Gritty Steps and Dancing

What is a dance without music? It is a series of steps, performed by grit.

I have a 'to-do' list which bullies me. It forces me into measuring the success or failure of my days by how many items on the list I accomplish. My whole life becomes reduced to how many things I do each day - a series of steps.

I have a sense that this is not what God intends for me. I think He wants me to dance. I think He wants to add the music that will transform my gritty steps into something beautiful.

A couple of years ago I discovered the joy of running to music. I received an MP3 player for my birthday and suddenly my runs turned into something altogether different than they had been. I got faster. I could go farther. Sometimes, when no one is around, I sashay. The music turned running into a kind of dance, it set the pace and lended me energy I had not had before. It makes me smile as I run. Something about moving to music fills me with joy.

I want my whole life to be like that. Not literally like that, of course, but somehow I want to learn to hear God's music and let it set the pace of my days, let it turn my to-do steps into a dance so exquisite that people can see God in it. I want, at the end of the day, to measure its success or failure not by how many items on my list were accomplished, but by how much I was able to hear and move in time to the music of God.

Can I do it? Can I turn housework, homeschooling, paperwork, exercise, parenting, and all the ordinary stuff of my ordinary life into a dance? What I am really asking is, will God do it? Will He dance with me through these things? Is that what He wants? I really think it is.