Dance Moms

Lifetime airs an amazingly popular show called Dance Moms. This show chronicles the life and times of 7 special little girls who are wonderfully talented gymnasts/ballet/dancers. However, it is kind of a task to focus on the talent of the girls when you are bobbing and weaving yourself through the dramatics of the Moms coupled with the antics of the dance teacher.

Upon watching this show, you see immediately the mind games, belittling, and scare tactics the teacher uses to effect the girls in certain ways. She threatens them. She beats them down. She questions their love for dance. She uses every low blow and trick in the book to mold the girls into the caliber dancer she wants them to be. And the Moms, with some fussing and fighting, actually put up with it. They buy into it. The buy her nonsense in exchange for her teachings.

Seems ridiculous doesn't it? But I wonder how many times our own Moms have been in a similar position. Not in taking us to some extra-curricular activity like basketball or dance. But in taking us to the one place we should feel safe...church. In the years since salvation, church has been engrained in me (and Sharon too) - but both of us have seen Pastor's who abuse their position of 'power' in berating the members of his congregation with the Word of God. Not to develop members in their relationships with God, but to force-feed religious tradition down their throats.

I wonder if those little girls on the show feel a special passion for their talent. Do they have a connection with dance out of desire/motivation or because they've been coerced into it? Do they long for more because they genuinely want it or because they've been trained in it for so long? Do they feel that their teacher cares about them as people or that she only cares about them when they are dancing up to par?

As we get older and grow in our walks with God, I hope that we will make sure to nurture the youth and young people around us. Nurture their relationships with God. Spend time WITH them in the Word of God. Instead of relying on our Pastors to teach them how. You never know when you will run into leaders in the church who believe in hell, fire, and brimstone methods similar to the dance teacher mentioned above. Let's be more than just Dance Moms. Let us be the Moms/Sisters/Aunts that show their kids how to dance.

Proverbs 22:6 (KJV)
"Train up a child in the way in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it."

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