I've been traversing the desert for a long time, though here in Colorado it might be called tundra. It's desolate; it's BARREN. That latter word makes me cringe. It seems so much more final than that other word I think so often, infertile. We fit the medical definition of infertile long before I first felt the hot sand draw hope from my soul. During the first couple years of our marriage, I still felt so content to simply wait on God's timing. We were young; we had time. Or so we thought. I'm not sure of the moment or event that pushed me into this peregrination, but I suddenly felt the panic that we might NEVER have biological children. There are so many medical interventions that we could try, but I'm still grieving things not happening the way they were supposed to happen.
What a terrible burden those dreams of the supposed-to-happen have been: the jokes that I'd have a minivan full by my ten year high school reunion, the admission to my college roommates (fellow engineering majors at the time) that all I really wanted to be was a stay-at-home-mom, the cute fact we shared with our wedding guests almost eight years ago that I planned to name our children after cities in Georgia in honor of my husband's southern roots. I'm less than a month from turning 30 and still trying to accept the fact that life isn't fair. I remind myself that I've been promised nothing here on Earth, yet God has faithfully walked this desert with me. Christ is my oasis, and for that I'm thankful. I can't imagine what this journey would be like without Christ to strengthen me, so now we come to the part about dancing.
I love to dance. Dance is my career, my passion, my joy, even sometimes my worship. This blog will definitely have posts about the desert, but I plan for many more posts to be about the dancing: the ways I've found to worship God and rejoice in this life despite the desolation. Sometimes it will be literal dancing, but more often it will be all the other wonderful ways in which I find joy: cooking, sewing, crocheting, hosting parties, decorating our home, maybe even shopping for shoes.
