Dancing Through Life (5 page)

When talking about joy, Angela went on to say, “The followers of Jesus have been given lavish gifts from God. Most of us open the ones we need most and too many of us leave the gift of joy unwrapped or still in the box.”
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As I struggled to learn the jive, I could have chosen to stay frustrated. It would have compounded the problem, making learning more difficult, and it would have been like leaving a gift that God intended for me to have for this journey unwrapped on the ballroom floor.

The Superhero Power of Joy

First Chronicles 16:27 is describing God and says, “Splendor and majesty are before Him; strength and joy are in His place.”

Psalm 16:11 became one of the verses I clung to during my
DWTS
journey. It says, “You reveal the path of life to me;
in Your presence is abundant joy
; in Your right hand are eternal pleasures” (emphasis mine).

Wherever God is, there is strength and joy but these are not qualities God keeps to Himself. Where God is, joy is. When we are in close proximity to Him, seeking to know Him, we will experience joy.

Why is joy such a gift? Is it just about warm fuzzies? No way! What’s amazing about joy is that it works like a superhero power to strengthen us in times of weakness.

There’s an Old Testament story in which the prophet Nehemiah is talking to God’s people at a time when they are deeply troubled. The whole nation is weeping when Nehemiah says these words, “Go and eat what is rich, drink what is sweet, and send portions to those who have nothing prepared, since today is holy to our Lord.
Do not grieve, because the joy of the L
ord
is your stronghold
” (Neh. 8:10, emphasis mine).

Where can we find the strength to keep going when life is tough? Joy! When we feel weak, what gives us strength to carry on? Joy! Joy and strength are two sides of the same coin. Joy fortifies. It shores up. Sometimes it’s the reinforcement we need to stay standing.

As Christians it’s okay to let loose and have joy instead of getting overly wrapped up in our circumstances. My circumstances didn’t change. The jive was still a difficult dance to learn. I was still feeling the pressure of competing on a live show watched by millions. I was still an amateur dancer trying to compete with Olympic athletes. Getting upset wasn’t going to make any of that any easier but choosing joy did! I was strengthened for the journey by making a conscious effort to be joyful along the way.

That may not always look like forcing a smile while learning a new dance routine. My sister noticed my decision to be joyful while on the show. She’s a great mom who homeschools her four kids. She loves it! She’s naturally joyful, but she told me that when she watched me perform and respond with joy on the show she recognized that sometimes she forgets to have fun. She took it as a reminder to put a smile on her face that would serve as an example of joy to her family and all those around her.

Whether you’re a celebrity on a dancing competition or a homeschooling mom of four, attitude is everything. We may not be able to choose our circumstances, but we can choose to smile. We can choose joy.

In fact, my prayer is that Psalm 32:11 becomes the battle cry of the stressed out, worn out, frustrated, discouraged, and maxed out among us.

Be glad in the L
ord
and rejoice,
you righteous ones;
shout for joy,
all you upright in heart.

No matter what we face, we can force those happy brain neurons to keep firing by choosing to unwrap God’s gift of joy.

A Joyful Jive

I don’t mean to give the impression that we can choose joy once and for all. I didn’t slap a smile on my face in rehearsals and then never feel another moment of stress for the duration of the show. Nope, stress and anxiety and nerves came in waves. Every time the waves hit, I had the choice to choose joy or to choose an attitude that would be less constructive.

The moment before we went live for week three was one of the moments I felt pummeled by nerves. The jive was a difficult dance to master with its sharp kicks and flicks, and there was one piece of choreography in the middle of the routine that was hit or miss with my steps. I wasn’t consistently nailing it and I knew my nerves were getting to me even more because of it. I wasn’t sure I was ready to showcase it in front of the watching world.

The stress must have shown on my face because right as we were standing on the dance floor, with the audience surrounding us, waiting for the video package to play before immediately going into the routine, Mark grabbed me and prayed with me. He took my hands, pulled them in close, and recited the Lord’s Prayer, whispering it into my ear. Tears filled my eyes and a huge smile was upon my face as we both said, “Amen.” It was a significant moment for me! Not only did I feel totally loved and supported by Mark, but it was also a huge answer to my prayers. One of my friends had been encouraging me to pray with Mark. My response was, “I’m praying about praying with Mark.” I know that sounds silly, especially because I’m a praying gal and I’m rarely shy about it. I was certainly open to praying with Mark and wanted to, but I recognized the amount of time we’d be spending together day in and day out over what could potentially be several months so I hesitated initiating prayer because I didn’t want to force it if it made him feel uncomfortable and make our time together awkward.

There’s a difference between in-your-face and Spirit-led Christianity. I hadn’t hid my faith from my partner or shied away from spiritual conversations at any point in the journey, but I wanted to personally pray with Mark when I felt it was the right time for the right reasons. When he initiated prayer and prayed for me, it was a very special moment and one I’ll never forget. And, it was just the push I needed to let go of my fears and jive my heart out!

