"The Lord is my strength..."

So, I am now officially a senior...I can't believe it! All I can say is that I feel extremely inadequate to be applying to colleges and finishing high school; I feel so little, so small. My best friend cracked me up yesterday when she said "You know how senior year is supposed to be awesome? Well it's kind of a mourning time for me." haha, but really it's true, it's so scary! But anyway, here is what I've been learning from God recently.
-taye


"I will trust and not be afraid"

As I begin my senior year of high school, I have had to begin the long process of applying to colleges. This process has been somewhat intimidating for me as well as terrifying. The issue has been the fact that I know one-hundred percent that God is calling me to do something with dance, whatever that may be, therefore the logical thing to do would be to major in dance. The thing is that part of me wants to try and make it in a company right out of high school, but God is not calling me to that. I feel like He has a lot to teach me through going to college, so that is what I am going to do. I believe I have finally narrowed it down to applying to four schools: Belhaven University in Jackson, Mississippi, University of South Carolina in Columbia, South Carolina, University of North Carolina School of the Arts in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and lastly Birmingham Southern College in Birmingham, Alabama. Before I really decided on these four schools, though, I had some serious trouble putting all of my trust in the Lord and simply relying on Him that He would guide me where I need to go.
Last night I was looking for a verse to send in my nightly text message I send to some friends and I stumbled upon Isaiah 12:2 which says

"Surely God is my salvation;
I will trust and not be afraid.
The Lord, the Lord, is my strength and my song;
He has become my salvation."

I just love when God gives you a verse that is exactly what you need to hear.

Happy Friday!

ABT Austin

So I got back last weekend from a month in Austin, Texas where I was at ABT’s summer intensive. It was an incredible month, for sure…I learned so much, but not only about dance. Here are some things I learned, though I’m sure I’m forgetting a lot.
-taye


Things I learned, oh so much!

1. No matter how good you think you are at something, there is always a TON of room for improvement. That’s one thing I love about ballet and dance in general, you always have something else to work toward. Over the past month I danced in a class full of people that were really great dancers and I got to take class from some of the best teachers I’ve ever taken from. Doing this taught me that I still have a lot to work on in dance and that hard work is good for me. In dance, I have bad days where I feel like crap and wonder why I continue to do this, and then I’ll have good days where I realize why I’ve been dancing for the past 14 years, and why I love it so much, and what I can do with it in the future. I’m so thankful for all of the teachers that helped me grow as a dancer and a person over the past month.

2. I learned that when you live with a bunch of girls for a month, there is drama. This is one reason I think I was meant to be a guy. But God blessed me with friends that stayed out of drama and I am so glad I had the opportunity to meet those girls and get to know them, even though we’re all from different parts of the country. I learned and grew so much from spending so much time with them, and I’ve come to love them very much and I know we’ll all be friends for a long time. Girls, you know who you are.

3. Even though I was there to dance, throughout my month in Austin I managed to grow spiritually as well. I’ll admit that I didn’t always make time to read the bible, and some nights I fell asleep before I had a chance to talk to God, but I realized a few things while I was there…one, that God is present even when you aren’t thinking about him. Two, that dependency on Christ is something I lack very much. At the beginning of the summer I went to Camp Marannook and so many people were saying how they wanted to be more dependant on God, me being the stubborn teenager that I am thought to myself that I didn’t need to work on that…haha God showed me.

4. I’m realizing that with dance, there are a lot of options for my future and that I’ve just got to have faith that where I’m supposed to be is where I’ll end up this time next year.