Let your light shine, DARN IT.

Over the weekend, Brynn had her first dance performance. If you follow or stalk me on my various social networks, you already know this story. But now I'm going to tell it in 300 words or so. So.

She's in the Tiny Tots ballet class, which is fitting because she is a very miniature human. She was incensed the other day because her Sunday School teacher thought she was 3. (She's 5.) She was still griping about it on Tuesday. Way to hold a grudge. I remember everyone used to think I was a little kid (when I was a grown woman) and it would bug me, because I couldn't get no respect, and then people would say, oh, you'll love that when you're thirty. And now I'm 33 and no one ever mistakes me for a youngun at all anymore, and that  bugs me.

Anyway. I was pretty excited about this little dance, even though I knew it would mostly be little girls turning in circles the wrong way and looking confusedly at the teacher and so on. Still, I'm a performer, love stages and acting and singing and whatnot, so this was a milestone in parenting.

So we talk about it for weeks and then we go to the rehearsal and she totally loses it every time she gets stage direction. And every time another girl looks at her wrong. And every time her shoe feels weird. And when she sees me, and when she doesn't see me. And all the other little girls are just letting their lights shine for Jesus, and pointing their fingers here and there, and smiling, while Brynn is having a complete 13-year-old-with-a-pimple-on-picture-day meltdown. So I got a little Toddlers-and-Tiaras-mom on her, like, hissing, "Get back over there and do the dance! I mean, you don't have to. Do you want to go home? Then do the dance!"And she is wailing about how hard it all is, and how that girl (inaudible).

So finally it was over and we went home, and I spent her waking hours very calmly and nonchalantly asking if she was going to scream and run off the stage if I let her do the festival. She made no promises. I played her the song to see if that jogged her memory, but she just scowled at me. So I dropped it. Saturday morning she woke up cheery and confident, and carried that all the way through the rehearsal in the morning and eventually, the real performance. She did what dancers that age are supposed to do, look at the teacher and do an arm movement every now and then. I'm very proud.

Also, I am a little concerned that I might be a pageant mom.


(Brynn is in purple)