Discomfort Zone

“You were made for the discomfort zone.  It engages you,  keeps you sharp, and makes you grow,” thus said Curt Rosengren in his article in Motto Media.

He was of course referring to young, upwardly mobile career people, not to a Methuselah like me. 

As a career person, I had no comfort zone.  Advertising kept me on my toes and the new day was just as uncomfortable as the old one. “You are only as good as your last job,” was an adage that drove us. And a new job came even before the last one could end.   

I finally found my comfort zone when I quit that job, which held me captive for years. Now, on my computer keyboard I could get lost for hours, skip meals and sleep. Comfort zone is a nice place to rest, get your footing, examine your heart, and bare your soul. I could stay there till kingdom come.

But came October—Missions month in church, to culminate in a group worship/celebration with eight other churches. The theme was local missions. Each church was tasked to perform something on its assigned ethnic group. Ours was Tausug and in the council meeting of elders, it was decided that the women's group would present a dance number: malong dance. (Malong is a tube skirt made of multi-colored cotton cloth similar to the sarong.)

Guess who had to be in it?

I had not danced in years.  The last time was a Fox Trot number six years ago in a Rotary function.  That was not too bad, I had danced  Fox Trot in my youth and all it took was chutzpah to dance it again. 

So on day one of the malong dance rehearsals, fellow Methuselahs whined every second on practically everything. There were five things to remember all at once: the steps, the counting, the music, the malong folding, and the hand  movements. A good thing our dance instructor, April, was patience personified. She smiled through it all. 

It took three rehearsals for the five-minute number. And when d-day came, I was reduced to a quivering mound of jelly—a panic attack not unlike those I went through in the ad world. “My heart went down to my toes,” I told our Pastor who laughed his hardest in years.

The long, loud applause told us it was excellent; the photos tell us a different story:

 
 
Yet the whole experience—discomfort zone it might have been—was a dance of grace.

We were one with our brothers and sisters in Tausug land.

May we reach them through our missionaries, strengthened by our individual and community prayers, so that this ethnic group of men and women in Mindanao (about one million of them) will discover the glory of God's grace.