Whitney Houston Told Me To Just Dance With Somebody & I Did Just That

“I wanna dance with somebody who loves me.”

And I did.

He spun the Bob Dylan album on my bright blue turntable, took my hand, and we danced in the glow of my computer screen – my bedroom as the dance floor. He wrapped his arms around my waist and guided me on top of his feet like a father teaching her little one to dance. I was never any good at dancing, but he taught me how to simply feel the music. Feel it deep inside my bones, and just enjoy the moment, before the track and time is up. Before the clock strikes twelve.

I have danced with him for 365 days and I want to keep dancing, dipping, and twirling for 365 more.

As we spun and twirled around the mahogany-stained wooden floor, my thoughts began to sway with the folksy beat and became flooded with images of him.

My hand resting on his shoulder.

His stomach glued against mine.

My laugh replaced the music.

His smile replaced the pale glow of the computer screen, transforming into one million lanterns floating in the midnight sky.

We were one: One person. One human. One soul.

He wasn’t trying to swoon or amaze me in any way. He was swaying to the melody of our hearts beating as one; my chest against his. Each step we took was the act of one. There was no competition, no need for one to follow the other, because the energy could simply be felt. And it ignited like a forest fire, overcoming me with a sense of warmth and safety. It felt like coming home after a long, frigid winter day, sipping hot chocolate by crackling logs under a fleece blanket.

When the song ended, he stepped away, and looked at me with a slight, but soft smile. I wish he hadn’t stopped, I wanted to keep dancing all night. I wanted to be so close to him that we literally morphed into one. Even as our bodies were crushed up against each other as we danced to If Not For You and I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight, it didn’t feel close enough. I wanted to be closer than that.

The truth is, every person out there wants a fairy tale ending. They want to go for a whimsical ride in a magic pumpkin without losing their shoes. They want to take what their mothers and fathers have recited over and over again in story books, and bring that magic to life with a little bippity-boppity-boo.

We will lose lots of things – bobby pins, car keys, time, and people – but sometimes you just have to keep moving through life onto the next thing until you find a pair of dancing shoes that fit just right.

They’re not too tight, too limiting. They aren’t too loose so that you trip over the notes. They’re snug enough to fit you through life. They will get beat up through the pirouettes. The leather will scuff up, peel, and the soles will ware and fade to black. If you’ve really danced, perhaps there will even be a hole or two.

Lose the shoes anyway. Walking through life barefoot is more of an adventure. It builds calluses and makes you tough. Let the bottoms of your heels and toes feel like the working of someone who has wandered in the desert for years and years. Wander through this life without regrets. Find your dancing partner, and dance like everyone is watching, because in the end, the music will stop. And I hope you like your playlist, and your dancing partner, when you look back.

I think my girl Whitney Houston had a point. Don’t just dance through this life with anyone. Don’t settle on easy or what feels comfortable, because things in this world are meant to be difficult and uncomfortable. You’re supposed to feel awkward, like you have two left feet. Don’t just dance through life with anyone. Dance with somebody who loves you. And even if you feel like you may not have a dancing partner, you’re wrong. God will always dance through His beautiful world with you.

He’s the cool guy every girl wants as her prom date. Sometimes, He’s the shy one hiding in the back, and you choose not to notice him. Every day, he stretches out his hand and whispers, “May I have this dance?”

It’s up to you whether or not to choose “yes.”

This is your song. Please choose yes.

 

To The Little Girl They Call Kansas: Thoughts On Makeshift Homes and Growing Up

Last weekend I went to a barbecue at my current boyfriend’s Sargent’s house. He and his wife live in a tiny, square home in the quieter side of the city down a dead-end road. His boxy, grey house at the very end of Woodhaven Lane is nothing impressive. In fact, it looks worn, used, and tired, like there have been some real memories constructed inside, and a couple of fights, too. It reminded me of the kind of place you read in books about struggling families: Black and white linoleum covers the ground while a pale, floral wallpaper peels off the walls. It looks like the paycheck was just enough to pay the bills.