What Will You Choose?

Are you in a season of stretching and learning something new and stumbling a bit along the way? Can you not seem to master the “steps” of your roles at home or at work? Are you running a marathon without energy? Wondering how you will ever cross the finish line coasting on fumes?

I get it! I’ve been there. My time on
DWTS
was an opportunity for me to sharpen the tools in my arsenal that I need to live a full life off set. I was reminded that no matter what I face or how frustrated I am tempted to feel, I can choose to focus on Christ and in His presence there is fullness of joy.

What about you? Does your attitude stink? Are you compounding difficult circumstances by responding negatively?

If so, let me be the coach for a minute. Take a break. Breathe deep. Pray. Ask God to help you have an attitude more like His. Flash a smile. Hold it until those happy neurons start firing. Remember where your strength comes from. Have fun. And repeat this battle cry with me . . .

Be glad in the L
ord
and rejoice,
you righteous ones;
shout for joy,
all you upright in heart. (Ps. 32:11)

Chapter 5

For the Lord disciplines the one He loves
and punishes every son He receives.

—Hebrews 12:6

I
magine this.

It’s a hectic Monday morning. I need to get the kids off to school and Val and I off to work. Between the laundry, the backpacks, the lunches, the scheduling, and the carpooling, there is too much to do and too little of me to go around. So, I do what all mamas must—I delegate! I tell Maks, my youngest, that he is in charge of breakfast for the whole family. If you know a preteen boy, you might be able to predict how this could turn out. We all sit down to the breakfast table to find that Maks has prepared us a feast that includes waffles, ice cream sundaes, French fries, Hot Pockets, Reese’s peanut butter cups, and Doritos. With root beer floats to wash it down, of course! The totality of Maks’s culinary expertise is on display. There’s no time for me to whip up a healthier breakfast, so we all dig in. Truth be told, we all pig out. Then we push back from the table and head into our week with bellies full of sugar, carbs, and a side of grease.

If you know much about me, you know that this is a highly unlikely scenario. We have a family commitment to healthy eating and living, not because we are trying to follow the latest food fad, but because we recognize that our bodies are the vehicles we use to live our lives. If we fill them with junk, we are very likely to crash and burn.

In
Reshaping It All
I wrote about my food mantra this way,

I love food. I love the smell, I love the taste, I love the variety. But I think we all have to come to terms with the fact that, first and foremost, food is fuel for our bodies. Let’s get the entertainment aspect out of our heads for a minute and realize that it doesn’t have to be a 24-7 buffet.
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Food is fuel. If the Bures filled our bodies with junk and tried to head into a busy week, we’d find that we didn’t have the energy needed to focus and accomplish everything on our to-do list. While Maks’s buffet might taste good for a moment, it wouldn’t translate into the right kind of fuel we need to get the job done.

Over the years, my life and body have been transformed by coming to terms with this simple principle—garbage in, garbage out. If you’re a computer programmer, you may recognize that phrase (often abbreviated as GIGO, for you techies). I don’t speak geek, even though I live in the state that hosts Silicon Valley, geek mecca. But I’m a big believer in the GIGO principle. What I put into my body is what I can expect to get out. Put junk in. Get junk out. The same is true for the rest of my life. What I put into my mind is exactly what I get out. Where I invest my energy is where I can expect to get results.

What does that have to do with my time on
Dancing with the Stars
? Everything! Week four was switch-up week. Just when we were all starting to get comfortable, America voted to switch the teams, partnering each celebrity with a different dance professional. If I had to describe that week as a food, I might choose the imaginary breakfast buffet that Maks prepared. It was one of the most enjoyable weeks of the entire competition. Just like sitting down to a giant hot fudge sundae with my family, everything about that week went down smooth, but ultimately it was a week marked by all grace and no truth, resulting in scores that tied the very low scores I received for the rumba. That landed me at the bottom of the leader board with 28 out of 40 points, leaving me way behind all the other contestants.

Week Four, and the Livin’ Is Easy

I knew that switch-up week was coming, and I was most hoping to be partnered with Val or Derek. Maks, who really is a big teddy bear underneath it all, felt too intimidating, and I was hesitant to be paired with Tony Dovolani. For the bulk of the show, Tony was partnered with Nene Leakes. You might know Nene best for her role in the
Real Housewives of Atlanta
. I’d watched Tony and Nene own it on the dance floor during every round of the competition, and I knew Tony was an accomplished dancer and fabulous instructor, but he also liked to joke at my expense. He knew my tendency to think more conservatively and loved to hone in on that to make me squirm. It was all in good fun but he was always out to make me blush! Because of that, I was hoping he would not be my new partner for switch-up week. But when the door flung open to reveal my new partner while the cameras rolled, there stood Tony.

