I Hope You Dance

Soon to be six years old, Carly is the older of our two daughters. Like many six-year-old kids, she has much to learn about how to behave. Specifically, she interrupts me when I'm talking, she often doesn't answer me when I ask her what she learned at school, and she gets lots of food and grape juice on her clothes when she eats, thus my wife has become a stock-owner of Spray and Wash. But here's the thing: She loves to dance. Never is she more graceful, peaceful, and utterly joyful than when she dances. At her most recent ballet recital, she and her class danced to Barbara Streisand's 'Memories'. . . 'Daylight, I must wait for the sunrise, I must think of a new life. . .'. It hit me: I'm determined to get her to behave by demanding that she answer me properly, warning her about how inconvenient it is when she gets a stain on her clothes, and thinking I can improve her behavior by promising ice cream or a movie. The problem is, the more rules I try to enforce, the more mechanical and predictable our relationship becomes. When she dances, however, she dances neither in fear of making a mistake nor in hope of getting a reward. She simply dances, savoring each moment as a portrait of beauty and delight. I ask you, when it comes to living what Jesus called 'an abundant life', who is closer to understanding the love and grace of God: the one who behaves, tries hard to always answer correctly, and never stains their clothes, or the one who dances freely and goes wherever the music takes her just grateful for the joy of knowing that even if she slips and dances rather poorly, a roomful of loving parents will applaud, and her father will embrace her and bring her home when it's over? I think you know the answer, and I hope you dance.