It’s the kind of place that has an empty hole in the center of it when duty and deployment calls. Wobbly chairs gather around the kitchen table and plastics dollhouses and dump trucks scatter across the enclosed porch, opening to a small, green backyard. The minimal house was nothing beautiful on the outside or the inside, but God, it felt like a real home with tough skin (and smelled of brisket and collared greens). However, that hole is filled by the heart of someone incredibly unique.

It was in these four, short walls where I met Kansas.

Kansas is approximately three feet tall, has long, wavy blonde hair, and bright blue eyes that sparkle like the moon dancing over the ocean on a cool night. Kansas loves animals, playing basketball, and she can even talk to her imaginary friend – which just so happen to be a ghost named Emily who lives under that dingy, 1970’s kitchen floor.

Kansas brings things to life with her wild imagination. She has a heart so big that it could encompass the entire universe, and everything beyond it, too. I thought it was ironic that she was named after a state that Dorothy said is “no place like home.” Kansas felt like home to me as I held her in my long and lanky arms. This strawberry blonde-haired angel made me realize that one day, like the Sargent and his wife, I will have my own little family. I will have my own little makeshift home. I will work from nine to five and struggle to pay the bills. I will decorate it with blood, sweat, and tears. I will have my own little Kansas dancing around the backyard as if the world is her stage. And she owns it.

This thought terrified me and set off my anxiety, but it, also, made me so incredibly hopeful. Coming from a single-parent home, there is nothing I want more in this world than to be a mother to a beautiful spirit like Kansas. My parents divorced when my brother and I were four years old, and my dad passed away five short years later. I never deeply and truly got to know my Dad on the level I so wish I could have. I feel cheated. Bitter. Alone. But, it only ignites the fire inside of me to love and support my own future family with all of my heart and soul. I want it to be perfect. And I know, someday, I will make it perfect, even if I struggle, in the end it will be beautiful.

She may only be four years old, but Kansas taught me a lot about what new homes and new beginning feel like. Her energy radiated throughout the surrounding walls, and you simply couldn’t help but to pick her up in your arms and hold her close to your heart until she falls asleep clutching your arm. You want to keep this girl- this child – safe and sound from the world. I wanted to shelter her from the chaotic storms of the world, the corruption and ugliness of human life, and only allow beautiful things to grace her spirit.

Kansas has a little flicker inside of her that keeps growing. And, one day, she is going to set the whole world on fire.

She showed me that even if a home is a little broken, and if it is not so pretty on the outside, that it is the people in it that make it beautiful. It’s not about having the perfect HGTV-esque home with the draped matching the carpets and the shiplap. It’s about structure; how it is built, from the ground up, and what everyone puts into it. A house isn’t built in a day – neither are families, dreams, or just about anything else. Life doesn’t come with an instruction manual, and that’s the whimsical part about it – to just have fun with it. Kansas showed me that the structure of the people inside, not the four surrounding walls, are what holds a home together. Laughter makes the skeleton of the house. The windows are draped with positivity, allowing the light to come in. Kansas let her light inside her family. And I feel it in my bones that she will set the world on fire. I hope I will, too.

 

 

Dear Monday 1: Summer Bucket List

Dear Monday,

You can be a huge pain in the butt. You can be a burden. You are the dreaded reminder that a free-spirited weekend does not last forever, but only for a few short days. Monday, you get a lot of flack, and maybe you don’t deserve it. You get our grumpy, sleep-wiped eyes each morning, complaints of the commute to work and the long week ahead. You get a lot of kicking, cursing, and a lot of the blame.

It’s not you, it’s me.

Today is not only Monday, but it is the first day of summer. So, not only is it another Monday to cross off our calendars, but it just to happens that it is the longest Monday of the year. Essentially, it is the worst possible kind of Monday to exist. However, it doesn’t have to be.