As we talked through our initial reactions about our new partnership, he compared how different it was going to be for him to have had someone like Nene, known for her unfiltered and unabashed dominant personality, to someone like me, who was much more reserved and blushed at a moment’s notice; not to mention our height difference with Nene standing tall at 5'10" and me at 5'2". But Tony quickly put my fears to rest. As we settled in to our new roles of teacher and student, Tony was very sweet and professional. He put up a boundary and traded in the silly jokes for serious but gentle instruction, which was a great relief.

We were assigned the quickstep and given the song “Ballroom Blitz” to dance to. This was technically my first ballroom dance of the show. To understand why, let me give you a crash course in ballroom dance terminology. (You didn’t know that you’d enrolled in Ballroom Dance for Dummies when you bought this book, did you?) There are five points of connection in a ballroom frame. If you have ballroom dancing aspirations of your own or just love quirky trivia like my guy, Lev, check out the five points of connection on the next page. The dances I’d performed in previous weeks didn’t require me to be in a frame with the five points of connection, so they weren’t technically ballroom dances. (But that didn’t make them any easier!)

I had a blast learning with Tony. He was such a good teacher and I was totally at ease. During that week I never forgot my choreography. I felt no pressure at all. Even though we were still training for six hours a day and looking ahead to a live performance in front of millions, Tony managed to make it feel light and breezy. It was like I was on a ballroom dance cruise, not a dance competition. Others noticed a difference in me too. They pointed out that I seemed more relaxed and that my smile was bigger and brighter.

But that’s not all they noticed. At one point Mark popped into our room during rehearsal. It was a pattern of mine that any time someone poked their head into the studio while I was dancing, it threw me. Having unexpected visitors rattled me because my nerves were already on high alert. So, when Mark stopped by unannounced to watch us dance, I was bothered by the interruption. (Particularly because Mark was invited to watch our dance the day before by Tony but refused the invitation and said he wanted it to be a surprise at dress rehearsal.) Obviously, Mark had seen me dance before. He had been training me for weeks. He also knew having someone else in the room unexpectedly rattled my nerves. And with him being my long-term coach, I naturally felt more pressure to do a good job with my new partner in front of him. The combination suddenly filled the room with tension and I didn’t want to dance in front of Mark. Mark kept digging a bit, telling me I was acting like a baby and maybe I was, but suddenly I felt like my ship docked and my cruise was coming to an end. Tony stepped in and kicked everyone out of the room, and immediately redirected our conversation and focused on happy things, and the chill mood I had come to love about working with Tony returned.

Because I really was interested in Mark’s feedback, we scheduled a time for him to come back and see the dance. I was prepared for his critique so I wasn’t rattled. He didn’t say anything to me immediately, but later he pulled me aside and said, “Your frame is terrible. You’re going to get marked off for that.” He recruited another female dancer to model good form for me and sent me back into the rehearsal studio.

As the week progressed, I asked Tony a couple of times if my form was okay. He was always encouraging, saying things like, “Don’t worry about it,” “You’re great,” “Just relax,” and “You’re gonna kill it.”

I killed something all right, but it wasn’t the dance. It was my scores! I ended up with 7s across the board. Tony and I had a blast on the dance floor but when we got to the judges, they saw what Mark had seen during rehearsals. They pointed out that I missed two of the five points of connection. It was the kind of framework they would have expected to see in round one or two of the competition, and something they sympathized with because it was the first time dancing with Tony, but at this stage of the game, it wasn’t enough and I watched my name plummet to the bottom of the leader board.

Those scores were not a commentary on Tony’s abilities as a dancer or an instructor. He’s among the most accomplished dancers in the world. He’s been on
DWTS
since the second season, coaching celebrities and securing a mirrorball trophy of his own. But his style (as much as I loved it) wasn’t what I needed. Maybe it was because it was switch-up week and Tony wanted nothing but enjoyment for me, but what I needed in the competition was to be challenged. I needed to be pushed. Switch-up week was one of the most comfortable weeks I experienced on the show, but ultimately it resulted in a weaker performance. We all love to be comfortable. We all want to have fun, but this week was a jolting reminder that just because something is comfortable and feels good, that doesn’t mean that’s what’s best for us.

All Grace and No Truth

Like every other leg of my
DWTS
journey, switch-up week proved to be a parallel to my Christian faith. The truth in God’s Word isn’t always easy to digest. It doesn’t always feel good to live like He’s called us to live. Sometimes we feel beat up and bruised as we seek to swim upstream against the culture and live out His plan, but He stretches us in ways that are ultimately for our good.

Yes, He is a God of grace. But He is also a God of truth.

In fact, truth is one of the words Jesus used to describe Himself during His time on the earth.

In John 14:6 Jesus was teaching His disciples when He said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.”

Jesus isn’t
a
truth or
my
truth. He is
the
truth. I can take His teachings to the bank!

In John 8:31–32 we read, “So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed Him, ‘If you continue in My word, you really are My disciples. You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.’”