The Dance
With My Teacher
By
Vickie Conde

There is a wonderful dance.  Everyday My Teacher comes to me and stretches out His Hands.  The hands that knit each child together, hands that were nailed to the cross are the same hands that reach out to me every morning.  Shall we dance today?

The dance between My Teacher and I have different steps everyday.  He always is the Lead.  He is powerful and kind.  Purposeful and gentle depending what He wants to teach me.  When I was younger I believed it was all about how good I was at dancing.  This meant simply following the motions of another person.  The better I copied someone else the better I was at dancing. Look she follows all the rules—a gold star for her. 

The old way of dancing was performing repetition.  That was good in the beginning then as I learned there were times when I could make up my own steps.  I knew the basics now and those steps could be used to do new dances. 
The focus always on me and my talent.  The old steps became boring.  They needed to be spiced up.  I wanted to do more.  This is when the problems began.  As I tried new things the old steps were not as “cool”, so I broke some of the old rules.  Leaving the repetitiousness behind it didn’t seem all that exciting anymore. Nor did I think I needed the practice over and over again.  This is where I begin to get hurt and hurt others. 

My Teacher allowed me time to experiment with this new dance.  It was like getting all the dance steps right but forgetting to look into my Teachers’ eyes and seeking to please the Teacher.  I learned to look to see how many others were copying my steps.  That seemed to be the important part, right?    It became more important to have others watch me than my Teacher.  He knew there’d be a time when I would come looking for my Teacher once again.  Slowly I tired of the dance by myself.  I wanted to quit dancing altogether it wasn’t fun anymore.  So little by little I quit dancing.  Life began to lose it color.  It began to fade into gray.  No hope, no excitement, always watching for someone else who had the joy as I did in the beginning.  Did I really love dancing?  Did I really ever dance?  I missed my lessons, I missed my Teacher.  I longed to start over again but that couldn’t happen now I had my turn I was old now.  No one would be interested in teaching an old person something they’ve been taught before.  How did I get so far away from the thing I loved the most?  How did I lose interest in learning more steps?  What was I thinking; I couldn’t even remember where the dance class was or where to find my teacher.  Slowly by myself in secret I began with the basic things I remembered.  Just a little at a time.  Sometimes I would get excited remember how good I had felt.  Then I would recall how much I had forgotten.  In the beginning I felt like I was the teacher’s favorite.  He would show me things all the time that He didn’t show everyone else.  Now I didn’t even now where to look for Him.  It was sad.  Other friends I knew had their own Teachers’ but they seemed to be dancing by themselves too.  I wanted to go back to the beginning but there seemed to be no way.

But My Teacher had a new way planned.  He made the new way possible.  Little by little I continued to dance the same familiar steps over and over and I would remember a little more.  The difference this time was I was aware of the preciousness of the dance.  I wanted to go back yet go forward.  I learned new the dance was about The Teacher and relationship with Him.  He knew all the perfect moves and knew how to teach them to me.  What was so different this time He wanted my full attention on Him.  He wanted me to quit looking in the mirror and look deeply into His eyes without looking away.  This was a whole new way of dancing.

This new dance with My Lord it requires so much more.  To know all the dance steps is very important but just as important is following Him as perfectly as I can.  He requires that I quit looking at myself, but look deeply into His Eyes all the time.  His hands gently move and direct me to the next step we will make.  If I listen I can hear the words He is singing over me.  If I forget and look down or step on His feet He will correct me quickly.  Again and again He reminds me to look back up into His Eyes to keep me focused.  His desire is that I learn to know His ways so closely that it takes very little from Him to turn me left or right.  He teaches me how to “understand” His lead.  He wants the intimacy between us to be so profound that He hardly has to do anything for me to understand what He wants me to do.

There is such beauty in this new dance.  It requires me to be strongly disciplined everyday, familiar with His touch, His Voice, and His Movements.  Since each day I study the Words He as spoken and written I learn to respond to His teaching better everyday.  Some days the dance is soft and gentle, some days it is fast and loud.  Each day requires from me complete attention.  At times He dips me without much warning requiring that I trust Him completely with everything.  Other times He spins me quickly and requires that my eyes only look away long enough to go around then seek to fix my eyes as quickly as I turn back.  The hardest dance is when He wants me to spin repeatedly without holding on to Him knowing that He is watching intently knowing when to grab me back into His embrace.  Then there is the fast dance where we are not touching at all but the whole time we are staring into each others eyes.  Never worrying about what others think of our dance.  It is the dance of all life.  It is an all day and night experience.  The last thing I think of before sleep captures me and the first thought upon waking are on the hands that are reaching out waiting for me.

My teacher is always looking for my response to look directly back at Him with reverence, awe, sweet surrender without holding anything back.  Allowing myself to be fully inspected by my Teacher, ready at any moment knowing that He could do anything He wanted. Yet trusting Him beyond understanding that no matter what He does it is the best thing for me.  He has perfect wisdom, knowing all things, yet knowing that when He stares at me He loves the intimacy of our hearts beating in rhythm more than anything else.  This is what He is looking for.  A student that has a heart that is willing to be open to Him.  A heart that is fallow, for healing a when it gets broken, a heart that isn’t covered with shame or shies away with an ungodly fear.  He is a Teacher looking for the student who is willing to be taught.  A Father, A Groom, A Teacher--He is all in all.  He has planned out all the lessons, knownall the subjects, and covered everything we would need to know in how to dance with Him.  He has planned the most amazing event and wants us to be ready when He presents us as His prized student, His best dancer, His favorite, His prepared, His treasured one.   
He has dressed me this Teacher, He has chosen my gown, He is My Groom I am His bride, He has chosen the linen covering Himself.  He has picked out the righteous covering, knowing full well if we chose our own robes it would probably look like someone else’s so we thought we looked good in it.  His desire is not that we “fit” in, but to stand out. 

When this dance begins I want to be fully prepared, dressed and ready to come to Him at His bidding.  He has prepared everything in advance for us.  He has done it out of love.