Dancing Through Life (12 page)

Chapter 9

He lets me lie down in green pastures;
He leads me beside quiet waters.

—Psalm 23:2

T
he book of Psalms reads like a series of journal entries to God. Written mostly by the great King David, it’s full of gut-wrenching honesty about the ups and downs of life. My tear-filled therapy session was tame compared to the raw emotion that David often wrote with. Here’s a taste:

L
ord
, how long will You forget me?
Forever?
How long will You hide Your face from me?
How long will I store up anxious concerns within
me,
agony in my mind every day?
How long will my enemy dominate me? (Ps. 13:1–2)
I am weary from my crying;
my throat is parched.
My eyes fail, looking for my God. (Ps. 69:3)

David knew how to emote! He’s a therapist’s dream, an open book who wore his heart on his sleeve.

But when you look at the entire book of Psalms, you see that David wasn’t always lamenting. He didn’t only cry out to God when he was weary and worn out. He didn’t only write songs when his heart was full of sorrow and his enemies were at the gate. In fact, much of the Psalms are joyful expressions of gratitude and contentment.

My heart is confident, God;
I will sing; I will sing praises
with the whole of my being.
Wake up, harp and lyre!
I will wake up the dawn.
I will praise You, L
ord
, among the peoples;
I will sing praises to You among the nations.
For Your faithful love is higher than the heavens,
and Your faithfulness reaches to the clouds.
(Ps. 108:1–4)

Here David’s heart is ready to burst with joy and gratitude. He can’t wait for the sun to come up so he can face the day, a stark contrast from when his eyes and throat hurt from crying so much.

I love that David didn’t sanitize his prayers and that we have access to them through God’s Word, because they represent what life and faith are really like for all of us. There are definitely times when life is hard and we feel like we are climbing that 100-foot peak on the roller coaster or plummeting downward in an out-of-control free fall. But life isn’t always like that. Sometimes everything is coming up roses.

Things had certainly become rosier for me on
DWTS
. After a triumphant Argentine tango that landed me in the top six, and a breakthrough that helped me overcome my crippling anxiety, I headed into the next round of competition free from the pressure that had plagued me for so much of the journey.

Flying High

Unlike so many previous weeks, training went pretty smoothly and our live dances went off without a hitch. To start off, Mark and I were assigned the fox- trot, a ballroom dance in 4/4 time characterized by alternating two slow and two quick steps. We performed to Sam Cooke’s “That’s It, I Quit, I’m Movin’ On,” a fun throwback to the 1960s. The whole performance had a vintage feel and the costuming and set made me feel like I was Lucille Ball and Mark was Ricky. Sure, I had some nerves associated with performing a new dance that never went away, but I had a new set of tools to help me through. I breathed deeply, holding my breath for eight counts before exhaling, and repeated that three times. I told myself, “I can do this! I’ve got this.” I remembered that I had access to the choreography that was filed away in my brain. With those tools in place and my newfound confidence, I took the stage with a smile. The enjoyment factor for this dance was huge! I had so much fun and it showed.

Carrie Ann said, “You’ve had a very difficult struggle the last couple of weeks, like trying to find your footing again, and I can see that you have found your footing. Sometimes it’s not about winning, it’s about the journey. And what I see is that you have truly made a breakthrough in your mind, in your confidence, in your spirit. And to me, that’s 90 percent of what the show is all about. And tonight, you’re back on track!”

Whoo hoo! A clear head translated into a great dance. I scored 9s across the board, my best scores of the season up to this point. It was the only dance where I didn’t miss a single step. Afterward, Len declared, “It was fun. It was frivolous. It was so joyful to watch. Such a joyful dance.” The changes in my heart must have been evident on my face. That’s not to say that I had magically become a professional dancer who could memorize routines easily and perform them effortlessly. It was still a lot of hard work to get there physically and mentally on show days! But, I was finally enjoying the ride without the heavy weight that my constant fear of disappointing others had put on me.

In addition to the fox-trot, Mark and I performed a celebrity “dual” dance with Olympic ice dancer Charlie White and his pro partner, Sharna Burgess. The victories I was experiencing mentally freed me to push myself even harder than before. Dancing contemporary to Sam Smith’s “Stay with Me,” Charlie and I completed a thirty-second lift in the middle of our dance without my feet ever touching the ground. It was a bold and dangerous move. We were the first celebrity couple to ever attempt a lift like that and not even the pro dancers on the show had done a lift lasting as long. With Charlie’s strength and experience as an ice dancer, and my comfort and ease with lifts and core strength, we knew we had a winner on our hands. The week felt like a dream.

You may never take the stage in a dance competition. Maybe you’ll never have to fox-trot in front of millions, or be hoisted onto the shoulders of an Olympic ice dancer, but the lessons I learned on this journey apply to each of us. That description of fear of man being a snare that we find in the book of Proverbs is so fitting. Whether it’s a net, or a noose, or a trick wire, the purpose of a snare is to keep its prey tethered. Fear of man keeps us tethered to worry, doubt, and timidity. When we shed that fear, we are free to leap higher than we ever have before. In my case, I was freed up to leap into the air into a daring and difficult lift. Could we have failed? Sure! And I would have found myself knocked flat in front of a huge audience. But I was suddenly willing to take the risk, because I wasn’t just doing this to impress others anymore. I was mentally free to do it for me.

