Sometimes We Dance

A teammate and I pop into the tent of Amira, a woman we know in the refugee camp where we run a learning center. She greets me with a kiss on my left cheek, right cheek, left cheek, right cheek, then she hugs me with an extra left-cheek kiss to show her happiness.

Last year, a midwife and I visited Amira for prenatal appointments. While the midwife checked on her at her final appointment, I enjoyed watching her kids show off the songs and facts they’d been learning at our center.

Weeks later I visited Amira after she had lost her newborn. Hot tears of grief stung my face as she talked about how the baby died during her C-section.

She jumps to her feet and happily exclaims that she is going to a wedding.

Today my teammate and I sit in her same tidy tent and drink sugary tea.

Amira has eyeliner on. I tell her how her blue ankle-length dress and darker-hued headscarf are good colors on her. She jumps to her feet and happily exclaims that she is going to a wedding later tonight. Then she moves the small tea glasses and her children’s bed to the side of the room, turns on Arab dancing music, and pulls us to our feet to dance with her.

Sometimes we thank God together in this little tent. Sometimes we beg Him for His intervention in her hard situations. Sometimes we clean up the tea that her children knock over while we try to visit. Sometimes we dance.

Spontaneous all-women dance parties still catch me off guard here. But they happen frequently, and they’re starting to really grow on me.

I try to forget about how hot it is in my long sleeves and ankle-length dress and leggings, or how I’m too insecure to dance. Instead, I try to think of the women inviting me to spontaneously dance—how they fled their home country due to war, how they are raising their kids in a tent through summer heat and winter cold, how they don’t experience a lot of the freedoms I enjoy. I want to do something for them, with them.

I try to forget about how hot it is in my long sleeves and ankle-length dress and leggings.

My visit gives them a good reason to shoo men out of the tent for a bit, drink tea, and tie colorful scarves around their waists and dance. They dance because they can. They dance because they learned how when they were little. They dance because it feels celebratory in a way that their reality is not.

I’m not always sure why they dance. But it’s fun and free. These women inspire me. And dancing with them is one of the ways I can be beside them in their life journey and show them the love of Jesus Christ.

Sometimes we dance.

• Praise God for the resilience of women around the world who continue to celebrate and embrace in spite of grief, trauma, and injustice.
• Pray that Amira and Muslim women around the world will discover lasting hope in the message of Christ.
• Ask the Lord to open doors for Frontiers field workers to share deeply with Muslim women and invite them to follow Jesus.