slavery of many sorts

I've been wrestling this year with the whole obedience out of love idea. Love for God is such an intangible thing. He's far away, He is (or can be) quiet, it's easy for my pursuit of Him to feel cold and impersonal; just a list of religious practices that are supposed to make me feel connected to Him or more sincere in my faith. As a new mom pondering how to teach the love of God to a toddler and beyond, I fear focusing on legalism or going the other extreme and ignoring the desire of God's heart that we be holy as He is holy. You know that foggy feeling when you know you don't know and you want nothing more than to just know but there's something missing from your understanding... it's what I imagine the holy of holies was like on the day of atonement. Rooms within rooms, the final having no windows and filled with smoke. Isn't it interesting that in that confusion, cloudiness, mystery, God annually revealed himself? I think that any idea of Who God is that isn't surrounded by mystery and awe is too simple and is an empty an answer....
So I've been in that fogged way of thinking about this whole freedom from sin and works thing. What then is required of us? Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind and love your neighbor as yourself... but what does that mean? How do I do that? How do I teach that to Olive if I don't even understand it?
I was reminded today of my journey through dance. I began with no technique at all, but had an innate passion for dance. Even before I knew how to technically dance it poured out of my being every time my dad played the piano in our living room. From there I learned some basics with a limited understanding of technique. I eventually made my way to Westside Academy of Dance where I received more information about the how and they continued to refine my natural ability to express the love and passion I had through dance. Finally after I graduated I went to OBT. Now in this analogy of my dance life to my faith life, OBT is that group of legalists who are the antagonists of Galatians... they told me I was horrible, had no technique, had bad turnout, bad feet, was too short, and that there was no place for me in their dance world. It's like telling the Galatians that they needed to be circumcised and follow the Hebrew's code of ethics which they had no hope of following perfectly. During the year that I was with OBT the passion for dance died and all I thought about in every class was the increasingly strong theme of "i'm not good enough" which eventually made me hate dance and resent any hold on my heart it had had over the previous 16 years. It took 1.5 years away from that environment before the God given passion moved me to dance again.
As a teacher I realize that passion is something given. There are a great many technicians in the dance world. A lot of dancers can get their legs high, do 32 fouettes, hold balances for a short eternity, jump feet into the air... these things can be trained and drilled into you; if you start young enough, you can force perfect turnout, break feet into a perfect point... but all of this does nothing to create an artist. Teaching love is next to impossible. You can teach someone good ways of proving love, but even that can become a practice of legalistic "right" actions. Jesus tells us that if we love Him, we will obey His commandments. I don't think we can teach his commandments and say if you obey His commandments you will love Him; that's backwards and will end in a mantra of "i'm not good enough" (which is good and true, but not a final conclusion) and resentment that even after all that hard work, there's no payoff. Passion, love, adoration for Christ are gifts given by the Holy spirit. I can't produce them in my daughter any more than I can make one of my students love dance. I can show her what her actions tell her about her values though. I can show how her choices are an overflow of the heart. More than anything I can pray, for her, for me, for every one of us struggling with how to love God, that in the smoke filled mystery of this freedom from obedience to the laws and freedom from sin that we would meet Christ and the love for Him would overflow into our lives and actions...