Dancing Through Life (6 page)

We live in a culture that says that relative truth is the path to freedom. If we just let everyone decide for themselves what truth is, then we’re in the sweet spot. The Bible takes a very different stance. Admittedly, it can be a tough pill to swallow. God is truth. His Word is truth. That doesn’t mean it’s always easy to hear and apply what He wants us to do. Living the way God calls us to is often tough! But knowing the truth of who God is and how He calls us to live, ultimately leads to our freedom.

The idea that absolute truth is the key to our freedom seems counterintuitive. Maybe if we circle back to my food analogy, we can get a better grasp on it. During the early years of my marriage, I coped with all of the changes that came with getting married—pulling the brakes on my acting career and relocating from California to Canada (brrr!)—by eating. More specifically, I ate whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted. Ice cream late at night? Sure! Cookies for breakfast? Why not!

When it came to food, I was suddenly uninhibited. I threw the “rules” for healthy eating totally out the window and used food to help me cope with a tidal wave of transitions. But I didn’t find freedom. Instead, I ended up in bondage to an eating disorder. True freedom came when I learned to respect the “rules” of my body and follow them and ditched my “anything goes” approach to food.

Just like taking an indulgent approach to food led to an unhealthy body, if I focus on God’s graceful side and ignore the truth of His Word, the result is an anemic faith that doesn’t give me the strength I need to really live my life for Him.

That pattern extends to how we treat each other. We need people in our lives who will push us out of our comfort zones. We need people who will lovingly point out sin. We need coaches in our corner who will push us to be better than we are.

Here’s an example of what that looks like in my life.

Post
DWTS
, in the fall when school started, I knew my fall and winter were going to get really busy. I was scheduled to do three films for the Hallmark Channel back-to-back, all of which were being filmed out of town. My husband and kids have always been on board with me being away and filming for three-week stints at various times throughout the year, but because
DWTS
made the start of the year unusually grueling, my daughter in particular needed to share her heart with me. It was a heavy dose of truth. And it hurt!

After coming home from Utah, having filmed my first of the three movies,
Christmas Under Wraps
, my daughter wasn’t exactly happy when I arrived. I couldn’t quite figure out why I was getting the cold shoulder, since we’d been talking, face-timing, and texting the entire time I was gone. Turned out, she missed me. And her way of showing me was by being mad at me. If anyone has a manual on figuring out the emotions of teenage girls, please send it to my address! Val was put in the middle being the go-between for a few days when he finally said, “Honey, you need to sit down and talk with Natasha. She has some things to tell you, and it needs to be a face-to-face conversation. She told me what’s going on and she’s ready to tell you.” Great! I was ready to talk the day I got home and was ready to share a piece of my irritated mind at the unwelcoming homecoming I got from her. I picked up Natasha from school and took her out to a late lunch.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

Truth be told, I had my mom speech all ready for her about how acting out and giving me the silent treatment wasn’t respectful nor was it going to get her what she wanted. I was prepared to talk and lecture her until her eyes couldn’t roll back into her head any further, when she very earnestly and honestly started sharing with me how she felt.

“Mom, you weren’t home much when you were on
DWTS
, and even though we loved it, I missed you. And now, you just left again for a movie, and you’re leaving again in a month for another. I just don’t feel like you do ‘regular mom’ stuff anymore. Papa always takes us to school. Papa picks us up. Papa makes our lunches. Since school started, you even stopped doing morning devotionals with us.”

Ouch!

Sometimes truth feels like a punch in the gut! In this case, I wanted to hold up a glove to defend myself so I asked about all the things I do with Natasha and the boys and, particularly, about the summer that had just passed. I always choose not to work in June, July, and August so I can spend every moment with my kids. I felt she so easily dismissed those summer months to try to prove her point.

Luckily we were both able to lay the boxing gloves down and talk it through because we love each other. Natasha admitted that there were many things I did do with her and that the summer was great, but said that I was always multitasking while being with them. She didn’t feel like she ever had my full attention. That stung my well-intentioned mom heart. Why? Because it was the truth!

