One thing I've learnt from performances is that everything seem to go wrong on the day of the performance. Be it wrong music, wrong lighting, insufficient floor space, a change in actions, a change in dance positioning, a sprained ankle, a hurt knee. And usually, they would only occur a minute before the dance, or while the dance is occurring.
One rule in performing a dance is to suck it up, smile and carry on. The purpose of a performance isn't to portray the behind-the-scenes problems dancers face all the time, the purpose of the performance is to portray a story, a thought or an emotion.
I've had heaps of experiences and tales from fellow dancers, that when something goes wrong (even during the dance), overcome it with a confident expression.
Knocked your leg on an amplifier? Get back up and keep on dancing.
Slapped another dancer while flinging your hand? Get back up and keep on dancing.
Sprained an ankle before the dance? Suck it up, get back up and keep on dancing.
Because we're on stage, where people stare at every single movement we do. It's much like living in the world as christians, where we're being watched by society. As flawed human beings, we fall all the time. The difference between being a christian and a non-christian is this: God helps us to get back up and keep on dancing.
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In a dance performance, the show must go on. In life, God's Will must go on. :)
Eurythmy = a movement of art that unites form, movement and language (Eurythmy Spring Valley, 2011).
I don't exactly 100% understand how God can move hearts through dance, but I witnessed it myself. Dancing to a story every girl can relate to regarding low self-esteem and self-hatred, I saw God touch the hearts of the audience. Even guys! Marvelous, how a simple dance could bring so much meaning to someone.
Personally, I was too caught up in not making mistakes (due to problems with floor management) to fully immerse myself into the song as I danced, but hearing from other dancers (who were not affected by the floor management problems), the tears were real.
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Have you ever seen a dance, whereby the dancers shed real tears, and the audience shed real tears as well? The entire dance, started out and ended with tears, from dancers and the audience. Crying wasn't the result of a beautiful dance, no I actually thought there were heaps of mistakes. But crying was more from an inward pain that the dancers and audience felt. It was something that everyone (well for girls anyway) could relate to. All glory to God, for being able to use eurythmy in portraying His Message.
Dance isn't merely about movements, it's about portraying your heart and your soul out through rhythm, non-verbally. Alot of people underestimate the power of non-verbal language. We put so much emphasis into speaking and listening that sometimes, the non-verbal language is forgotten. But in actual fact, I believe that non-verbal language is the most honest form of communication. Even in acting! Who says acting is fake? You immerse yourself into the character, there IS some form of real-ness there.
Everyone can verbally lie perfectly, but no one is able to non-verbally lie perfectly.
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I'm in mourning. Mourning because I'll never see him again, because he was so young, because all his dreams and hopes have disappeared, because he was in such pain, because he left his three sisters and mother behind to fend for themselves, because I keep trying to imagine how it was like when he fell (how he felt, how painful and scary it was, how his friends felt when they saw him fall, the horror that seized them, etc).
Alot of people have been emphasizing to me that it's stupid to mope like this. Of course I know being upset and demotivated isn't going to give JJ his life back. But I can't go through being totally normal and cheerful when he constantly goes through my mind. And I can't bring myself to fake a jolly smile when I talk about this, knowing that his family's hearts are shattered, and they are left confused and even more lost. I'm not mourning because I feel I should obtain sympathy, I'm mourning because that's what people do when their friends die. Even Jesus wept! (John 11:35). No one understands, but when I read His Words, I felt comforted.
Ecclesiastes 3:4 - a time to weepand a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance.
I've been told to dance even through this sad time (which I totally understand the point), but God says I can mourn. And now's the time to mourn, not to dance. So for now, I'll mourn for his family. And when the mourning time is over, I will dance.
Just heard that a friend of mine might have fallen off a cliff in Sydney. :( They're still not sure if it's him so his mom is flying over to Sydney to identify his body.
I feel so numb right now, not having the desire to do anything at all. Life is so so precious. I realized that no matter how many deaths I come across, I'll still say this: life is so so precious, and so so fragile. God can decide to take away your life just like that. He decides it all.
