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Thursday, March 11, 2010

Praise dance class

For the last few months, Rayna has been taking a praise dance class at a nearby school. The girls are in grades 1-3, so she is one of the youngest -- and definitely the smallest. We've seen a lot of improvement in her ability to focus and pay attention to the teacher, but sometimes she still tends to be distracted by whatever the other girls are doing.

As her mom, it's easy for me to get frustrated by this, and for the first half of the course I was often discouraged. But over the last few weeks, I've seen a shift in my perspective. When Rayna is dancing, she gets so into it... her expressions and the movements are so enthusiastic. No one stretches higher or smiles broader -- she truly loves every minute of it. I'm learning to just enjoy the fact that she enjoys it. And, sometimes I just have to laugh -- like when she leaps enthusiastically the exact opposite way of everyone else and almost causes a collision.

Tomorrow morning the class is going to dance some songs at a local nursing home, so yesterday was their dress rehearsal. All the girls looked so pretty twirling around in their skirts (except for the ones who forgot to bring them). Here are a few shots -- Rayna is the one in the magenta shirt in the front row.


(See what I mean about how dramatic she is?!)


It is so wonderful to see the girls learning to worship God in this way!

4 comments:

  1. I LOVE it!!! We should all praise with such abandon. And good for you for celebrating her enthusiasm instead of getting hung up on some notion of perfection. What I love about praise dance is that it's good depending more on the praise than the dance. How beautiful to see her doing something she loves!

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  2. I fully concur!! How beautiful!!

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  3. So neat to "hear" you writing about your journey of growth in understanding Rayna's challenges and gifts. How awesome that one of her gifts is praise! Love the girl.

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