What Natasha wanted most was my full devotion and attention whenever I was with her. My boys wanted the same thing. I can look back on my years as a mother and honestly say that I’ve given them that pretty consistently, but 2014 became a fruitful year in regard to work and it took me away from many motherhood tasks I’ve always done on a regular basis. While I am grateful for my work, and recognize it’s necessity to help provide for my family (not to mention, I’m passionate about what I do!), I had to take a hard look at what my priorities had become.

As Natasha’s words settled into my heart—and I’m not gonna lie, they hurt—I knew my priorities had become a little too much about me.

Natasha could have let those feelings continue to fester in her heart. She could have faked it and tried to pretend that everything was okay. She could have vented her frustrations to her friends and slapped on a happy face whenever we were together. I’m sure that conversation was as difficult for her as it was for me. But an all-grace-and-no-truth approach wouldn’t have been better in the long run. Her silence would have driven a wedge between us and eventually the truth would have come out, likely in ways even more painful than our chat over lunch.

I was grateful Natasha told me the truth. It’s easy to forget that sometimes sharing your feelings can be scary or difficult when you’re sixteen years old. I was so grateful for her grace in allowing me to make some necessary changes to get my priorities back on track. It didn’t mean I abandoned my work obligations or reneged on my contracts. It just meant that I made the things she talked about a priority again, like our family daily devotionals, putting away my cell phone or shutting down the computer when I was with them, driving them to and from school and practices as much as possible, and scheduling meetings when they were in school.

And guess what? God knows what He is talking about. The truth really did set us free! We were free to enjoy each other more as a family. Free to spend time together without distractions and free to connect without anger, resentment, and hurt coming between us.

Discipline Is Spelled L-O-V-E

In that conversation with Natasha, she was the one speaking truth and I was the one who needed a course correction. But usually the shoes are on the opposite feet! Every loving parent will tell you that discipline is a necessary part of the parent/child equation. A parent who is wishy-washy on discipline or refuses to acknowledge and correct their child’s mistakes will end up with a tiny tyrant. It may not always feel like the most loving thing to do to discipline a child; after all, discipline is almost always painful for both parties. But in reality, consistent discipline is, in fact, a gift of love. The end result is discernment, self-control, and an allegiance to doing what’s right. Those are qualities that will take your child a long way, and he will flush his life right down the toilet if he tries to make it without them.

That certainly doesn’t mean that loving correction is an easy bull’s-eye to hit! Natasha helped me learn this lesson too.

American Idol
Mama

Natasha can sing. She discovered her voice and love for singing in the sixth grade, but it hasn’t been until the last two years that she realized it was her God-given talent and passion. I encouraged Natasha to take singing lessons so she could learn to use her instrument to its fullest potential and discover all that it was capable of.

Recently, she’d been working on a very difficult song sung by a powerhouse singer. Natasha was eager to have me listen to her version of the song. She’d been practicing all week. As I did, I was so impressed by the strength of her voice and the clarity she sang with. I’d never heard her sing in this style and I was one proud mama! But I also heard where notes were a bit weak in places and needed more work on control during transitions.

In the moment just before she finished singing, my thoughts quickly searched for the right response to her performance. She knows that I’m a big cheerleader and I love to whoop and holler when I’m excited and cheering someone on. And while I wanted to whoop and holler because she did such a fantastic job, I also didn’t want to overdo it because I knew I needed to share some constructive criticism with her. I also didn’t want to be a downer or seem unenthusiastic. I was completely torn in the moment between wanting to encourage (that’s grace!) and needing to be honest that there was room for improvement (that’s truth!). And if any of you reading this have a teenager, you’re feeling my pain of how emotional and touchy this kind of thing can be! It can go south in a matter of seconds and then you’re still feeling the effects for days.

