All My Knotted-Up Life by Beth Moore

Author:Beth Moore [Moore, Beth]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: RELIGION / Christian Living / Personal Memoirs, BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Personal Memoirs
ISBN: 9781496472694
Publisher: Tyndale House Publishers
Published: 2023-02-21T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

IF IT’S TRUE GOD OFTEN USES THE BODY OF CHRIST—by that I mean a community of fellow believers—to tell us what he wants from us, what he wanted from me in my early twenties was leg warmers. I was a new mom when the aerobics craze took America by sweat and storm. A handful of women at my church decided we needed a class and I was just the person to lead it. Why, you ask?

“Didn’t you do drill team, Beth?”

“Well, yes, but that’s not the same thing as—”

“Fabulous! When’s the kickoff?”

In my day, we didn’t just start things at church. We kicked them off.

“I’m going to have to give this some thought,” I explained, “because I promised God that, whatever I did, I’d do as ministry.”

Unimpressed, they retorted, “So, do it as ministry.”

“How?”

“How are we supposed to know? You figure it out.”

I turned the idea over and over in my head, then, when I saw them next, said, “Maybe I could figure a way to use Christian music.”

To their credit, they affirmed the idea, though I could plainly see from their expressions that they pictured us stretching in our tights and leotards to “Rock of Ages.”

“I need to actually learn how to do aerobics.”

Exasperated, they asked, “Well, how long is that gonna take?”

It didn’t take long. I enrolled in an aerobics class not far from my home to get the hang of it and, lo and behold, loved it. This was 1980, when Christian contemporary music was just beginning to get airplay on local Christian radio stations. Songs were coming out weekly by artists like Amy Grant, Michael W. Smith, Steven Curtis Chapman, and Leon Patillo, and groups like the Imperials, Petra, Harvest, Farrell and Farrell, and White Heart that were clearly begging for choreography. The music was there if I had enough imagination.

For better and for worse, imagination happens to be one of my strong suits. With a baby on a blanket beside me, kicking her little legs to the beat, I started choreographing aerobic exercises to Christian contemporary music. We announced a kickoff in the church bulletin and on posters in the halls and women’s restrooms a month later. The church let us use a small room if we’d remove the chairs ourselves and put them back afterward, and by the first night, we were already short on space.

Eight people was one thing. What’s a few lunges between friends? But when the class kept growing, I got antsy. I needed to know what I was doing. I contacted Houston’s renowned First Baptist Church because, according to hearsay, they’d spent a small fortune building, of all scandalous things, what they called a Christian Life Center. It was complete with an indoor track, basketball and racquetball courts, a weight room, a café, a bowling alley, and locker rooms with showers. This was a fancy outfit. A friend of mine had seen the women’s locker room with her own eyes and claimed they even furnished handheld hair dryers.

“Wattage?” I asked.

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