the dance
And now I'm glad I didn't know
The way it all would end, the way it all would go
Our lives are better left to chance
I could have missed the pain
But I'd have had to miss the dance
(Garth Brooks, The Dance)
I don’t believe our lives are better left to chance, but I do believe our lives are impacted by the “chances” taken in life.
I was challenged this week by a dear friend and sister in Christ who is in my life because of the pain I experienced through the ending of my first major dance, my first marriage and our family unit. God crossed our paths in Kansas a few years ahead of the fallout, through Bible Study Fellowship. Her challenge to me was to find and acknowledge the good times and qualities from my previous life, specifically my first marriage.
In all honesty, that is something I have been trying to do for years!!
Her reasoning for this was not because I have not dealt with all of that and moved ahead. God has been so faithful and good to me in that regard. It was more in regards to actually trying to find the good in that part of my life. Afterall, it accounts for a little over a decade of my time here on earth, but more importantly, it was a time where some major impacts that changed my life forever were made.
I’ll admit right here and now, I declined her challenge. I wanted no part of going there again. I have thought about this many times over through the years, and the end result is always the same, I got nothin’. But, after we ended our phone call, her challenge stayed with me. I could not stop thinking about it.
The song above, "The Dance" is a song written by Tony Arata and recorded by American country music singer Garth Brooks. Many people think it was written about love, but Arata says it was never about love, but rather the bigger picture of life.
After my phone call with this friend, I pulled up a song to listen to on YouTube, and Kelly Clarkson’s rendition of, “The Dance” came up in my search. The video of Clarkson was flashing relentlessly in my peripheral vision, just begging me to click the link to listen.
Safe to say, that marketing strategy works. I took the bait, clicked the link, and once Kelly (yes, we’re on first name basis here. Lol) sang her first two lines, I immediately knew, this was what I had to write about this week, and this was how God was going to help me find the good in my past. This was how He was going to help me see the beauty in the ashes.
Believe me when I say, I want to look back on the memories and believe there was something there!
I desperately want to see some morsel of truth and sacredness in my first marriage but knowing the truth I now know behind our life, every picture I look at I cannot help but think about the other woman/women also in our lives at that time. Practically every memory I have is “shared” with another woman. And…when someone is living two different lives, they might not realize it, but they are miserable, and they carry that over into their home life, and they are miserable to live with as well. It makes sense. I cannot imagine the internal conflict that would be, trying to keep so much hidden and in darkness. Complete misery.
Knowing all the pain, remembering what we went through, and reflecting on all the betrayal, when looking through these lenses, it is really tough to see anything good in that marriage.
Betrayal, especially deep betrayal, on many fronts, destroys all sense of truth in a relationship. Any good foundation that might have existed is obliterated by betrayal. When the betrayer refuses to make things even a teeny bit easier on the one betrayed, refuses to reach out a hand to the betrayed as they are drowning in an ocean of what is now becoming their reality, and makes that person seek answers and truth, and play detective instead of coming clean and showing true remorse for the pain they are causing, sorry, again, hard to find the “good.”
I do need to make a couple of important points here.
First, I am not saying that foundations cannot be rebuilt after a betrayal. They absolutely can.
I know people who have better relationships now than they did before because they all are living in the light of the truth now. I have had the privilege of walking through the rebuilding and restoration of broken marriages with others. The betrayer chose to come out of the darkness and come clean to their spouse, and together, they chose to allow God to heal and rebuild their foundation.
I know of marriages stronger than they originally were, BUT there has to be true remorse, sorrow, and repentance for that to happen.
That is not how my story played out.
Second, those years of my life, while difficult at best, they were still filled with many good things in spite of the rough marriage. I’ll speak to those later on in this blog.
Before I share more about my dance and what I have learned, I need to address one particular verse that maybe I am taking a bit too literally, but I am compelled to speak to. The verse, “Our lives are better left to chance,” does not speak truth to me from a biblical perspective. If I align it with what I know to be truth in light of God’s word, and everything in scripture that proves that God is a very intentional God, then our lives being, “better left to chance,” does not resemble truth to me.
I know!! Buzz kill! You’re probably saying, “Just listen to the song. Don’t analyze it.” I can hear it now. I can even feel the eye rolls. LOL! Welcome to my head folks! However, because I am sharing my faith throughout all my blogs, I feel a tremendous amount of responsibility to not mislead anyone. So, addressing this verse about leaving our lives to chance is important to me because it does not align with faith and the Christian walk.
Websters defines chance as, “something that happens unpredictably without discernible human intention or observable cause.” What is “chance” as it is used today? Chance is often associated with “the roll of the dice,” or the turn of a slot machine. This is not how I see my life as a woman who was created by God with a specific purpose. God is not a God of coincidence, but rather a God of intentionality and He calls us to live lives with intentionality as well.
“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” Jeremiah 29:11
Therefore, I believe it is my responsibility to consider the overall walk of my life to be more about my choices than my chances. What choices/decisions did I make that have helped shape who I am? What have I learned from the choices/decisions I have made, both good and bad?
