Does This Cocoon Make My Butt Look Big?

          I have been in this cocoon for 12 years and 9 months, I am ready to come out of it.

     I'm mature enough to know that just because I am ready to come out of it does not mean I am ready to come out of it, but I tell you, I am ready to come out of it, in the impatient sort of way.

     I sold my dance studios in 1999 with the intentions of going full time into dance ministry. It was called "Dance and The Word" Workshops. The desire to teach and dance as a secular business no longer intrigued me. The days of company teams, dance competitions, hours of extra rehearsals, the constant proving myself as a leader in the dance community had lost its lure and I desired to offer dance as a tool and a gift with a more eternal value.

     At the time of my business selling I was up and running with the workshops and had several bookings to teach on weekends. I had written a book called "Disciples of the Dance" and it was selling pretty good. I was ready to make the transition. I had my last show as Artistic Director of Encore Dance Co. in May of 1999, making the announcement onstage at the end of the show that I was leaving and introduced the new owner/director. It was all done and I was ready to take on the new thing that I felt God was taking me to. And then...nothing...no phone calls...no bookings...no workshops...no interest from anyone. It all dried up.

     I went through an identity crisis. Who was I? What was going on? Where did I miss it? I had been a dancer, teacher, choreographer, and a community presence since 1972, now I was at home doing nothing.
For sure, I grew and expanded and developed and learned things I didn't know that I didn't know, spiritually as well as emotionally. But, I still couldn't wrap my mind around why the world had stopped and I had fallen off of it.

     It wasn't until the following year of 2000 and I was signing my tax returns when I saw under my name "housewife" as my occupation. That was when I got it. I was a housewife. The title Instructor/Artistic Director had always been there. Now housewife had replaced that.

      It was at that moment I became very resolute like Scarlett O'Hara was about Tara. If that was what I was, then I was going to be the best housewife there EVER was! If this was my cocoon then I was gonna embrace it and have peace while I was in it. After all, how long could this process possibly take? Right?

     In 2004, exactly 5 years and 5 months after the sale of my studios I began to teach for one of my students who had graduated and left for college and had returned to her hometown to open a Christian dance school. She opened it in 2002 but I did not feel led to be in the studio atmosphere, AT ALL, besides I had signed an agreement with the new owner of Encore that I would not teach in a local school within a five mile radius for 5 years. The beginning of 2004, God began urging me (with not a lot of enthusiasm from me) to help this former student of mine with her vision to have a Christian inspired dance school with uplifting and motivating music, godly movements as well as devotion and prayer time as part of the classes.

      Still, without much gusto I consented and joined in with her call and ministry. Her business grew and flourished by leaps and bounds. She achieved everything in 2 or 3 years that I had tried to accomplish in 17 years with my school and never did.

     I continue to grow and still continue to wonder why this dormancy. What about MY dreams, MY visions, My desires that are wrapped up somewhere in this cocoon that I think is going to split open, at times, because I feel like I'm protruding hugely out of it!

     When it's time, will I be too snug to come out of the rug? Will I be this big, fat, aimless, worm or something that has lost its butterfly vision?

     I have heard that if you try to help a butterfly come out of its cocoon, even if it is coming out on its own already, that it will die. It won't make it.

     So, as I continue to squirm in this personal cocoon and try to survive the transformation process, I will stay attached to the place where it all started...to God...the author and the finisher of my faith. I will cling to His method that is equipping me for my EMERGENCE!

     There are times I think I'll be squeezed to death. There are times I don't think I have the strength to push out. I feel that my life is ebbing away and what will be left of me will be worthless, of no value to anyone.

      Help me, God, to be the best cocooned housewife that there EVER was for I believe there will one day be an emergence-y of me, I will come out, I will fly.

     "Come, my people, go home and shut yourselves in. Go into seclusion for a while....." Isaiah 26:20