It’s a dance

Man, it’s been quite the week around here. Changes, opportunities, losses, gains, answered prayers, an inconsistent internet connection at home (putting at least three entries on hold while I contemplated throwing my laptop across the room to see if that would speed things up), and a fainting spell on the train, and it’s not even the weekend yet! There’ll be a post coming about all of that eventually (except the fainting; that was just a Monday morning anomaly), but in the meantime, it’s been on the forefront of my mind.

There are few posts coming down the line that relate to it in some way, but for the moment, I want to re-post something that was on my other blog a few months ago. For reasons that are related to everything I mentioned above (except maybe the internet connection), I’ve been thinking about the way that Colin and I work together, and the fact that in the very early months of our relationship, we each placed ourselves in situations where we were under the artistic direction and ministry leadership of the other.

That decision has set the tone for our professional relationship, but it also allowed each of us a glimpse into the other’s character as a leader, which was so important when we were making those early decisions in our relationship.

This post isn’t as much about the arts as most of this blog is and will be, but it’s one of the foundational ways that my faith has manifested itself in the way I work and live, and because of that, it impacts my art and the choices I make. If nothing else, it’s something that still makes me think — and I wrote it! Seriously, though, this is something that I live in the midst of every day, and it’s on my mind right now, so if you don’t mind a re-run (if you happen to be one of those who reads my other blog), here it goes:

Submission isn’t something that people like to talk about much. It conjures images of being a doormat, of being weak, of abuse and domination, and of power struggles and inequality — and all those things are part of the cultural baggage that comes along with submission. And yet, submission is a biblical, godly concept that reflects an image of who God is and His relationship with humanity, and because of that — because of the inherent fact that everything that God has created is good — it has to be redeemed and understood somehow.

About four years ago, I’d just come through a couple of years where God was teaching me a lot about legacy and identity, and the next thing on this list of “big topics” that He started in on was submission. I wasn’t in a relationship at the time — it wasn’t about being submissive to a partner — but I remember being vividly aware of the fact that it was preparation for marriage, even though the context was different. Specifically, submitting to those in authority over me in ministry and leadership and really submitting my plans and dreams to God were the first steps in understanding something that’s sticky, paradoxical, and too often misinterpreted. I don’t know where that perfect balance lies in relationship to God, to authority figures, to a spouse, but it’s a concept that I’ve been working through for years, and what I know is this: There’s freedom in submission. There’s responsibility and empowerment in choosing to submit, and my journey through understanding submission has, of course, intersected with Colin’s, and as we’re building the foundation of a marriage, we’re now walking through it together, discovering as a couple what it means.

We had a conversation about this with a friend a few weeks ago, which started with a college music professor and choir director saying that he asks his students to submit to him by removing body jewelry, covering tattoos, and dressing nicely for class — and this friend of ours took great issue with that. If he’d phrased it as asking for nose rings to be removed out of respect, she would have had no problem with it, but because he presented it in the language of submission, it became an issue, and even though she doesn’t wear any body jewelry, she was offended that someone else would be asked to remove it.

In that scenario, he asks for submission for several reasons. His own aesthetic sensibilities are offended by sloppy attire and body jewelry, and as the director, he is reflected in his students’ choices, and his choices (and by extension, theirs) reflect the university that he teaches at. Their appearance says something about him, and as the director, it’s his prerogative to require a specific aesthetic. More importantly, though, he lives and works in submission to God, and in that, he wants excellence and godliness to be reflected in how his students present themselves. Does God care whether we wear body jewelry? That’s not the point here. The point is, this professor is teaching his students what godly submission means, and the way they dress for choir is a relatively easy learning curve that will take them far in the future. As he asks them to submit to him, he also teaches them how to submit to God, far beyond a nose ring.

They’re making a choice: whether it’s more important to get this teacher’s instruction (and trust me, it’s instruction worth having; he’s internationally renowned) or to prove something by wearing a nose ring. The student’s choice is to either submit and recognize that what’s being taught is worth dropping the fight or to choose to drop the class and be able to dress however she wants. No one’s forcing her to take out her nose ring permanently; just for rehearsals and performances. If it really comes down to it, no one’s forcing her to take it out at all. She can choose not to take the class, and then no one will say anything. The choice is whether the payoff is greater than the sacrifice.

