A testimony,
Love One Another! 9/2008 → True Love Waits - Pure Hearts
Dancing is my passion. It had always been my heart’s desire to devote a great part of my life to it, though it meant banishing even motherhood from my mind.
Four years ago I accepted Jesus as my one Lord and Savior. Yet I did not entrust Him with every area of my life that He might enter and fill it with His wonder-working presence. I believed strongly that in acting in a person’s life God changes what is not pleasing to Him. I feared He would not be pleased with my involvement in ballroom dance. The endless practice sessions (attended more often than Holy Mass), the dancing events, and the cult of an athletic body clashed with my desire for a closer knowledge of God and pure relationships with others I wanted to see into the interior, but looked at the exterior.
Finally, the time came when God forced me to make my choice. On the one hand, there was my cherished work and dancing milieu, on the other — God and the unknown. Thanks to many people’s prayers, I made the right choice. I took a step off the precipice only to discover that my foot fell on a bridge. There can be no doubt Who placed it there! In one week I received three job offers that I would never have expected. That circumstance enabled me to grow closer to God, but still somewhere deep within me there lurked a certain fear. What was I afraid of? Well, I could not reconcile myself to the idea that I was going to be a mother, for that meant the prospect of interrupting my career, getting out of condition, losing my figure, and, in the extreme case, quitting dance altogether and having to devote myself to the rearing of children. Would I not then always be blaming my children for the loss of what I treasured most: my beauty, physical fitness, and career? I did not wish to hurt them in this way, and so it was better not to have children at all. That is what I thought.
In response to an insistent inner voice, I went on a retreat of the Movement of Pure Hearts. There I had occasion to observe a happy little family with children. It was this family’s young mother who made the greatest impression on me. She had left a promising career to devote — not sacrifice! — herself to the rearing of her children. So much love did she draw from raising a family that she positively radiated love and beauty. “Is not love the meaning of life?” I thought to myself, and immediately I resolved to surrender to God “my own” little area of dance. Let the Lord do with it as He wills — I prayed. I trusted He would fill me with such love for my future children, that in comparison with it my love of dance would seem like a pleasant bonus.
My prayer was heard, as for the first time I felt able to make a spiritual adoption of the child I had conceived. I wondered why for so many years I have been unable to do this. After all, one decade of the rosary and a short prayer every day was so little in comparison with saving a human life; and yet still there was resistance within me. Was. But not any more.
Daily reception of the Eucharist is also healing me in the way I look at others. This is a long arduous process and demands a great deal of effort. I am learning always to look for Jesus in others, for if my relations with people are not right, my relation with God remains weak and shallow, based on wish fulfillment rather than the truth. I am therefore choosing the truth about myself, about others, and about the Almighty!
Agnes
The article was published with the permission from "Love One Another!"
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