Ecclesiastes 3:1-4 There is an appointed time for everything. And these is a time for every event under heaven. A time to give birth and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot what is planted. A time to kill and a time to heal, a time to tear down and a time to build up. A time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance.
I was reading this verse today (before I heard of this sad news) because I felt abit down just now. Devotion brought me here. How timely is this verse! For a disheartening event that occured just now and now. God truly knew what I needed to hear.
Through this waiting process of his body being identified, I felt the need to pray. And alot of people around me are praying that the body does not belong to him, that he's still out there somewhere, missing but safe. But I realized, what's the point of praying that the body is not his, when God's already done what's done? We can't pray fro God to undo events, but we can pray for the family.
He (my friend) recently lost his dad just about a year ago too. So his family is in great grieve now. I'm grieving too, I'm sure alot of other people are grieving too. But above everything that happens, God's watching and is in control. He knows what He's doing. He appointed the time for us to be alive and die!
You are magnificent, eternally, wonderful, glorious. Jesus, no one ever will compare, to You, Jesus. (Magnificent by Hillsongs)
Let His name be glorified, because the reason why we are even created was to please Him. <3
It's never an easy thing when someone you trusted so much broke your heart.
It's been 13 years since my parents divorced. And even after 13 years, I still find myself having so much anger for my dad (don't get me wrong, I still love him, sorta). And I don't know why. I don't know why the littlest things that he does would piss me off, the words he say, the way he judges situations. You'd think that after 20 years of knowing my dad, I would get immune to his ways and stop getting angry at everything. I thought so too.
And throughout last year I lied to myself about how I've finally forgiven him and can accept him the way he is, and that I won't get angry at him anymore. And through occasional emails with my dad, I would try to show him that I love him.
Needless to say, all that love vanished when I went back to KK for the holidays. Suddenly, my perception changed and I realized that all the 'love' that I pretended to have for my dad was fake, because anyone can fake their words on social networking. All the anger inside me welled up again, perhaps even more! I don't recall dreading to see my dad as much as I did during the holidays. :(
I can't pray for him. I've to pray for myself before I can pray for him. I use to always pray for him, now I understand that the fault isn't 100% on him. It's on me. Sure the little things that he do pisses me off and he can always try and avoid those little things, but I'm the one not able to manage my anger. Today in Social and Emotional Development class, my lecturer said that emotions are okay, but it's what you do with the emotions that matters.
Colossians 3:15 - Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body; and be thankful.
Everytime I feel angry towards my dad, I'll just shut up, let the world pass me by and become the party pooper. I guess I've still alot to learn about forgiveness.
Jesus forgave me so I'll try really hard to forgive my dad too! Forgiveness is always a learning journey to take.
This Easter, I was given the opportunity to dance to a beautiful song, 'Beautiful'.
For years I've been living in secrets of self-esteem issues. I've never shared this with anyone because I didn't want to be judged. But sometimes I would cry because I wasn't happy with who I was, and I wanted to be beautiful. To be the beautiful the way the world sees the word 'beautiful'.
And even after believing in God and know that He loves me for who I am, I would still get frustrated at myself, at how 'defected' I thought I was. I would always pray at night, wishing and hoping that He would miraculously change me because I wanted to get out of my skin so badly. And I would always, always, always look at someone else and think 'I wish I was normal like them', or 'I wish I could be comfortable in my skin like them'.
And so this song means so much to me. Because I wanted to be beautiful, to be accepted, to be seen as normal. Because to the world, I'm not beautiful, I'm not accepted, I'm not normal.
And today after dance practice, I came across someone saying 'God doesn't make mistakes'. And you know, I've always knew that God doesn't make mistakes, but it never dawn on me that He didn't make a mistake when He created me, that He wanted me to become exactly who I am today, that He says that I'm perfect (apart from all the sin that I do).
God sees me as perfect!!! And you know, the world's always and forever gonna tell me that I'm flawed, that I look horrible, abnormal and all. But you know what? God says I'm perfect, so who are you to tell me that I'm flawed? In your face!!!!
