with each other. My older sister trained in classical ballet throughout high school and developed her voice classically as well. I don’t know anyone with a more technically powerful voice box as my sister! My older brother is very talented with the guitar and sings as well. He writes music and poetry. When it comes to me, I seem to have an equal love for singing and dancing. However, I can’t quite pull off pursuing them both wholeheartedly at the same time. My artistic life has been a pattern of seasons with either Song or Dance at center stage. I find myself now at the beginning of a new season. Dance has given its grateful courtesy and moved out of the spotlight, for now. In its place I find my old friend of Song stepping into the light (more on that to come!). I will always be a dancer. But…I am no longer a dance teacher. Here’s the story!!!
When I was a child in the ages of 4-12, I fell in love with dancing as I learned and practiced the art of ballet. I began setting a foundation of how to control my body. Dancers are superheroes of self-control. Good technique in ballet is designed to be attained over a long, unglamorous process. And yet, you fall so in love with that process as a dancer. Even though I was a hot mess kid dancer who normally came into class late with my hair down and rips in my tights…I’m so sorry, mom!…I was putting in the years of foundational work that would eventually be my launching pad towards real passion with Dance.
Then at age 12, I began singing in church consistently, both in a choir and on my own. Choir work is really valuable for young singers! You learn to not only have an ear for harmonies, but also an ability to blend vocally with other singers. On top of that, solo work will develop confidence and stage presence. All of these tools helped train and strengthen my Song so that I could have a muscle memory to fall back on when things like anxiety entered the picture. And man, did it ever!! Even to this day, I have TERRIBLE nerves performing. I think that is why I have finally found my home in singing worship music. It’s the best of both worlds for me. I can sing and keep developing this art I love so dearly, and not have to perform. “Performing” worship music is otherwise known as “leading” worship. When you lead worship, you are on stage singing it, but the “audience” is on their feet as well, singing along with you and in their own personal moment of worship. All I need to think about is worshipping God and leading others into that heart posture. I love it!! More on that whole journey another time!!
So, as you may have already read in Chapters 4-7 in this blog, at age 13 I entered a touring singing group in our full-time ministry. I was both the youngest and the lead singer. This was so much training that would later be so useful to me. Not only did I begin to really explore my voice in those years, but I also learned so much about ministry and sharing the hope of Christ with people. Yes, I was a HOT MESS mentally in those years (see Chapter 5) but I learned how to communicate and minister to people.
Something else significant happened when I was 13. I went to a summer dance intensive in Jackson, MS. I look back and marvel at my young self flying to Mississippi all alone for 4 weeks to a camp where I didn’t know a single soul! Go, Mary! This camp was a dance intensive (basically summer camp for kids, but all you do is train and take dance classes all day) with Ballet Magnificat. Ballet Magnificat is the largest Christian professional ballet company in the world. Even though dancing was not allowed in my church, somehow my pastor allowed my mom to teach ballet and me to go to Mississippi to train. That summer when I was 13, I saw how ballet could be used to worship God for the first time. I was stunned! Up until then, I had only danced classical things like Cinderella or watched Nutcracker every December. I had no idea that people worshipped God with ballet or wrote classical works that told spiritual stories. I had found my groove! I remember one night at camp that we were told to gather in one of their massive studios for something called “creative worship.” I came from such a conservative background that I never even lifted my hands in singing. We hardly clapped in my church. Here at summer camp, I saw that the church world was much bigger than I knew. Some kids stood stoically when worship music came on, as I did. But others were quite different! I would soon learn the word charismatic as it relates to church people.
So anyway, back to creative worship night. We herded into a studio and formed a giant circle. They told us to find our own space and just go into our own time of seeking God and worshipping Him however we felt led. To be honest, I was initially completely weirded out. My ability to worship God was nonexistent. I mean, I loved Him! But I had no idea how to express that in true personal worship. So I sat there that night in weirded-out-wonder. Ha! There is an initial shock in seeing people worship God with dancing. Most times, it looks foolish. We’ve all seen Christians acting a fool. But this was not an out of control mess of hyped up people flailing around. These were ballet dancers applying their technique to worship. I envied them, I cried, and I eventually got up and found my own space to dance in while I poured my heart out to God. That very night, I was hooked. As the camp continued, the company performed their touring repertoire of story ballets, executed with incredible technique and artistry. Any dancer who knows Ballet Mag would agree that they are the Christian American Ballet Theatre! I knew that summer that I wanted to do THAT. So I returned home with a lit fire in my heart for dancing. I would eventually attend that summer intensive for 6 years. That ministry has such a piece of my heart, and I’m forever grateful that God made a path for me to go there. It was the only place I really ever went outside of our very enclosed ministry. God knew. So during the ages of 13-19, Song and Dance both fought for the spotlight in my heart. By day, I would be in choir and tour group rehearsals, or even be on the road singing for a 4-5 day trip. By night, I would be in the studio taking classes or in my home studio stretching, worshipping or choreographing.
