I Could See Myself Dancing

When the vision comes before the healing — and God holds both with equal tenderness

📖 “*You have turned for me my mourning into dancing; You have put off my sackcloth and clothed me with gladness.*” — Psalm 30:11 (NKJV)

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There are losses that don’t announce themselves. They don’t arrive with fanfare or a sudden, crushing blow. They settle quietly — so quietly you almost don’t notice them going. A little bit of yourself slips away, and then a little more, until one day you look down and find your hands are empty, and you can’t quite remember what it was you used to hold.

Dancing was one of those losses for me.

I loved it fiercely as a girl — the kind of love that lives in the body before the mind has words for it. I remember standing on that primary school stage, part of the cast of Joseph and the Technicolour Dreamcoat, and feeling something come alive in me. The music, the movement, the sheer freedom of letting the body say what words couldn’t reach. I didn’t analyse it then, although I was somewhat disappointed that Mama didn’t come to watch the play. I simply loved it.

When I came to Christ, years later, that love found a deeper, holier home. I joined the church dance and drama team, and something in me recognised what the body had always known — that movement could be an offering, that worship wasn’t only in the words we sang but in the way we moved through the sacred space. Like water finding its level, I had found where I belonged.

I didn’t know yet that a long season of stillness was coming.

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Marriage is a beautiful country, and sometimes, without meaning to, we quietly surrender pieces of ourselves at its borders. My husband wasn’t fond of dancing. It wasn’t cruel — simply a discomfort, a preference. At social gatherings, when the music began and others found the floor, I’d draw back. I’d say I didn’t feel like dancing. I said it often enough that I eventually believed it.

These things rarely announce themselves. They just settle quietly — like feathers drifting slowly down, so gently you barely notice them falling — until one day you look and realise the air is still, and something that was once airborne has landed, and you can’t remember quite when.

“The desire didn’t leave, though. It simply went underground. We relocated to Johannesburg, and with that, even the dance and drama team stopped — subsequent churches didn’t have dance and drama.”

📍 Story Moment: A Sunday morning worship service — she can see herself moving freely across the floor but her feet won’t move.

For at least two years, after coming back to Christ, I would stand in worship and watch myself — not in a mirror, but in my spirit. I could see myself moving across the floor in dance: arms wide open, feet finding the rhythm, a flag sweeping through the air like a banner of praise. The vision was vivid and clear and aching.

Yet my feet wouldn’t move.

That was the quiet grief of it — seeing what I could be doing, what I longed to be doing, and standing still. It wasn’t defiance. It wasn’t quite fear. It was as though something in me had simply forgotten how to begin.

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Suppressed joy doesn’t disappear. It waits. It goes underground and finds the deep places where it can survive until the season changes. The body that stopped dancing didn’t stop wanting to. It simply stopped knowing how to begin.

Looking back, I know now that dancing had become a symbol of something far larger — the freedom to express joy fully, openly, without apology. When that was slowly pressed down, my body reflected what had already happened inside. We carry our stories in our muscles, in our posture, in whether we step forward or hold back. The inner world always finds its way to the surface.

Like kintsugi — that ancient art of mending what is broken, not by hiding the cracks but by tracing them with gold — God doesn’t restore us by pretending nothing broke. He restores us by making the healing itself part of the beauty. The fracture lines become the testimony. The places that shattered become the places that catch the light.

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God is unhurried. He never demands immediate freedom from us. He waits with us in the stillness, tending to roots we cannot yet see, doing the deep, patient work of healing before He gently invites the fruit. His patience isn’t passivity — it is love in its most faithful form.

When restoration came, it arrived imperfectly, as all true healing does. My hands and feet wouldn’t coordinate. The body that had once moved with ease felt like a foreign instrument — familiar in memory, but uncertain beneath me. It’s rather like learning to trust again after loss: the willingness returning slowly, the capacity still there somewhere deep, the muscles simply needing to remember. Like wings that have been folded for too long — still made for the sky, still carrying the memory of flight, needing only time and tenderness to find their strength again.

