She Dances Over Graves

Today’s story comes from a woman whose journey has been a living testimony of amazing grace! I first met her in my recovery journey, as she took me under her wing and led me through the process of facing my deepest, ugliest scars. When I wanted to run and hide rather than face my mess, she boldly and lovingly encouraged me to press on and believe God for my healing. This side of that healing, I am so thankful for her insistence, and understand that it was born out of her own struggle to persevere in the face of pain and shame.

While I didn’t know her in her brokenness, she has opened up the treasure chest of her life to me and shared the journey she had to fight through, leaving me in awe of the way God truly does resurrect the dead. I stepped into her life in the midst of her transition into promise, and I have watched her dreams become her possession and her reality. What has looked effortless on the surface – what God has just deposited into her life, however, I now know the back story to. I now see the years of faith and fight that prepared her to hold this life that is bigger than she ever imagined it would be.

Seeing her dance her way through her promised land has been a beautiful reminder to me that God is so, so faithful. And that there is always great reward on the other side of great struggle.

Being invited into her story has been a catalyst for me to believe in my own story, in what God is writing behind the scenes. I’ve learned to trust that my story, no matter the plot twists and turns, has an amazing ending that is so worth pressing on for!

I’ve also learned that reaching the end of the story isn’t the only thing that matters. This journey is beautiful, even in the broken parts, because that is where God meets us so gently, and pours His love over all that threatens to undo us. It’s where He walks beside us with comfort and carries us in His strength. It’s where we discover that, in truth, we are accepted and beloved just as we are. It’s where we discover the will to reach for more, and begin to believe that there might actually be something worth holding on for.

May you draw near to women like this, and even dare to become one such woman for someone else. May you open yourself and your life up to other women on the journey toward breakthrough, and may you discover the land of promise together. May you dance your way into new life, and celebrate all that God has caused to spring up from your graves!

Nine years ago, I was looking out of the windows of a rehabilitation center…broken and bruised.

I was contemplating leaving that day. I wanted to give up. Facing myself in the mirror was just too hard! But leaving that place and going back to what I once knew was just like looking death right in the face. Leaving there meant going back to drugs, alcohol and abuse.

God spoke to me as I stared out that window, contemplating the two paths before me. He told me His plans for me, which seemed quite ridiculous at the time. But I believed Him, and I chose life that day.

I began to cling to the rock of His presence and to lean on Jesus instead of my own understanding. I got out of my own way and began to let God take full control of my life. In full surrender, I walked in blind faith, trusting what God had in store for me.

Not only did I stay, but I also graduated from that program in 2009 and set out to find my God given purpose! Fast forward to today, and I stand in awe over the plans God did in fact have for me….

I am married to a wonderful man, and we have a beautiful three year old daughter. God has given me back the gift of dance, and I am now the owner of Ray of Light Performing Arts, my very own dance studio! God has completely restored me and given me back everything that the devil stole from me! Oh how He loves us!!!

I am walking proof that God will turn your mess into miracles and your test into a testimony!!!”