To Dance or Not to Dance?

When you were a child, did you ever have a dream?  I'm talking about a fantasy of how you wanted your life to be one day, a goal that you thought would make you happy?  What did you want to be when you grew up?  How did it turn out?  Have you achieved it?  Are you there?  Or did life get in the way and alter your course?

My daughter simply loves to dance!  She wants to be a ballerina when she grows up.  She listens to music and makes up her own little dances to it.  She leaps, twirls, and imitates all the moves she thinks a ballerina would make.  She announced to me recently that she knows ballet and is very good at it.

This she says despite the fact that she's never been to a dance class in her life.  Granted, she has a video made for children that shows the basic positions.  She even has the little plastic balance beam that came with the video.  She watches the video irregularly, sometimes twice a day, sometimes twice a month.  When she watches it, she sometimes follows the directions.  Thus, in her mind, she knows ballet. She wants to be a ballet dancer, she has a video on it, so of course, she's good enough to be a professional ballet dancer.

But given a choice between taking ballet lessons or gymnastics, she chooses gymnastics every time, no competition.  There is not even the slightest hesitation.  So what is really her dream?  What does she really want to be when she grows up?  We still don't know the answer to that question, because she has yet to put her body where her mouth is.

I find it interesting that there are some people out there who decide what they want to be as a child, and every time they have to decide on an action that will lead them to or away from that dream, they will choose the one that leads to the dream.  And there are others out there, like my daughter, who have a whim, a fantasy, of what they want, but when it comes to counting the cost of what it means to achieve that goal, it's not convenient for them at the time to take the opportunity.  We have choices to make, and those decisions will affect the rest of our lives.

And then there is the flip side.  What if you pour out all your energy into something and still don't achieve the goal for which you were striving.  What then?  Then you take a step back.  You examine to see if it is a gift you have or if it is just something you want to have.  If is truly a gift, then the time will come when it can be used to it's intended purpose.

Others around you will let you know it is truly a gift.  Forgive my bluntness, but I'm not talking about someone who will tell you something you want to hear just because they love you and want you to be able to succeed, though they may say you have a gifting in that area because you truly do.  Take another step back and see what others outside your "comfort" group tell you.

If a perfect stranger comes up to you and says you do exquisite handiwork, then you may be gifted in crafts.  If they say you inspire them with the dance, then that may be your calling.  If someone at work thanks you for being such an encourager to everyone, then that may be your gift.  The amazing thing is that you can find comfort if that is not your gifting, because there is something inside you that is special, something that nobody else can do like you do it.  The world is blessed when you work in your calling, and it is sorely missing a vital part when you do not.

We all have different gifts and talents.  We all have different things that we love to do, and often the things we are gifted in go hand in hand with our passions.  But the greatest aspect of all is this:  we all have different gifts for a purpose.  We all are called to be a team, a single entity, in a sense, like a single body, so that we can strengthen one another and work together for a common goal.  What would it be like to have a hundred minds with no hands, or twenty hands with no thumbs?  How much can a set of lungs accomplish with no synapses to tell the brain to breathe?  Every one of these parts of the body is equally important, no matter the size, because they all work together.

Can you imagine what could happen if we all discovered our hidden talents and put them to good use together with those of one another?  It's like a three cord rope exponentially:  we'd be united, unbreakable.  So I ask you....do you want to dance?