This post related so much to my assignment on children with special needs.
On a side note (not actually side, actually),
Who are we to judge people by calling them retarded, ugly, physically disabled etc? God created them perfect.
Just cz they don't look like the majority of this world, doens't mean they're not perfect. If God made 90% of us with Cerebral Palsy (an impairment that makes your muscle stiff and so you don't move as naturally as others), and the other 10% without Cerebral Palsy, the whole world would think that having Cerebral Palsy is 'normal' and label the 10% without Cerebral Palsy as weird.
Today, I learnt that God is happy with the way I look, and He probably gets frustrated at me when I ask Him to change me because He sees me as perfect when I see myself as totally retarded.
I learnt that God loves me for who I am, He already had an idea of how I would look like before I was born. I'm perfect, because God's plan for how I would look like is perfect.
I'm still struggling with the whole self-esteem thing, sometimes wanting to hide in a hole and never come out because of criticisms that I face. I'm still learning to accept who I am, that I'm perfect because God made me so. I'm gonna take a long while to fully comprehend how perfect God made me and how perfect God loves me for who I am, but at least I'm getting there.
Tonight, my prayer isn't going to be: God, please change me. It's going to be: God, thanks for creating me perfect.
I know I'm not the only one out there feeling disgusted with myself. I actually reckon that every girl goes through this at least once in her lifetime, so just to let you know in case you haven't already figured it out: God created you perfect. Just cz the world tells you you're retarded, doesn't mean they're right. Hey, God never said that a Cerebral Palsy person look ugly!
We (along with a bunch of other christians from different churches of which I actually just met) prepared huge amount of food in our leader's church (someone whom I've just met too!). We then drove all the way to city (Northbridge area) to give them out to the supposingly poor people.
Even though this is a monthly event that happens in the same place and at the same time each month, lots of people didn't know we were there to give out free food. One of us just went around yelling 'who would like some food?!'
We had rice, curry, salas, coleslaw, potatoes, bread, nachos, cordial drinks and brought watermelons. Took an hour for 21 people to prepare 100 people's average food intake. Another 20 minutes to clean the kitchen and another 15 minutes to drive all the way up, cz we prepared food at Mt. Pleasant. Brought disposable plates, containers (for them to tapao), cutleries and cups, gloves to serve and lotsa of plastic bags to pick up rubbish with (we needed to clean the park where we served too cz otherwise the council would complain that we leave a mess, then forbid us from using the space.
It was great helping out, seeing their faces when you serve them, and them saying 'God bless you' with sincerely grateful smiles. It was great, seeing them eat happily and coming back for second rounds, then coming back to tapao for their family, then going home to tell their family that 'there's free food in the park today!!'. It was sooo great seeing the sick, making their way across the park in slow steps (cz it's a struggle for them to walk) just cz they finally found food and they've been hungry for a while.
Guys, there are so many people out there that has no food to eat, no pillow to rest their head on, no car to get transport from, no clothes to wear. Some of them even need medical attention but they can't afford it! Please, lets do something about it. Don't just think 'Oh yea, poor people, wish I could help but I don't know how to'. We can start with their most important need: food. Just bake potatoes with salt & pepper, and go to the streets and yell 'free food'. I'm sure lots of desperately hungry people would come.
'If you see a problem, fix it. Don't just complain about it, hoping it would go away' (Tham, 2009).
However people, we need to be sensible. I used potatoes as an example because it's cheap, easy to cook, keeps one full and contains heaps amount of vitamins and nutrients people need. Bear in mind that these poor people are always hungry and are most probably malnutritioned, so if you do give food to people (may God bless you), give pratical stuff. Veg, a little bit of meat (honestly you don't need to eat lots of meat to survived, potatoes are enough!), something with a lil bit of sugar, water, fruits. You'll leave the poor people healthier and happier!
My blog is sorta kinda like my online journal (but of course, I don't make things too personal). So hi, welcome to Sam's life! I blog about alot of things that I normally don't talk about to everyone at any given time of the day, so yea, this is the different side of me. The side that thinks alot and wonders alot about alot of things. :)
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