No Games … Just Dancing

Most women have a story of heartbreak they could share with you if you ask them. Our tender feminine souls can be so easily hurt, disappointed, and crushed. Stories of heartbreak are many, but each is unique and important because each tear and each dashed dream is the opportunity for redemption by a Savior who loves our delicate, sweet souls which long to be loved, adored, and cherished.

So while my story is not uncommon or special, it is my story and I want to share it with you. Because in this last year my soul has hoped and dreamed and has been disappointed and hurt. And in all that, my pain has been redeemed by Jesus who has made beauty from the ashes of my life.

My story is one probably familiar to many of you who have experience something similar. I loved a man who did not return my love the way I hoped and prayed he would. For a year and a half as I worked along side him, I had 100% - in my job and in our friendship. I wrongly allowed myself to not have clear, firm boundaries in my mind, and I hoped that someday he would recognize how much I truly loved him.

I believed that through sacrifice and dying to myself, and manipulation I could cause him to love and adore me. “I just need to be patient,” I would tell myself … but what I needed was to be honest with myself and with him about how I truly felt.

For months I let myself “read-in” to things he would say and do, convinced that despite the fact he clearly said he wasn’t pursuing me, I knew I could try harder to do, to be, and to look perfect, … or whatever it was that he wanted me to be.

To some of my readers this may sound silly and extreme, but to some I know you know exactly what I’m talking about. How easy it is for us as women to involve ourselves with a man and become deceived, thinking that if only our spirit was a little more gentle and quiet, or our figure a little more shapely, or our disposition a little more charming, then “he,” whoever “he” is in your life, would finally see us for what we truly are and realize his life is incomplete without us.

This is not easy for me to write. Even now, many months after I finally faced my emotional impropriety and my dishonesty with myself with this man and with the many close friends in my life, even now it is hard for me to look at the whole situation because I see so clearly where I was wrong. I don’t want to speak here to the role of a man in a relationship where, although seemingly innocent and appropriate physically, there is much inappropriate emotional intimacy without commitment. I do believe there is a whole conversation around that, and plenty to be said from a Biblical perspective to men who play with women’s hearts, who think that because their pants are on that no harm is being done. But that conversation is for another time and place, and not something that I even want to address.

What I would like to say though, is that heartache is real and that sometimes it can be avoided by having discernment and practicing some clear boundaries. And above all, it can be avoided by being brutally honest about our thoughts, motivations and the desires of our heart.

Beyond that, I want to share with you that even through the pain of disappointment, there can be healing and restoration and Jesus doesn’t want any of his daughters to be sitting in a place of pain, guilt or despair.

For me, the process of healing from this unhealthy relationship began by being brutally honest and forthright about my emotions and desires. I had to risk what felt was everything in order to restore first my relationship with God and second my relationship with my friend. I risked my future, my feelings, and a friendship but looking back now I can honestly say that it was so worth the risk. I sat my friend down and explained how I felt, and told him in no uncertain words what my desires were. I explained I could no longer work with him and was resigning my position. In those moments I felt as though I had lost everything. This is what is so sad to me looking back, because had I been in a right place in my relationship with Jesus I would never have come to this place where this fantastical relationship was paramount and unrealistic. When I say I was honest, I mean it. I literally proposed marriage to him, and he graciously turned me down.

So for the next few months I processed a lot. I had tried so hard to be something else, to be something better. I felt unwanted, unattractive, and unloved. I had to (slowly) through prayer and much conversation realize that I was looking for love in the wrong place and I had to let Jesus love me with his perfect love in order to feel whole again. Let’s just say … NOT an easy process!

And so I took up dancing.

I didn’t take up dancing as a way to “get over” my feelings or to fill my time so that I just didn’t have time to think about my dreams which seemed lost. I just happened to start taking salsa dancing lessons and have since realized that even this fun recreational activity fit completely into God’s plan for my life at this moment. In the midst of feeling sorry for myself, feeling out-of-control of a situation where I HAD felt some control, and feeling discouraged, alone, and unlovely, I began to dance and dance, and through dancing I began to work out and work through some of the toughest issues of my femininity and spirituality.

This form of therapy in my life came from a surprising source, a dance partner who will remain unnamed. I have a huge debt to this man who I met in my dance class because of the way he has refused to play games with my heart over the last months. I was at a point where I was sick of games and sick of thinking my feelings weren’t valid. We began to dance more and more together, outside of class, every chance we got, yet without any emotional relationship. Our relationship was, and still is, strictly dancing. We meet at our favorite place, enjoy a few hours of salsa, and part ways, sometimes saying fewer than 20 or 30 words all evening. I have never felt more respected or more feminine than when I dance with my dance partner.

The absence of games in our relationship, and the intense practice of strong male and female roles, has produced this healing process that has helped me feel beautiful, graceful, and feminine once again. Dancing takes great discipline on both parts. As a woman I find it hard to follow, to wait patiently for the subtle cues from my partner that tell me which way to turn, which way to spin, which foot to move before the other. I often want to dance on my own, out of turn, which always just results in a mess and confusion. It’s also hard sometimes to step up and respond when my partner moves one way or another. But song after song I know Jesus’ love for me more intimately than the last.

So for me, this unusual relationship has built so much confidence and humility back into my life. I have had few other relationships with any men which didn’t involve some game, flirting, or manipulation. But when I dance, I feel as though I dance alone before God, and I feel his pleasure. I sense my femininity so strongly and am able to embrace who God has made me to be, because dancing makes me feel beautiful.

I’m not approaching dancing as some women approach food or exercise after ending a painful relationship. I do not want dancing to fill a need that I have for adoration and love just as God doesn’t want us as women to try to fill our needs by over-eating or starving ourselves. But I do feel as though for me, dancing is a way to be quiet and focused, and to allow myself to be led. And so I am thankful; I am thankful for a Savior who loves me enough to convict me that I am worth more than a man who plays games with my heart. I am thankful for my femininity and emotions, even though they drive me insane when I don’t surrender them daily to the Lord.

I am thankful for the freedom to move and dance, and for the beauty of a relationship where there is a designated leader and a designated follower. And just like a line from one of my favorite movies that says “No games, just sports” … I am thankful for salsa because my experience has truly been … no games, just dancing.