OVERCOMER
I can defy the odds through sheer determination but only HE can bring the fresh day.
____________________
This is the woman I quietly sit with, looking out at the river while we share the hard and remarkable details of our lives.
They sit beside one another like trusted friends—My tumors. Her assault.
Seasons of grief and betrayal that spin in our minds in the wee hours like her body held high overhead.
This is where the sacrifice is measured, not in hardship but in the sheer will of reforming and reframing what was, to something breathtaking. As I write, the song accompanying her dance plays like an anthem in my head—
What Was I Made For?
Through all the searching and uncountable prayers, the answer comes not as revelation, but more an embedment—I quarry His words in me like buried treasure then speak them back to Him.
It seems [the achievements, even offenses] the identities we revere—are not purpose but idols we gather and raise high above our heads.
Perhaps we have mistaken the evidence of purpose for purpose itself.
The recognition. The attention. The accomplishment. All expressions of something important, but never the source.
What awes me is not what we achieve, but what we overcome. This is the story rarely told, but the one evident in the extraordinary lifts and spins that Heidi's body will endure as those in beaded dresses sipping champagne look on.
The assault, of body and spirit three years ago, is now transformed into her own ravaging of a body asked to twirl and rise and twist and fall in a captivating dance of overcoming—a power and release witnessed by hundreds.
Its origin never known.
Her, rising above another's shoulders.
Me, measuring the distance between the chair and the door.
Neither tells the whole story.
The Overcomer rarely looks for an audience.
The overcoming is between me and Him.
My stage is an embankment beside a flowing river. My audience is the geese honking overhead.
Like voices at tables surrounding a 5' 2" frame that walks onto a stage carrying nothing but who she is.
Who she is, is the prize.
She knows what He's been trying to tell us all along—the reward is the creation of ourselves.
Not the performance, the applause, or the conquest.
But what we have overcome to stand where we stand.
The breath, the will, the steady we bring.
Six years I have shared of tests, and procedures, and therapies.
Have I boasted enough of the One who holds us upright?
Come close, I whisper.
And He sends a Partner to dance with us.
To raise us up when we are barely crawling.
To bring people to us that bring us closer to Him.
I can dance and practice and prove, defy the odds,
and through sheer determination hold myself when the news is not what I want or expect.
But only He can bring the fresh day,
the new moment,
the next opportunity to bring beauty to someone else's life.
The human spirit is marvelous and resilient, capable of inexplicable things—
like twirling high above another's head
and walking slowly down a river path with geese high overhead.
I wonder how often we mistake overcoming for arriving on the other side of something.
As though we must be finished with the suffering before we can claim the victory.
But there she is, high above the shoulders of another.
And here I am, counting the steps my body will allow.
Two women. Two very different measures of movement.
Perhaps the greater miracle is not what either body can do, but what the spirit refuses to surrender.
I am in awe of the overcomer.
More, I want to be one.
Do you?
NOTES
SOUL MAP
assault → survival → retreat → reaching out → invitation → partnership → courage → overcoming → becoming → grace → HERE
Three years ago, we were both healing from a different kind of assault—
Mine from an inside invader.
Hers from an outside one.
Instead of allowing it to eat her alive like a cancer, she picked up the phone.
A text to a world-class dancer.
A complete and utter shot in the dark.
And then came the response.
Let me see you dance.
And a partnership was born.
How many of us, when faced with the unthinkable, climb under the blankets, close the blinds, shut the door?
REFLECTION
What have you allowed to define you that was never meant to have authority over who you are?
When something alters the course of your life, how do you distinguish between honoring what happened and continuing to live under its power?
Is there a part of your story you have learned to survive, but have not yet imagined living beyond?
What would it require of you to reach toward something beautiful before you had any evidence that it could become yours?
Have you mistaken the visible evidence of overcoming for the overcoming itself?
If the applause never comes, the circumstances never fully resolve, and the body never performs as it once did, what remains of the victory?
And perhaps the more unsettling question—
What part of your overcoming belongs to your own determination, and what part can only be accomplished by surrendering to the One who holds you upright?
DROP YOUR PINS
what happened → where I retreated → what I reached for → the first brave step → what I have overcome → who I am becoming → HERE
Or perhaps yours begins somewhere else.
_____ → _____ → _____ → _____ → _____ → _____ → HERE
YOU ARE HERE.
Image: Heidi Zappone, practice session with Partner, Victor Da Silva
for the Gala Dinner Dance/Spotlight Exhibition at the Dance Queen Trophy World Competition in Tbilisi, Georgia. The images are captured from a video during a grueling practice so they are not as clean and focused as I would like. Still, aren’t they extraordinary?