“We make dozens of decisions every day, some simple, some more complex. Some internet sources estimate that an adult makes about 35,000 conscious decisions each day. We make 226.7 decisions each day on just food alone according to researchers at Cornell University.” -Ray Williams, Executive Coach, Author
We live in a world where we make many, many choices. We are called to live with intentionality. Therefore, our choices will affect our lives, and also the lives of many others. So, when I think of this verse, I don’t believe our lives are better left to chance, but I do believe our lives are impacted by the “chances” we and others take in life.
“The purposes of a person’s heart are deep waters, but one who has insight draws them out.” Proverbs 20:5
As we dance our dance, in our blip of time here on this amazing planet, we need to use wisdom and discernment in making our choices, and not leave our lives to chance in order that we might experience the real dance. The dance that God has choreographed for each of us.
“The journey between who you once were, and who you are now becoming, is where the dance of life really takes place.”
– Barbara De Angelis
My friend’s challenge to me was strong, surprisingly quite uncomfortable to me, and God was hitting me right between the eyes with the uneasiness of it, calling me out, to seek His truth outside of my truth, or my perspective.
I should not be so surprised. God loves to take us out of our comfortable into the uncomfortable. The uncomfortable is where His greatest work is done in our lives, and where the greatest growth occurs in us.
It’s uncomfortable to think about things that hurt us and cause us pain. It’s much more comfortable to stay in our head space, believing the lies that everything was awful and there was nothing real, good, or true in any of those years of my first marriage, but then to believe that discredits everything God provided for me and my sons during those years. To choose to believe and say that those years were an utter waste is to slander God and the testimony He has given us through His faithfulness in the midst of those trials and the brokenness.
The sad part about our human nature, is that it frequently takes pain for us to appreciate the dance.
We generally do not appreciate our health until we are sick, our jobs until we don’t have an income, our marriage until it’s over, our parents until they are gone, our homes until there’s a flood, tornado or fire, peace until there is war, freedom until it’s gone, and so on…This is exactly why God uses our broken moments as some of our greatest opportunities to share His goodness, and those are often found in our dance of life and the pain we experience as we waltz through this time and space.
To dance, we must be open to the reality of pain.
At this stage in my life, I thoroughly understand the meaning behind, “The Dance.” I have lived enough and experienced enough life now that it resonates deeply. When I think about missing the pain of life, I find it a conundrum. I don’t like hurting or being broken and I would not wish it on anyone, but as I spoke to in my previous blogs, my deepest, purest moments with God, have been in moments of complete brokenness.
What’s crazy is, I want to avoid that “place” as much as possible, but in missing the pain of that place, I wouldn’t know the gift of the life, my life, that has been built from the pain in the dance. My dance. My life. My journey.
This is the life God has given me. I get to choose if I will sit it out or dance. This is my dance to dance, and it doesn’t come without pain. If I would not have risked love. I would still be alone today. If I had known my marriage was going to end the way it did, I would have never married my first husband, but that means I would not have my three sons whom I love so deeply and treasure. If I had not chosen to experience the pain of childbirth, my three sons wouldn’t even exist. If I had known one of my sons would one day reject me and the pain that would come from that, I might not have had kids at all, but what a hole my heart would have in it without them to love, and what I would have missed getting to grow and become a better person because of them. If I had not experienced the pain of divorce, I would not have had the perspective of true brokenness that afforded me the incredible privilege of walking along side of others as their marriages were restored. This list could go on and on.
If I had not experienced the brokenness I have experienced, I am not sure this stubborn heart of mine would know and love Jesus as I do today.
Throughout scripture, God uses the broken and the weak to witness to His might and power, His faithfulness and goodness. “Nothing testifies to the deep, authentic reality of God’s presence in the life of a believer like watching that believer keep their eyes on Jesus while enduring hell on earth. Observing a Christian cry out to God in confusion, pain, and anger, while maintaining the faith to keep calling, to keep weeping, to keep reaching out in hope and trust, is perhaps the greatest apologetic for the Christian faith the world will ever see.” (your-pain-has-a-greater-purpose)
As I wrote in a previous blog, sojourner, we are actually living, “between two gardens,” says Lysa Terkeurst, author of, It’s Not Supposed to be This Way. Until we reach what John, the author of the book of Revelation in the bible calls, the heavenly Eden, (Revelation 22:1-5) we will have pain, but we get to choose to sit it out or dance, and I say DANCE!!!
The dance is worth the risk.
I hope you never fear those mountains in the distance,
Never settle for the path of least resistance,
Livin' might mean takin' chances, but they're worth takin',
Lovin' might be a mistake, but it's worth makin',
Don't let some Hell bent heart leave you bitter,
When you come close to sellin' out reconsider,
Give the heavens above more than just a passing glance,
And when you get the choice to sit it out or dance.
I hope you dance... I hope you dance.
(I Hope You Dance-Lee Ann Womack)
Something to consider: One of the greatest risks in life is never taking any. What have you missed by refusing to dance? Is something in life passing you by because of your fear of the possibility of pain? What’s the worst thing that could happen if you just decided to dance?
(Kelly Clarkson's Stirring Rendition Of "The Dance")