But you don’t have to be a teenager for criticism to launch you into meltdown mode. If I were to poll the readers of this book and ask, “Who loves to be disciplined?” I’d predict I would end up with a big ol’ goose egg. Nobody likes their mistakes pointed out and corrected. When we think of the word
discipline
, we often picture the parent/child relationship, for good reason, but discipline can take on many forms. Maybe it looks like constructive criticism from a boss or friend. Maybe something goes haywire and you suddenly realize the need to course correct. Often discipline comes through the consequences of our wrong choices. It rarely feels good, but discipline is for our good. If you’re not sure about that, picture that two-year-old throwing a stomping, screaming fit on the floor in Target. Left unchecked and undisciplined, that behavior is not going to result in a happy, well-adjusted child. (Or a happy, well-adjusted mama!)

The truth is that discipline is tied to love. I’d love to take the credit for that idea, but I can’t. God came up with it first.

Hebrews 12:6 says, “For the Lord disciplines the one He loves and punishes every son He receives.”

This is a picture of the beautiful balance between grace and truth. It’s because of His grace toward us that He receives us as His children and because of His unswerving allegiance to truth that He disciplines us when we miss His mark. We like grace because it feels good, but grace with the absence of truth isn’t what’s best for us. It’s because of this that God’s Word encourages us to develop a love for discipline.

Proverbs 12:1 says, “Whoever loves discipline loves knowledge, but one who hates correction is stupid.” Those words may seem harsh, but the reality is that when we hate discipline and avoid it at every turn, that will ultimately lead to our demise.

Natasha and I are still learning this lesson together. She finished singing and immediately looked to me for a reaction. She caught on to my confusion before a word came out of my mouth because her face dropped. Apparently I didn’t whoo-hoo quickly enough and had a plastered smile on my face and she knew something was up. I tried to recover immediately by telling her how proud and impressed I was. I really was! She didn’t totally believe me and started crying. I fessed up that I was trying to choose the right reaction that communicated that I thought it was amazing but there were still places that needed work and growth. I hugged her so tight and cried with her. I felt terrible. I was trying so hard not to blow that beautiful moment, but that’s exactly what I did by overthinking it.

In that moment, I had empathy for every parent of an
American Idol
contestant whose audition went awry. You know the kind. They get up to sing in front of the judges with their paper number stuck to their shirt and within two seconds it’s obvious that they can’t carry a tune in a bucket. That doesn’t stop them from singing their hearts out. Simon Cowell’s eyes roll back in his head. One judge puts her fingers in her ears. They actually try to stop the audition part way through, but the contestant won’t have it. They keep singing for all they’re worth. When the train wreck is over, Randy Jackson declares, “That was a little pitchy, dog.” Simon says something rude and insulting and the contestant runs out of the room, sobbing. That would be bad enough, but the tape still has to be played in front of millions of viewers and then talked about around water coolers and viewed in slow motion on YouTube.

All grace and no truth was the track that allowed the train wreck to happen. The more loving thing to do would have been for someone, anyone, to point out that the heartbroken contestant choose a different reality TV show or at least enroll in singing lessons before making their way onto the
American Idol
stage.

Natasha’s song was nothing like an
American Idol
audition gone wrong. She really can sing! But I would not have been doing her any favors by pretending there was no room for improvement.

We talked it out and the tears stopped. Thankfully, she didn’t stay disappointed because she knew that my honest criticism came from a place of love. Sometimes, I feel like I’m a little too constructive and critical, but as a parent, it’s inevitable because I care. Truth in love. Sometimes you get a big whoop-whoop and sometimes you get tears. But in the end, there’s always growth. And that’s the goal.

S-T-R-E-T-C-H-E-D

Switch-up week was fun, but it was all giggles and no glory. The end result was a dance that missed the mark in the judges’ eyes and the scores to prove it. I did learn some valuable lessons from Tony about how to enjoy the process and put my mind at ease more, which I was incredibly grateful for, but I also gained a new appreciation for Mark’s teaching style and couldn’t wait to return to the studio with him.