When I was 16, my mom started giving me opportunities to choreograph for recitals at the ballet school. If you aren’t familiar with dance things, choreographers are the ones who conceptualize and “make” the dances you see when you attend a ballet. One person is usually responsible for thinking up the theme and each individual movement you see dancers performing, as well as teaching that choreography to the dancers. My mom must have recognized that I was going to follow in her artsy ways of story writing, choreography and teaching. She is the one who first learned about Ballet Magnificat, and made it happen for me to go. It was a miracle in itself that we ever managed to afford for me to go. Ballet is expensive, ya’ll!! And out-of-state 4 week long ballet training camps are even more expensive. I am so grateful for Ballet Magnificat. They worked with my family who made virtually no money. I was never fully paid up when I arrived each summer, but they never ever shamed me about it. They let us pay what we could, when we could. I don’t know if that has been the case for anyone else and I am forever thankful. I’m also thankful for my mother who sacrificed so much and made sure I would get out of my small town and narrow-minded ministry. Each year that I wanted to go to Mississippi, her answer was a firm YES. It’s almost as if she knew how crucial that place would be for my development, both as a dancer but mostly as a child of God.
When I began to choreograph things that I would actually teach dancers and perform, my mom and I formed a bond. We are so alike that it made sense to start collaborating artistically. When I was 17, we worked on a massive production of The Prince of Egypt that we both wrote and choreographed. As I started to teach my choreography to dancers, it became clear that I was a pretty decent teacher. I have always been able to explain things to people in a way they can understand, so it was natural for me to progress into teaching actual classes at my studio. I began teaching a lyrical dance class, which was very much the style of Ballet Magnificat. When I decided at age 19 to stop dancing (due to MANY disordered things you can read about in Chapter 5) I also stopped teaching ballet. I got engaged that year, and was married at 20. At that point Song took center stage of my life and I released Dance, almost bitterly. I had battled my terrible body image, eating disorders, and ballet burnout. My body was abused and exhausted. My mind couldn’t conceive how I would ever find joy in dancing again. At the same time my mom was committing more and more of herself to the ministry we lived in. When I left the studio, it made sense that she would sell the studio and pour herself into the ministry. I was married, and the studio was gone. So just like that, Dance disappeared from my life.
After getting married I continued to tour with the same group I had begun singing with at age 13. Mike and I toured together for 2 years as a married couple. We became even more perfect poster kids for the ministry. Not only had Mike come through the program, but he had married a staff kid and we had both decided to stay and work in this place. These were the prime kinds of stories our pastor wanted to use to promote his ministry. So we worked and sang. Eventually, Mike was removed from the group to focus on his job as a dean in the boy’s dormitory. I think what really happened is that our pastor wanted to divide us as a couple (as usual) so he took Mike off the road. That left me being the one to share our story on tour, alone, and soon with a child in tow. At that point, I was so ready to finish my season of touring. Loading up in a van to go on a 13 hour drive with my baby AND 11 teenagers began to feel…really not fun. I was done. I also knew I would never be allowed to stop. I had been the lead singer of this group since I was 13. There was no way my pastor would let me retire from it.
Leah was born when I was 22. After I became a mother something in me shifted. As my passion for singing began to fade, a hunger – no, a need – to dance began to grow. It might have been my body’s natural response to changing so much in 3 years. Not only had I left ballet behind, but I was also healing from a very disordered relationship with food. My body went from one extreme to the other. Weight piled on, and so did the shame. I began to miss dancing SO much. But my studio was gone and I was a new mommy with no extra time. So I started to write stories that I imagined would be original ballets one day. I was desperate enough to dance that I gathered a couple of friends together and formed a “company” that would travel around and perform original choreography. I was so incredibly out of shape by ballet standards, but I loved it so much. I know my dancing was cringy, but I was dancing again! My first time back in a studio after quitting at 19 was such an emotional experience. I could barely do anything like I used to, but it didn’t even matter to me. It was so full of joy…such a restoration from the broken thing that dance had been to me when I was a teenager. I started to take ballet classes whenever I could at a studio 45 minutes away. It felt wonderful and terrible all at the same time. My technique had a long way to go and my body just couldn’t keep up, but if dancers know anything…it’s how to dig deep and put the work in! I was back at the barre because I wanted to be there. I knew I would never take dancing for granted again.