Now that summer has, finally, rolled around the bend, it’s time for a change. It’s not only a new season, but it is a new age to be alive. A new chance to start fresh after all that spring cleaning. If you know me, you know that I make a lot of lists. I hate forgetting things. I make lists for anything and everything – what I need to get done that day, pros and cons, grocery, reasons to be alive, reasons to be happy, things to look forward to. It just helps. It’s the same kind of idea that if my room doesn’t look like a nuke exploded in there that I have my life together (sort of).

Well, here I am making a list out here for all of you. I’m making a list of things I want to give up this summer and things I really want to start doing. I guess you could say it’s like a mid-summer lenten season.

1. I’m giving up holding back.

There are too many things I let hold me back, and the number one fan on the top of that list is fear. I am afraid of a lot of things – snakes, tornados, someone breaking into my house, the dark. I am Chuckie Finster in his prime. I am so incredibly afraid of failing. I am terrified of wasting my talents and my gifts simply because I was too scared to open myself up to change. Because I was too scared to make the phone call. Because I was uncomfortable, or felt awkward. Well, the truth is, life is always going to feel that way when you try something new. Open yourself up to new experiences and don’t let your anxiety get the best of you.

2. I’m adding a healthy lifestyle.

Not just physically, but mentally, too. I’ve found that with a physically healthy and active lifestyle comes a mentally active and healthy one as well. I want more of that. I want to feel good and energized; enough with the laziness and putting things off to tomorrow. Enough of waiting for the ‘right time’ to start something. At the young age of twenty, I’ve learned that there is no right time for anything – so suck it up, take a deep breath, and make like Nike – just do it. But remember, it’s always okay to eat the ice cream.

3. I’m giving up on my haters, but thanking them from the finish line.

There’s no point in stressing yourself out about people who aren’t even concerned about you. What’s the point in focusing on the negative people only creating a negative environment and attitude for yourself? Ain’t nobody got time for that. Everyone has haters; everyone has critics. Embrace it, but don’t let it control you. In a way, be thankful for them, because they are a part of the reason you pushed yourself forward. Keep shining. It’s time to let go of the past and say, “Bye Felicia!”

4. I’m adding more of God.

What I’ve realized quite a lot recently is that allowing God into your life is a choice, but he’s never that far away. A professor at my college once told me that you can only push God an arm’s length away. Only an arm’s length. No matter how angry you are at Him, or if you’ve forgotten Him for a period of time, or if you’ve felt like you really can’t feel his presence – he’s there. Only as far as you choose to push Him away. I’m adding more of God into my life. I want to feel his presence. I always though that praying for yourself was kind of selfish when there are a whole lot of people who have it worse than I do. My Campus Ministry Director taught me that it is never selfish to pray for yourself. I told her I could not feel God’s magic and grace in my life , and she told me to pray to feel it. Pray for strength. Pray for guidance. I need ya, big guy, this relationship is NOT over. I am the clingy girlfriend who won’t stop calling. I pray you still pick up the phone, no matter how many times I get your voicemail.

5. I’m giving up being defined by the rut.

I refuse to let my life be defined by the ten-minute intervals before the next alarm goes off beside me. I refuse to keep blaming Mondays for all of my problems. It’s time for a change, and there is no better day to begin than right now. The birds are chirping and the sun is peeking through your blinds. Open them. Embrace this Monday and the one after that, and so forth. Brew some coffee, pour some Cheerios in a bowl and get crackin’ on the journey that is today. It isn’t always going to be easy, but it’s always going to be worth it. I believe in you, and so does everyone else. Turn off the blues this Monday, clear the fog (and the sleep) from your eyes, and blast your favorite song. I’ll be blasting Forever by Chris Brown, because that will forever and always BE. MY. JAM. Stay young and go dancing, friends.

Keep swimming,

Amanda

Pick Me, Please

There is a florist shop downtown that has a sign outside with a different person’s name on it each day. I always wondered what it was for, and I discovered that they play a little game: the flower shop chooses a different, random name every day, and if you’re the lucky person with the name they picked that day, you get a free rose.

