When I Need to Stand Up and Dance Again by Deidre Braley
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We may be familiar with the phrase, "If you pray for flowers, be prepared to deal with a little mud."
But, what if we're looking at the mud all wrong? What if it's not the necessary evil this phrase implies but actually what can awaken our souls to a rebirth and a deeper promise before us?
I think that's what childhood faith is all about. As adults, we're tempted to dismiss it as icky mud, but children see puddles waiting to be jumped in! So today, put on your rainboots because we're jumping in the puddles together as my friend, Deidre Braley, shares her reflection of Psalm 96 with us and reminds us of where our peace and our joy come from and how we can experience this in a deeper way today.
Deidre is a freelance writer and editor. She lives in Maine with her husband and three children, and most days can be found savoring an overly cheesy bagel or drinking a second cup of coffee while working on her weekly column & podcast, The Second Cup. Her debut poetry chapbook, The Shape I Take, was recently published by Bottlecap Press, and her award-winning poetry has been featured in The Way Back To Ourselves literary journal and Maine Women Magazine. Deidre's essays have appeared in Aletheia Today, The Joyful Life, and The Truly Co., where she also serves as the editorial content director. Deidre is a strong believer in the power of poetry, picking roadside flowers, and skipping the small talk.
Many ways you can connect with her...
...on Insta @deidressecondcup
...on Facebook at The Second Cup
...on Substack at The Second Cup
...on her website
...on Apple Podcasts at The Second Cup Show
You can find her book, The Shape I Take, here.
The first whiff of mud every year grows flowers in my belly. I kid you not—out of all my favorite smells in this whole wide world, mud has to be among my top five. On the first April morning when I step out the door and that dense-earth aroma hits me, I want to sing and mourn all at once. Sing, because delicate florals are bursting forth within me and everything takes on a sudden gloss of brilliance. And mourn, because I realize I’ve just spent the entire winter in a low-key state of doom and gloom, having forgotten what it was like to really feel alive.
But life beckons, and I leave the mourning with the winter where it belongs. I’m far too enchanted by the chickadees chattering in the birches, the peepers singing in the pond, and the tender green shoots of our perennials poking through the still-cold earth. I get this instinctual desire to drop to my knees, rummage through the dirt, and appreciate the homely feel of hands that have done hard work.
It is as though everything within me is striving towards refreshment, renewal, and rebirth and I—I am at its mercy, tumbling towards beauty and feeling the reverberations of the whole celebrating earth jostle me into joyfulness.
Psalm 96 reminds me of times such as these. The psalmist writes:
Sing a new song to the Lord; Let the whole earth sing to the Lord - Psalm 96:1
Can’t you just sense the relief there? The glistening of hope? The remembrance that—though it has been dark and dubious for a long hard while, something new is at hand?
These are the moments we wait for: when we can brush the dust of darkness from our laps and stand up and dance again. When—with the realization of such tangible refreshment—we drop our old habits of survival so we can open our arms and gather the abundance to ourselves, inhaling it into our very souls.
The beautiful thing is, we don’t have to wait until the first whiff of mud. Heck, we don’t even have to wait until our bills are paid off, or our children are healthy, or the demands of our job finally let up. Though it seems almost too wondrous to be true, we can actually experience that first-day-of-spring feeling whenever we want—and the psalmist teaches us that the key to doing this is to praise and rejoice in the Lord.
Ascribe to the Lord the glory of his name; bring an offering and enter his courts. Worship the Lord in the splendor of his holiness - Psalm 96:8-9
Here’s the thing: his courts are always bursting with splendor and majesty (v.6), and when we come into them with our offerings of praise, we get to partake in it. Though all the world around us might be stuck in muted tones, the inside of God’s courts are an eternal blossoming of color and light and life. And when we come in and look around and praise God in wonderment, those blossoms start to grow in us, too.
So outwardly, our situation might still look dismal. But our inner worlds can house flowers the outer world wouldn’t even believe. When we don’t just hear promises like, “The Lord reigns. The world is firmly established; it cannot be shaken,” but rather experience them from a seat right in the middle of his vibrance, we become a changed people.
We become men and women who can sing a new song.
We become sons and daughters who can join the seas and fields and forests in their celebration.
And, most importantly, we become people who can—on any given day—experience the complete, unbridled joy of smelling the first whiff of mud on a cool April morning.
Now, It's Your Turn!
Before opening God's Word, take a moment to pray and ask God to meet you there. Then...
Read Psalm 96 a couple times. Highlight what stands out to you.
Circle verbs or specific wording you notice.
Then, write down a bullet point takeaway based on this. "I-statements" help make this personal. Think of this as a challenge statement.
My peace and joy does not depend on my circumstances. When my situation from the outside still looks dismal, I will remember my inner world can house flowers the outer world wouldn’t even believe.
Then, jot down a question or two to think about today. You don't have to have the answer to this question now. And yield to the Holy Spirit - prayerfully ask God to search your heart and lead you to more truth and grow your faith through the Holy Spirit.
How can I pivot from merely hearing this promise to actually experiencing it: “The Lord reigns. The world is firmly established; it cannot be shaken.” How can I experience this from a seat right in the middle of His vibrance so I become changed, I become made new?
Again, we don't have to be Bible scholars and talk only in the thou's and art's of King James version to read this book. ...because when we pray before we read, we are not alone. The Holy Spirit is with us, guiding and teaching us.
Praise God for this!
And praise God for refreshment as we are intentional to spend a summer in the Psalms together, for if we want His truth to ever be on our lips, it must first be planted in our hearts.
Our strength grows as we rely on strength from above. Our joy grows as we see God transforming us from the inside out. Our peace grows as we spend time in God's presence, and we find rest when we intentionally seek the Lord first in our lives, for the Lord is ever our portion.
The good life, well it starts with a good day. Then another. Then another. Let's choose to live #TheGoodDay one day at a time.
I love hearing from you, so go ahead. Leave a comment. Be brave. Maybe your comment will speak life into someone else!
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