A True Confession - "You Don't Need To Do Things Perfect"

12/17/21 1:39 PM

In the “True Confession” category, I love to dance! In fact - and this is going to date me - at a Disco dance contest at the University of Illinois, my partner and I took second place. The couple that took first place had an unfair advantage. The guy was a 6’6 star athlete who wore shoes with huge heels that had a goldfish swimming around in each heel - hard to beat a goldfish in a shoe!

I also love stories that spotlight people who are doing things that were once thought to be impossible, or at a minimum, deemed to be very, very difficult. That is why we are sharing this story about Rose Ayling-Ellis. It combines my love for dancing with a woman who is doing something incredible, and I do mean incredible.

Rose and her partner are competing on the British version of Dancing with the Stars, “Strictly Come Dancing.” They have made it to the finals which will be held tomorrow, December 18. According to those who have watched Rose, she “glides along the floor with the kind of grace that you might expect of a finalist, hitting each beat with superhuman accuracy."

Now here is where it gets interesting. Rose was born deaf and literally can’t hear the beat. Given my love for dance, I couldn’t help but think: “How can you possibly dance when you can’t hear the beat to the music?”

In this video, she answers that question as she describes to CBS Correspondent Charlie D'Agata about how she and her dance partner, Giovanni Pernice, have been able to dance without hearing the music.

According to Rose, she does "a lot of counting in my head, and when you count and repeat and repeat and repeat, it just becomes a muscle memory," So even though she is deaf, she states that "I can dance, and I can count. It's just a different way of learning, a different way of teaching, and it's different — it's just different!"

It helps to have a great partner when you are doing the impossible.

According to Rose, she really relies on the cues from her great dance partner. Since she and her partner are so close she can follow him. "I don't feel the music," Ayling-Ellis said, "I feel Giovani!" And the results speak for themselves. They earned the earliest perfect score in the history of the series.

I was also inspired by the impact that Rose’s example is having among the British. The British Sign Language website has seen a 3,000% increase in people signing up for online courses, and she has also served as a role model for others.

For example, the video features a 7-year-old Tilly who is also deaf. So after D’Agata showed Tilly the video of Rose dancing, he asked Tilly: "So, you see her dance, do you think, 'maybe I can dance?' Even though you're not like other people, that don't have glasses or hearing aids, you can still be like them?" Tilly had an answer: "Even though you've got problems on you, you can still do the same things as them."

During this crazy Covid period it helps to look up and look around. Because when we do that we can see people who are doing heroic things, people demonstrating compassionate kindness, or people who are living life to its fullest and not letting obstacles keep them from accomplishing great things.

The video also highlights the impact that Ayling-Ellis had when she invited the audience in to her world by dancing through 15 seconds of perfect silence. It is a powerful example of of what can happen when someone steps up and says “I can do this!”

After watching her say: "I feel it's a powerful chance to show people my world. I feel like, this is what is so normal for me, it's so normal…" I loved Tilly’s response after watching Rose: "You don't need to do things perfect, just like other people, but you can still get trying and trying," Or as one of my friends likes to say: “Lord, free me from the burden of having to be perfect!”

In the light of all this Covid stuff, Rose’s story also reminds us of a famous verse from the Book of Psalms: “I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful…”