The lifts in that performance were great imagery for how I was feeling that week. Physically, it was a high. I was healthy and happy. Relationally, it was a high. Mark and I were connecting and training well with a new understanding of what made me tick. The camaraderie that I experienced with the other dance teams was energizing, and the love and support from my family, friends, and fans was still pouring in.

But none of that meant that I stopped praying. I was still on my face praying in my trailer every chance I got. I didn’t stop reading my Bible. You could find me plopped in the hair and makeup chair with my Bible open when the going was tough
and
when the livin’ was easy. That’s because the bedrock of my faith is a relationship with Jesus.

In the moments when life is hard and a critical need arises, God is my source of strength. He is the rock I lean on when my own strength fails. In those moments, the Bible is full of life-giving truth that I can cling to. My Christian friends provide prayer and encouragement that helps me go on. But there are also times when there isn’t a lot of drama. What does my faith look like then? Much the same as when I’m in crisis mode. During this week of competition when things were going well, I was still asking my prayer team to pray like crazy. I was still praying too! I was still determined to point to Jesus at every opportunity.

This is the arc of the Christian faith. I don’t want to be a crisis Christian, who has prayer support and runs to the Word when the house is on fire but lives like I don’t need the Lord once the smoke clears. The character of God never changes, and neither does my daily need for Him.

Some churches have a tradition to remind followers of the steadfast goodness of God. It goes like this:

Pastor:
God is good . . .

Congregation:
All the time!

Pastor:
All the time . . .

Congregation:
God is good!

I love that! Because we all need the reminder that God’s character does not change. He is always, always good. Psalm 100:5 (another psalm of David) says, “For Yahweh is good, and His love is eternal; His faithfulness endures through all generations.”

God is good! That’s a truth we can take to the bank. God is good when your nerves are shot and you can’t remember your next move, and God is good when you perform perfectly and knock it out of the park. The character of God does not change and our need for Him does not change regardless of our circumstances.

Sometimes we can get locked in to wrong patterns of thinking about God. When life is hard we assume that God is mad, and we jump through hoops to try to earn His favor. In contrast, when life is good, we think God must be happy with us. We may default to operating in our own strength as a result. But that’s just bad theology. God doesn’t change. His love and faithfulness toward us isn’t fickle. He is consistent. He models steadfast love for us and then calls us to love Him and love others with the same unflinching dedication.

That’s why David wrote, “I will praise the L
ord
at
all times
; His praise will always be on my lips” (Ps. 34:1, emphasis mine).

God’s praises were certainly on my lips at this point in the journey. I was grateful for all that He had carried me through and all that He was continuing to teach me.

In Good Times and In Bad

This pattern of consistency is often modeled for me most tangibly in my closest relationships. I may have gained gobs of Facebook friends and Twitter followers during my
DWTS
run, but my closest friends loved me faithfully before, during, and after this experience. My best friends know me as Candace, not D.J. Tanner on
Full House
, Summer Van Horne on
Make It or Break It
, or celebrity contestant on
DWTS
Season 18.

Yes, I relied heavily on those friendships to smooth out the peaks and valleys of this experience. But real friendship isn’t about surviving the roller-coaster ride. My deepest friendships are with people I just do life with. People who have lunch with me when there’s not some major life lesson churning in my heart. Friends who are as interested in my life when it’s about laundry and carpools and grocery shopping as when it’s about red-carpet walks and high-profile opportunities. Most of these friendships I’ve had since high school, like my best friend, Dilini, whom I met in tenth grade. We’ve spent countless nights in our sweatpants with frizzy hair and no makeup talking on the couch about everything to nothing at all. We can sit in comfortable silence or listen to one another talk each other’s ear off when life is pressing.

In fact, this journey helped me treasure those relationships that are well oiled with years of the mundane. I couldn’t have survived much of the emotional turmoil that came with being on
DWTS
without my friends and family, but I need them just as much to survive and thrive in “normal” life.

That’s especially true in my marriage. Just like I seek to have a consistent relationship with Jesus, I want to nurture a solid marriage at
all
times. I don’t only spend time with my husband when the road is rocky and we need each other for support. We vowed to love each other in good times too!

Yes, Val was a hero during this experience. He made breakfasts, packed lunches, shuffled boys to hockey practice and Natasha to tennis matches, double-checked homework, and made dinners every night—all while cheering me on from the sidelines. He was a wise advisor, faithful encourager, and proactive partner for every single step of my
DWTS
journey. But that’s nothing new. That’s the kind of husband he is and the kind of wife I strive to be.

This picture of marriage was beautifully illustrated by Mark in an interview we did after
DWTS
wrapped. Mark was appearing on
Huff Post LIVE
and I popped into the studio to surprise him as a guest host. Hoping for an inside scoop on his formative years, I asked him, “What’s the greatest lesson that your mom and dad taught you about being a partner?” (Note: Mark’s parents are competitive ballroom dancers, Corky and Shirley Ballas.)

His answer blew me away.

“My mom and dad were legendary ballroom dancers. From them, it’s just really being there 100 percent for your partner. As a man, you have to be the frame. The woman is the art. When you take a dance, Paso, for instance. The man is the matador and the woman represents the cape. You have to be in command. You have to be protective and nurturing but a strong spirit for your partner at all times. Even though you are doing your moves, you have to keep an eye on your partner all the time to make sure that she’s okay and to make sure that she is flourishing on the end of your arm. And I think my dad was such an amazing role model in that sense for my mom, because my mom was and still is one of the best female Latin dancers to ever grace the floor, and without a great partner you can’t be an amazing female dancer.”
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