restraint

I have a two year old. Any of you who have ever had one, or taught one, or even baby-sat one know that you ought to pity me. Life is a constant battle with a two year old. Some battles are over character, these are exhausting, but not frightening (a two year old's version of un-virtuous is undesirable and unenjoyable but not horrific).

Other battles have stronger immediate consequences... for instance the last time I visited Portland I went to breakfast with a dear friend and her significant other. It was this cool place where you chose your pancake components and then cooked your own pancakes on a hot electrical griddle inlaid in the table. I knew that this was a high risk activity with an Olivia, but decided she was old enough to follow my directions. I warned her about the "hot, hot, owie" that would happen if she touched it. "no no" and such. The one second I turn my head to place my order with the waitress Olivia reaches out to the very center of the hot plate and plants a full open palm right down. She is of course immediately "repentant" and deeply grieved. I felt horrible. I had failed to do my job. I had laid down the law and she had run right against it to her own detriment.

There are more and more of these sorts of situations encountered by us daily now. The strange temptation to run out into the street, run away from me in a store, and other frightening desires often lead us into full out "wars". She becomes irate that I won't indulge her in her desire for liberation and works herself into a frenzy of self pity and woe. I often have to physically restrain her to control her irrational and frantic desire to express her dissatisfaction with my law for her. She hates being restrained.... HATES IT. If I so much as hold down her hands to keep her from hitting me or herself she yells bloody murder as if I were beating her or twisting her arm behind her... Finally, eventually, whether because she calms herself, because I transition from restraint to embrace, or because I leave her in a crib or other safe-haven to work out the remainder of her fit, she does calm down and we are able have an actual, productive understanding of why her actions as a whole were not okay. I hope that some day these will lead to an appreciation of the rules I've laid down, but only God knows.

I think of one of these situations of restraint and tantrum when I read Galatians 3:23-26. captive, imprisoned, guardian are all words that make me think of my relationship to Olive. And what a hope! That in the end it is for the truest liberation! Sonship (or daughter-ship I guess as the case were) without a necessary guardian thru and by faith. Putting on Christ, putting on His mind, His heart, knowing His will because I know Him... my hope is in getting there. I'm so thankful that He is more patient with me than I am with Olive. I often fight His restraint... So thankful for His justification of me in Christ.

Resistance

I've been thinking about resistance lately. It is unavoidable in life; it's a reality of our physicality, and our emotion and intellect. I commented to a friend a couple of days ago that I've noticed about myself that if I have a strong negative reaction to some idea, it's usually because there is some truth to it that I resist accepting; resistance. I love truths that I come across teaching dance that resonate with where my heart is walking and where Christ is changing me.

I have been working with a group of pre/early teens for a bit over a year now. I regularly encourage these girls to create their own resistance. Fight yourself. Create dynamics within yourself by fighting your natural inclination to give in to the forces at work on your body. You see, in dance you encounter the resistance that physics presents to every body. Gravity and friction create entropy, the winding down, the natural resistance that our bodies hit when we tell our legs to lift above head level or our legs to carry our bodies in a jump through the air. We encounter Newton's first law of motion every time we nearly run into the wall once we've finally worked up enough momentum to actually get our bodies to fly successfully through the air. Even in the most basic of ballet steps done at the very beginning of class, the plie, gravity dictates that going down is much easier than coming back up. With all of these cases a basic fight is required. Naturally, we use our easiest, most accessible tools, butt and quads. While you can get through it all this way you will end up horribly imbalanced and eventually injured. An over-development of the quads will give you knee problems and as the quad group pulls on your iliopsoas it will casue back pain, which will be contributed to by your overdeveloped gluteous maximus (aka butt). Ideal is not natural. Healthy is not natural. Balanced is most un-natural...

This need for resistance within our dancing bodies is but an echo of my need for resistance in the heart. There are forces at work on me which necessitate and indeed demand resistance from me. The most obvious is my two year old daughter (or almost any other human interaction in the right context). Daily I meet a battle where I must resist in some way or another; do I opt for the way of least resistance and risk my emotional malformation by using the tools most natural or easily accessed by me? Do I rely on my anger as a "muscle" to empower my correction of Olive? Or even as I am resisting her force against me do I resist even within myself to use those small, easily-overlooked "muscles" of the heart that can relax and balance the natural reaction... I will be formed, will I chose the right degree of dynamic? Then is the added mystery. Only by the Holy Spirit's work as teacher and corrector can I hope to find and then use those small muscles. I cannot ignore or balance my natural reactions by myself because let's be honest, suppression is not balance either; It's not by not using my quads that balance happens, but by finding the right muscles to counter with... aah, for balance.

And there are days. There are days when it seems to be easy, where nothing feels tight or inhibited, where it seems to flow through and from me. As easily as breathing, I can find my balance in pase or in correcting Olive. Then, for no apparent reason, I wake up the next morning feeling tight and cannot for the life of me find my center. And there is no formula! We are organic, unique, and changing beings within and without. There is no set regiment for centering your body or your heart. I am thankful for the teachers in my life who call my attention to my imbalance and encourage and question my resistance of choice.