2 years passed of me honing my craft of dance again,and this time with a joy that I had never had before. It was like a brand new start with Dance. I should have known that a new season was on the horizon. After the great exodus from our ministry (read the story in Chapter 11!) we crash-landed in a local church and I immediately began to sing there on the worship team, but I was not in any kind of place spiritually or emotionally to be serving in a church. We settled in at another church and began to put our roots down. I didn’t want to be used in a church ever again. And with that, Song disappeared. I should have noticed the pattern, but it felt much like dance had in my past. Broken. Ruined. Burnt out. DONE. I had never led worship in my life, only performed as a singer. And I hated it.
Almost as immediately as I released my passion for singing, the opportunity arose through a bizarre series of events for my mom to reopen her ballet school. It felt like the dream of a lifetime for my little ballet company to have a homebase while I started an actual job of teaching ballet! At this point, it was 2012 and I had a three year old, a one year old, and a newborn. I was still so young, so immature, so struggling, that it was a beautiful escape for me to get to leave the house 2 nights a week, dance my heart out and teach ballet. Our studio flourished. My company grew and the stories I had written years earlier began to be actual shows we performed. My mom and I grew so incredibly close as we combined our abilities to create and teach. We were the dream team! For 8 years, I gave my heart and soul to our studio. I trained students that I will always hold so close to my heart. It was like I was a big sister for the first time as I trained up dancers in the classroom, and performed alongside them in ministry. Our company grew and we ended up touring to so many local public schools and nursing homes. We danced at Christian schools and prayed with kids at altars. All of the ministry experience I learned and lived in my singing group as a teen had a purpose in this season as well. It was all such a gift and I learned so much. My mom and I ended up writing a total of 7 original shows that our company either performed at year-end recitals or on tour.
My heart was so full. Over the course of 6 or 7 years, I had lived out the redemption of my dance story. I always felt like I left dance open-ended in my teens…it was such a disaster ending that it felt unfinished. I often wondered how much potential I could have reached, and after having my kiddos and returning to ballet I feel as if I truly did reach that potential. I worked my butt off, literally. I passed my technique I had as a teenager and grew stronger than I had ever been physically. And then I turned 30, a new shift happened. I looked around at the dancers I was sharing the stage with and they were all half my age. My body was starting to have a hard time keeping up. I was having to spend more and more time training to keep at the level I wanted to be at…time I didn’t have. I wasn’t a professional ballerina. I was a 30 year old mom of three who could only take 2 ballet classes a week. I was still happy, but my body was getting tired. There is a reason most female ballet dancers retire in their 30’s. And so in my year of 30, I retired from the stage. I wouldn’t take classes as often, and I would only teach, not perform. I was ready. So I threw myself into teaching. I didn’t even give it much thought. I assumed I would be like my mom and teach in my own studio for the rest of my life. But something in me has always known that I am the dancer, not necessarily the teacher.
After retiring as a dancer, it didn’t take long for teaching to start to feel like it was draining me. A horrible season of burnout began, and I found myself in the Fall of last year, 2019, dreading the times I’d have to teach at the studio. Something had changed in me. Lots of things, actually. In January of 2019 I had my encounter with Christ and nothing has been the same since. You can read about that encounter in THAT GIRL IS GONE here on the blog. I started to heal. I started to grow up. My heart changed towards my kids, whom I had mostly just needed a break from before. Now, I found myself wanting to be a better mom. I wanted to be home with my kids way more than I wanted to teach someone else’s kids how to do ballet. But that was scary! I had always thought I’d be a ballet teacher forever! But now that I really gave it some thought…I realized I didn’t actually want to be a ballet teacher or studio owner. It felt like a cruel joke God had pulled on me…restoring my passion for dance and then allowing me to start resenting it again. I begged Him to change me back. I couldn’t just leave everything I had built with my mom. My mom! How would I even tell her all of this?! How could I leave my students? Wouldn’t I look stupid to the whole community if I lost this part of my identity? Shame and fear of disappointing everyone took hold of my heart, like a ghost returning to haunt me. Luckily by this time, I had learned the difference between God’s voice and everything else.
