The Five Minute Friday prompt word this week is “Dance.”

I wrote about this free-write prompt three years ago. It was breakthrough thinking, and one of my favorite blog posts.

So I’d like to repost it instead of just writing something new. New writing on the prompt does follow. Just mind-meandering, really.

But first..

Dancing with my Prince

It is a dance. I see that now. With Prince most beautiful and noble.

He picks me up from the ash heap, dirty Cinderella without the ball gown or glass slippers, only rags and muddy, sooty shoes. No magical pumpkin coach to transport me to His palace on my own. He Himself lifts me up right where I am, right how I am, all bruised and charred and smeared with dirty sin-ders from an ugly little world that’s held me slave and captive.

And He begins the dance.

He leads, I follow, stumbling, but He goes on in gentleness, and my feet gain certainty and sometimes even something of His communicated grace. And as we dance, He draws me closer, and my shyness fades to inner glow, and to my stunned surprise I notice the dirt has fallen from my rags, and they themselves are turning silken, lovely, and the glory of His wondrous self is reflecting off this lost little maid, giving her some of His glistening beauty.

My ankle turns, I stumble. He holds me firm from falling, and my eyes look grateful up to His, and He is smiling into mine and I am overwhelmed with wonder, choked with gratitude, as we dance on toward the palace. 

***

 

That is the dance I want to keep dancing, always, always. But it seems someone is always cutting in on the dance. And I don’t know when to politely allow it, and when to say, No, that’s enough. You aren’t just cutting in on my dance. You’re cutting in on the Savior, my Prince.

I have seen through recent months how often it happens, and I keep asking, asking, how can prevent this more in the future?

Dance made me think of other things this morning, too. How one of the psalms (is it 149?) calls for dance as expression of celebration, joying in the Lord and all He is and does.

I see happy children dancing and jumping joy, like lambs that go bounding boing boing boing in the spring.

I see people bending like willows in wind, as well, expressing their joy and love for Him the way they’re wired to rejoice and express.

Dance is a modality, a way for certain kinds of people to let their hearts speak.

Sometimes I want to operate in that modality, even at my age, especially as an expression of that joy.

But there are other modalities of expression, and my main one, the way I’m wired, is to pour out ink in lines that flow into words, phrases, paragraphs—and through that modality I find the means for my heart to dance rejoicing, as my pen dances over paper like slippered feet on a ballroom floor…

[End. But not really the end…]

Linked to Five Minute Friday.