Why I Love to Dance :)

One of my favorite things is smiling. It's the natural state of my face and I literally cannot frown - ask me to show you and you'll get a great laugh because I cannot actually get my lips to turn down into a frown. Anyway I was thinking on the way home from church about how much I love to dance. Particularly swing dance (if you tango or anything else fancy, are male and six feet or taller and want to teach me, please let me know) and according to multiple dance partners I must smile while we dance. A LOT. Possibly almost excessively.

Frowning is as painful as it looks

Anyway, I was thinking about that and I know exactly why I smile so much while I dance. It has absolutely nothing to do with the dance partner - not that I don't enjoy the person, there's just a bigger reason. I've narrowed it down to spinning whilst dancing that I feel so completely like a daughter of God - I'm delighting in the dance, and allowing myself to be delighted in. I feel that connection that I am God's daughter, a princess, and dancing and twirling is integrated with my views of princess life and I just LOVE IT! I LOVE being romanced! And dancing for me, regardless of who it is with is romantic because I have a connection with Christ through it. I'm getting all smiley just thinking about it. :) :)

God has really, really changed my perspectives about Him and I this Summer in showing me how intimately He loves and pursues me as a lover. A lot of that is through romance. I had to understand that true romance isn't done as a required part of 'love,' it is a - "Let me show you that I love you. This has nothing to do with you meeting my expectations, nothing to do with requirements, let me whisper to you that I love you and am doing this for you just to show you that. There is no catch."

Romance, like love, is undeserved.

This weekend I was out at a vineyard picking grapes and watched the sun go down over the vineyard while someone was singing love songs in the background. Whaaat? Can we talk about romance at its finest?! And then the next morning I watched the sun come up over the vineyard. Gorgeous. So gorgeous, and all planned for me.

This is a little bit off the beaten path, but still on the side of romance. I was thinking about this the last couple days as I talked with some friends about life and love and all that jazz.

No woman I have met believes 100% of the time (I battle back and forth with this constantly) that she is deserving of love and out of that, not deserving of true romance. I wish I could count the number of times that I have told another woman how deserving of love and a truly wonderful, loving husband and how any man would be truly lucky to spend life together with her. I hear myself thinking - "I completely believe that for this woman - what man would not want to call her 'mine'? - but then there is always a whisper in the back of my heart that says - "For her, yes. She deserves all the love and romance and devotion in the world - but not you." I honestly believe so many women feel the same way - that each woman deserves the love of a husband but in the back of their hearts there is a whisper that says- "They do, but not you."

If you read that and identified this, take this as me grabbing you by the shoulders and shaking that thought out of your lonely heart! You ARE deserving. That whisper is Satan trying to feed you a lie that for some reason, because of something you have done in your past or something you have never done and will never do enough of you do not deserve to be loved in a deep way, you do not deserve that divine romance your heart longs for. That's a lie. You are treasured by Christ in a deeper, more romantic and intimate way than your heart has ever known and he longs for you to know Him back in the way your heart aches for.

He is pursuing you relentlessly. You are loved.

Seriously though - this is pretty romantic.