📖 “*To everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under heaven… a time to mourn, and a time to dance.*” — Ecclesiastes 3:1, 4 (NKJV)

I held this verse — and Psalm 30 — like a promise. Not because I was there yet, but because I believed I was moving towards it.

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Today, I especially love flag dancing. There is something about the sweep of fabric through the air — bold, visible, taking up joyful space for the glory of God — that feels like exactly the language my soul was always meant to speak. It is tender and fierce at once. It is surrender and declaration in the same breath. A flag raised in worship says: I am here. He is here. This — all of this — belongs to Him.

Healing didn’t arrive all at once. It came in increments — a step, then stillness, then another step. That’s been my experience with dancing, as with so much of my heart journey. The years of stillness weren’t wasted. God was there in the frozen feet just as much as He is here in the moving ones — tending to roots I couldn’t see, doing the slow, faithful work of restoration in the places that needed it most.

The desire didn’t die. It was held.

✍️ Story in a Sentence: “She could see herself dancing long before her feet remembered how — and God, in His faithfulness, gently taught them again.”

🪨 Life Verse for this season:

📖 “*You have turned for me my mourning into dancing; You have put off my sackcloth and clothed me with gladness.*” — Psalm 30:11 (NKJV)

💡 Reflection

You don’t have to have it all figured out to begin. Your story matters — even the parts that still ache, even the chapters you’d rather not revisit. Sit gently with these questions and let the Holy Spirit lead…

• Is there a joy or form of expression you once loved that you’ve quietly laid down — not through any dramatic decision, but through small, accumulated silences? 🤔 What was it, and what first prompted you to let it go? 🤔
• Have you ever found yourself saying you didn’t want something, simply to keep the peace or to protect someone you love? 🤔 What did that quiet surrender cost you over time? 🤔
• Like Trixi, have you ever been able to see yourself in freedom — in your spirit or imagination — yet felt completely unable to move towards it? 🤔 What do you think held you still? 🤔
• When God begins to restore something in us, it often arrives imperfect — clumsy, uncoordinated, a little awkward at first. Are you in that tender in-between space with something right now? 🤔 Can you offer yourself grace for the unsteady steps? 🤔
• Is there a form of expression — movement, song, art, writing, or something else entirely — that God might be gently inviting you to reclaim as part of your healing journey? 🤔

🎺 Affirmation

You are not defined by the years of stillness. You are not diminished by what you laid down — even if you did it quietly, even if no one asked you to, even if you simply, over time, stopped believing it was still yours to carry. God sees the whole story: the joy before the silence, the silence itself, and the restoration quietly beginning.

The body that learned to stay still can also learn to move again. The feet that forgot their first language can be taught anew. The flag hasn’t been given to someone else. It is still yours — folded and waiting, held tenderly in the hands of the One who placed it there.

You don’t have to perform freedom. You only have to take the first imperfect, uncoordinated, glorious step.

🙌 Prayer

Father, I lay this story — all of it — at Your feet…

You wove joy into us before we knew what it was for. You placed music in us, movement, the sacred language of the body in worship. Thank You that when we lose our way back to that joy — through the slow negotiations of love, through the quiet surrenders that add up to years — You don’t let the song go silent forever.

Thank You for the seasons of stillness we don’t understand until much later. Thank You that You were there in the frozen feet, tending to roots we couldn’t see. Thank You for the small, imperfect return — for Your patience with the clumsy hands and the uncertain steps, with the heart slowly learning to trust freedom again.

For every woman reading this who has laid something down and doesn’t yet know how to find her way back — meet her here. Teach her feet. Steady her hands. Give her back the language that was always hers.

Restore the dancing. Through it, restore the rest.

In Jesus’ Name, Amen.

There is something sacred about what God restores — not simply that He restores it, but the way He does it. Tenderly. Patiently. Without fanfare or demand. He waits until the roots have healed enough to hold the bloom, then says, quietly and without fuss: it is time. Slowly, imperfectly, gloriously, the body remembers.

If you’re still in the waiting — standing at the edge of the floor, seeing yourself move but not yet able to go — take heart. The vision isn’t a taunt. It’s a promise.

Your dance isn’t over. It is coming.