In one particularly bad episode of fear telling me I could never ever leave the studio, I heard His unmistakable voice. It spoke simple truth as usual. “The studio is not that abusive ministry. You’re a grown woman. You can make choices.” So that day I answered God by deciding I would retire from teaching ballet and I would leave the rest up to Him. I didn’t tell a soul other than Mike. He was his usual steady self and supported me in whatever I wanted to do. And so I waited to see what God would do and how He would prepare my mom’s heart. The hardest part of my decision HANDS DOWN has been my wanting to hold onto that season with my mom. What a time it was for us. We grew so incredibly close and did amazing things together as a team. I thought it would break her heart if I left.
I waited 6 months for God to give me the signal that it was time to tell my mom. It came one day when I was at work washing dishes. I got a text from her saying, “Ballet Mag (remember them?) wants to come do a workshop at the studio next Fall and they want us to host them, what should I say?” My stomach dropped. This was it. I wasn’t planning to still be teaching in the Fall, so I needed to have the talk I had been dreading. I frantically prayed for reassurance. Maybe this wasn’t the day. Agh, how would I really know God had prepared her heart?! Then, that familiar voice whispered…”I gave you Ballet Mag as a sign. I always went ahead and provided for you to go to Mississippi, even when it was impossible. I still provide. I’ve gone before you. Trust me.”
I won’t share the personal details of the talk we had that night, but I can confirm that God had indeed done what I had considered impossible. My beautiful mother understood. We knew the year ahead would be different, and yet we both had an undeniable peace about it. We had NO idea what was about to happen in the world. It was only a matter of weeks after we had that talk that Covid flipped our lives upside down. Just like that, it was over for me. I didn’t get to know it was my last class the last time I taught. It’s very bittersweet. I didn’t get a last show to write, or a final moment in the studio to say goodbye to my students and that sacred space. Yet, in the midst of it all, an overwhelming peace has never left me. Joy holds hands with sorrow. I look back on the latest season of my life with so much love that it aches in my chest and fills my eyes with tears even as I type this. That chapter was so full and it’s now over. And it turns out that God was right. I can make choices. I can leave something I’m finished doing, and I can start something new. I can release old dreams from a much younger me. The future is wide open.
I believe God saw Covid coming and prepared my heart in advance. I wanted to be home more and spend more time with my kids…which if I’m honest had NOT been me in the past. But a time was coming when people would be stuck at home for a loonnngggg time with their kids. And here I was, experiencing the quarantine as a gift. That’s so God.
So that’s my big news. I’m not a ballet teacher anymore. I don’t know what is ahead for the studio, but I know that my mom is still my mom. It’s her calling to teach kids the arts. I have no doubt that a new chapter is ahead for the studio and it will be just as beautiful as the last. As for me…I feel a release. If anything, I feel more free to be just a dancer again. And wouldn’t you know it…as this season changes and Dance takes her reverie bow once again, it isn’t a sorrowful end. She is giving center stage back to Song, but this time Dance gives a little wink. Like maybe she won’t be gone long. I’ve watched God redeem singing and church as well. Stay tuned for that story.
I know now that I am the dancer. It remains a part of me that will never go away really. Now the Dance and the Song both stand redeemed. I’m blown away by the goodness of my God and that He would care enough about me to do all of this. I have so much history with the arts of singing and dancing, of storytelling and ministry. I can’t wait to see how that history works its way into the future. To my students and everyone I’ve ever danced with: you all are some of the brightest strokes of paint in my life’s picture. I’m deeply honored that I was able to be your teacher, fellow artist and friend. None of it was wasted. Even if you find yourself in changing seasons when Dance appears to fade, don’t fear. You will never lose her. And when you start to miss dancing, remember that you carry it with you for the rest of your life. You don’t need a studio space to dance. Dance at home, dance in the shower (safely!), dance with your kids, dance while you worship. I’m at peace with the changing season. And I also know that the barre will be waiting for me whenever I want to come back home. Off on my adventure I go! The dancer who wants to sing every time she dances and the singer who wants to dance every time she sings. What a gift.
Until next time.. 🙂