Ballet Lessons

The last two weeks at our house have pretty much revolved around my youngest's ballet schedule. She is involved in Summer Intensive Workshop, an all day, every day, serious ballet schedule. It's our first experience with this and we had a pretty big learning curve, with a few bumps along the way. Yesterday was bumpy.

Upon registration, we received a link to a 15 page document with instructions, information, dress codes, packing lists...you get the picture. Rather than print it and have to keep up with 15 pages of paper, I did what any tech-savvy mom would do. I saved it to my computer, and I saved it to my iPad. With the iPad, the document was easy to carry with me anywhere. Being the somewhat compulsive person that I am, I read those pages front to back several times, checking and rechecking to be sure I was completely familiar with what we needed to do. My dancer also read over the instructions and checklists, using it as her shopping and packing guide. We had this thing under control.

But something just never added up. I read somewhere, and I heard somewhere, about a "dress code" for the final night of the workshop-a Gala in which all the dancers will perform. I re-checked my 15 page document, but didn't see any such dress code. "Well," I thought, "I guess they will give her that information later." I emailed the school office a few weeks ago to ask if there was a particular style leotard needed for classes, and was told, "No, the only dress code we have is for the Gala." Hmm...again, something didn't seem right, but I didn't know what it was.

Yesterday, I figured it out. I got a call early in the morning. "Mom! I have to have a long sleeve black leotard for tomorrow night!" What?? How did this happen?? I immediately went to my info. Nothing there about a long sleeve leotard! I started calling other moms. Most of them were aware of the long sleeve leotard clause. Was this a conspiracy? Was I loosing my mind? I called my favorite dance supply store. My favorite clerk told me that we should have known about this months ago. Seriously? How did this happen?

In desperation, I even took my iPad to the store with me so the clerk (who should know these things) could look at my copy of the list. She confirmed it. No dress code listed. She even showed me where it should have been. But the page was blank. Weird. So, I bought the necessary leotard and, despite some confusion and anxiety, we were good to go. But I wasn't satisfied. I needed to know how this happened.

A comment from another mom, and a suggestion from my daughter started some bells ringing in my head. I went to my desktop computer, not my iPad, and I pulled up the infamous document. As I began scrolling through it, something amazing appeared. Throughout the document were previously invisible blue boxes with text in them. One of those boxes contained the all-important dress code information. It was RIGHT THERE! There were also other text boxes with less-important, but still pertinent information. Suddenly lots of previously confusing issues made sense! Apparently, my iPad (as wonderful as it is) does not read some documents completely. Nice thing to know...

As I reflected on all of this today, I suddenly realized that there is a spiritual lesson in this crazy story. So much of life is like that document. We think we have things under control, but something is always missing. Some things just don't make sense, UNTIL we learn that we have to view things through the filter of the Holy Spirit. When we do that, suddenly things that never made sense before become perfectly clear! Those missing parts are suddenly visible when we look at things through Christ's eyes. When we ask him to open the eyes of our hearts, confusion becomes understanding.

So, I learned two important lessons this week. Always double check anything on my iPad against a more reliable document reader. And always ask the Holy Spirit to open my spiritual eyes to the world around me!