It always comes down to a choice. We listen carefully for God’s guidance, but no one’s forcing us to follow it. When Colin tells me that God has impressed a certain message on his heart, he still doesn’t force that decision on me — we have the choice, together, to submit to God’s will or not, and either way, we live with the consequences. We discuss it all, and all those decisions are made together, but yes, there are times when I defer to Colin’s wisdom, even if I’d rather do it differently; and times when he defers to my judgment, just like we do our best to submit to what we know God is telling us, even when it’s not what we want to do in the most immediate sense.

I choose to submit to Colin and to recognize him as the spiritual head of our emerging family. I believe that’s a role that God has placed him in and that I’m called to recognize. However, that doesn’t make me any “less” than he is. He doesn’t have a greater intrinsic value than I do, nor is his opinion more valid. We make decisions together, we listen to each other, value each other’s opinions, trust each other, and believe that God speaks to both of us. Submission doesn’t mean that we never disagree, that Colin wins all arguments, or that we never compromise and meet somewhere in the middle. I’m still headstrong and opinionated, and submitting to Colin doesn’t mean that I’ve become powerless and ineffectual.

Most of all, submitting to Colin is done in the full knowledge that it’s because he’s being submissive to God, first and foremost. It’s only because God is the ultimate authority and Colin is submitting to him that I’m able to submit to Colin in confidence and full trust.

As we’ve been moving towards marriage, with the understanding that we’re waiting because God is telling us to wait (part of which we now know the reason for; part of which we still don’t), a significant part of our journey has come from the fact that God has chosen to reveal the timing to Colin, not to me. It’s never been my message to hear, and because of that, I’ve had to learn to trust Colin’s leadership in our relationship fully and implicitly. It doesn’t make it easy, and it doesn’t mean that I don’t chafe against it and get frustrated with it, because I do, but at the end of the day, my desire to be married now has been given over to Colin’s leadership — which, in turn, comes from his submission to and trust in God’s plan, which is the real authority saying “not now.” In this case, it’s his responsibility to listen to God, to have the discernment to understand the message, and to lead us through that process; it’s my responsibility to trust him as he does so.

How will that continue to manifest itself throughout our marriage? I don’t know. Listening to God doesn’t give us all the answers; it gives us a starting point. As we’re waiting for the right time to get married, there’s plenty of forward motion in our relationship, and while we make our decisions in the context of the path God is leading us down, in the end, we still make those decisions. We still have the responsibility to choose wisely and to take the steps forward, not just to wait for something to happen to us. Looking back at these two years, though, I can say with certainty that, aside from the practical reasons, like the economy, school, the job market, and immigration, one of the most important reasons that God has asked us to wait is to give us both the time to learn about submission and leadership and to begin to apply it in practice.

Equally important is understanding the fact that submission is not synonymous with repression or a denial of talent and desires. In the early days of our relationship, Colin and I made a lot of huge decisions, one of which was the decision that I won’t (at least, as far as we can see now) be a full-time stay-at-home mom. When I was young, I’d pictured myself being one; as an adult, that has shifted back and forth, and I hadn’t really come down firmly on either side — until we made the decision that I would go to grad school, and as a part of that decision, Colin asked me to be prepared to continue working once we have kids. Of course, considering grad school implied that I was planning to develop my career, but it became much more than an implication at that point. There are sacrifices either way. I don’t take lightly the sacrifices that we’re both making for me to go to school; and raising kids as a full-time homemaker requires different choices, priorities, and sacrifices than it does to be a mom who works outside the home. Still, the second decision is a consequence of the first, and more than submitting to Colin’s direct request, I’m submitting to the sacrifices he’s made for me — but in doing so, we both recognize who I am as an individual and as an artist, and who I’ll be as a wife and mom.

Many people have at least a passing familiarity with the verses in Ephesians that talk about submission. If nothing else, they know that the Bible says something about it:

Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.

Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her… In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the church — for we are members of his body. “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.” This is a profound mystery… However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband. (Ephesians 5:22-25, 28-33)

The thing that strikes me here is that while a wife is called to submit to her husband, the husband is given an awesome responsibility to be worthy of that submission and respect. When Colin strives to love me the way Christ loves me, how can I not respond to that? How can that kind of love not compel me to respect and trust him? When it’s done right, when it’s done in Christ-like love, Colin’s not asking anything of me that he’s not already giving. He’s not demanding something of me that he’s not demonstrating in his relationship to God. We have married friends who take an even more traditional view of what submission means than we do, but the husband respects and loves his wife, and in turn, has earned her respect and submission. Even though it’s more “restrictive,” so to speak, than the form that submission has taken in our relationship, it (and he) doesn’t deny who she is or her value and equality in their marriage. Our reality of submission is different from theirs, and yet we’re all seeking to live out the same love of God and each other.