The first thing I thought was, “Wow! That’s so cute and creative, I hope they pick me!”

Everyday since that day back in March, I’ve been waiting for them to pick the name Amanda. It’s a pretty common name anyway, so I figured within the last two and a half months, they would have chosen it by now.

Nope.

Ten weeks. Seventy days. And they still have not picked me.

They chose Anna. They chose Carolyn. They chose Shane, Bridget, Arthur, Sabrina, Walter, and even Esther, too. They did not choose me. Not for seventy days, or the weeks long before then. I know I should not be the one complaining, because some of the names that were chosen you can’t even find on keychains. You can find the name Amanda on just about any mug and magnet in gift shops all around – but Ezekiel? I’m not so sure about that.

Every day I wake up and check to see which name has been posted on their Twitter page. Every time I walk by the shop and see the little black chalkboard sign, beautifully decorated with twisting vines and brightly colored flowers surrounding the name of the day, I wait to find my own. I’ve become so obsessed with this flower shop choosing me, that I’ve come to the discouraging conclusion that they will never pick me.

But, why not? Why wouldn’t they choose me? I mean, come on, there has to be at least a hundred other Amandas in this city that want a free rose! Who doesn’t love flowers? Who doesn’t want to be chosen? All human beings want to be chosen. We want to be the lucky winners of prizes, sweepstakes, awards, scholarships, love, and if you’re me – flowers. We all want to feel dazzling and important in this great big world. We just want someone to scream our names from the tops of mountains and declare their love. We all want to feel useful, wanted, desired. The list goes on.

I want someone to pick me like their favorite flower in their garden they’ve spent so much time and energy working on to make flourish. I don’t want to be a weed that is thrown off to the side. I want to be the biggest, reddest, perfect rose in the bunch, because those are the ones that seem to get chosen first, right? No one wants the small ones beginning to brown at the edges, cast in a great, dark shade from an oak tree. No one picks small and insignificant and not good enough. Everyone picks over-the-top, gorgeous things that sparkle. I want to sparkle.

In that moment, I felt a lot like that. I was waiting for a sign – in fact, I was waiting for the sign outside that flower shop to pick me. I was waiting for the day that, finally, I am chosen. Sometimes we feel lost in the crowd. We question whether or not we are good enough, as we admire all of the other pretty flowers in the garden of life around us. We question what we are worth – people, this life, love. I know my flower isn’t the most colorful or the most full, but what I do know is that I don’t need my name written in cursive with pink chalk on a board for the world to see. I don’t need a free rose.

It was then when I decided to write this that I realized that I am already chosen. I am chosen every minute of the day by someone who loves me so much that He died for me. I am chosen by Jesus. Every single time. I sparkle as a guiding light in the eyes of Him. I’m not just a flicker on a tiny candle slowly dying out into a wispy, smoke trail. No, no, no. In His eyes, I ignite like a burning bush full of life and light. Like fireworks on the Fourth of July. Because I believe in His light.

He choses me everyday – sinner or saint. And I couldn’t ask for more than that, right? Where are you going to find someone like that who loves you at your worst and at your best, totally and completely. I could be like,  “Hey God, I really messed up this time, bro, but I know you still love me. I know that even though this is one big, fat mess I got myself tangled up in and I hurt a few people, you still got my back, right?” And He would say yes. He would always say yes. Because He chooses everyone. And I know He chooses me. You don’t need to deserve God’s love, you only need to receive it.

So, if you’re feeling a lot like a blank chalkboard sign or the flower in the back corner of the garden that no one notices or wants, remember this: He picks you, too. Every time. Even when we feel at our worst as the most unlikely to be chosen in a crowded room, as we admire everyone else surrounding us, that’s when He picks us by our little green stems and puts us in His bouquet. He sees beyond our bright and shiny outsides into what lies on the inside – our hearts. At any price; even the price of His only son. And do you want to know why?

Because when you call out, “Pick me, please,” as you’re lying in bed at night, He whispers back, “I already have.”