According to Gary Chapman, my love language is quality time, but if you were to ask me, it’s dancing. When I go to weddings, I’m, of course, happy to see the couple celebrate their new marriage, but I’m mostly looking forward to finger foods and the dance floor. I’m half kidding here, but that’s where you’ll find me in my element.
I was a painfully shy kid, but my parents put me in dance classes at 3, and you would never have known that I was timid when I was on a stage. For about 12 years, dance was a huge part of my life. I would spend 3-4 nights a week in a studio and dinner afterwards was spent with my feet soaking in water to help the swelling go down and soothe the blisters. It was my biggest hobby, but the older I got, the more self-conscious I felt about seeing my body in a leotard next to other girls my age. When I was 15, my family moved to California from Louisiana, and I decided to end my dance career because I thought I was too big and not good enough to go to a studio other than the one I grew up in.
Ballet picture circa 1995. Man, I was cool.
When I was in college, a Latin dance exercise class called Zumba became popular and one of my sorority sisters was an instructor, so I started going to classes multiple times a week. This was one of the first times in years that I started to enjoy dance again and didn’t feel self-conscious. The point of the class was to have fun and be active, and not to worry about how your body looks when doing the moves. I continued to do fun dance classes for exercise until I was accepted for the World Race and I decided to stop to save money.
This month, my team did not have a specific host or ministry assignment like we normally do, and we’ve been doing what we call ATL, “ask the Lord”. Each day, we pray and ask the Lord what He wants us to do, where we need to go, etc. Before coming to Vietnam, I asked the Lord what I should focus on this month, and I got the image of me in a ballet studio doing exercises at the barre.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t find any ballet studios, but I found a Zumba studio, and it was a great way for my team to work out together and for us to meet people in Da Nang. We met an amazing instructor named Mila, who is from Ukraine, our first country on the race, and we’ve been able to become friends with her and encourage her during her classes.
Some of I Squad with the best instructor ever, Mila!
At the beginning of the month, my team prayed together to set the tone for ATL, and multiple people said they felt like God was going to give us lots of gifts this month. I genuinely believe that dance was my gift this month and that He redeemed something that caused me pain during my teenage years and was taken away from me prepping for the race. I’m so thankful for the gift of having so much time to spend with the Lord this month and the ability to listen to His voice. And if the Lord wants me to shake my hips to Latin music an hour every day, who am I to say no? 😉
New friends from Zumba class