And, in fact, the verse before this passage starts says, “Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.” It’s not something that’s only asked of me — I submit to Colin, but there are still instances where he submits to me, and above all, we’re both submitting to God.

I’ve said many times that one of the best things that we did when we started dating was to be under each other’s leadership for a while. In the weeks before we became a couple, I joined Colin’s choir and he came onto the production team of a show I was directing, so when we started dating, we were already in a position where each of us was leading the other. Because the beginning of our relationship was so strange in so many ways, this was one of the best ways to learn about each other. We got to see each other’s leadership styles in action, and we each were put in a position of submitting to the other in a very specific, deliberate environment, not as romantic partners, but as an artist submitting to the director’s vision.

In retrospect, I can appreciate how far that went to build a strong foundation in those first few crazy months. I knew I could trust Colin-the-artist’s work as my designer; I also knew I could trust Colin-the-director to lead me well (and the same went for the way he could trust me in both scenarios). Realizing that he could simultaneously lead and submit within the context of our relationship strengthened my trust in him as someone I was beginning to build a life with, and as we stumbled through those first few months together, it showed me a great deal about his character. In many ways, leading and submitting within an artistic, professional context was the easy part, but it eased the way through the steep learning curve of those huge decisions we made early on.

One of the most beautiful word pictures of this whole thing was written on my cousin’s blog almost a year and a half ago. I’ve held onto the quote since then (that’s how long this entry has been rolling around my head, waiting to be written):

Second, what am I? A ballroom dancer, yes. But more accurately, I am a portrayal of the dedication and commitment it takes to become a reflection of my partner’s leadership. After being greatly involved in dance for four years, I can say with confidence that it takes as much skill for a lady to follow as it does for a man to lead. Ballroom dance requires partners to move their feet at the same time or risk serious injury, so it is no wonder that one partner is given leadership, and the other partner chooses to trust that leadership. Watching a dancing couple one might think that they are governed by the tempo of the music to which they dance. But as we dance, my movements are almost completely an echo of the subtle signals my partner gives me through changes in his posture. By letting him take the lead, I choose to trust his technique and direction, and add to it my knowledge and skill to create an expression of beauty that can be shared with others.

When Colin and I were discussing this entry as I was writing it, he took the picture of a ballroom dance even further as an illustration of a situation where leadership and submission are accepted and healthy. He brought up the point that the partners are of equal, yet opposite, value to the dance — a leader is chosen and the other follows; otherwise, there would be chaos. I tried to paraphrase, but it all ended up sounding like I was just stealing someone else’s idea, so I’ll just quote him instead:

The truth is that the female partner (who also tends to be the submissive partner in a dance relationship) tends to be the center of focus. She is the beloved of the audience, just as a wife is the beloved of a family. The male partner is chosen as the leader, as he is the “base” of the partnership and often knows things critical to the outcome of their performance that the female partner doesn’t know. Say, for example, there is a lift planned, but the male partner has injured himself during the performance and knows he can’t support her for the lift. As the leader and having that information, he is able to maintain the safety of both partners — in dancing, this is one of many reasons why the male partner receives the designation of leader.

To complete the illustration, one can also say that perhaps the female partner has injured herself and can’t complete the lift. She then needs her partner to submit to what she knows (that he doesn’t) to avoid danger for the couple. In the end, it still comes back to the male partner taking the lead and figuring out how to avoid the lift, in this case, and the female partner needs to submit to his lead again in an “ad lib” to continue the dance and see it through as smoothly and safely as possible.

I can’t shy away from using the word “submission” just because it’s been distorted and misused. It’s a God-given truth and a picture of the relationship that exists between God and the church, and within the Trinity — Father, Son, and Holy Spirit (which is the epitome of paradoxical and indescribable, if you want to go there). Marriage is, first of all, a reflection of the fullness of God — a reflection that is only found in the covenant of a man and a woman completing and complementing each other; and, secondly, it’s given to us by God as a picture of the relationship between Christ and the church. Submission has to be a part of that, and understanding it is central to understanding the unity within all of those relationships.

What we can do is try to paint a picture of what submission should be. We can refuse to avoid the word “submission” in hopes that our lives will be connected to the words we use, and we can take seriously the responsibility of learning godly submission. We can show that submission, like everything else related to faith, is an up-and-down process; that we’re constantly taking two steps forward, one step back. We can’t single-handedly reclaim the word and the concept, and we would never claim to have all the answers to what perfect submission looks like or to how to fix what has been broken, but we can fish a little piece of the word from the brokenness that it’s steeped in.