Marriage is Like Dancing

I just finished reading a book entitled Marriage is Like Dancing. The author, Richard Eyer, a retired pastor and chaplain, wrote this book after he and his wife began taking ballroom dance lessons for the first time after almost forty years of marriage. He soon realized that the partnership in dancing paralleled the partnership between a husband and a wife. In his book, he discusses the importance of the man leading and the connections needed to dance well and to have a good marriage.

My sister and her husband have been married for twenty years, and during a recent vow renewal ceremony, her husband read her a quote by Elton Trueblood. “A successful marriage is not one in which two people beautifully matched find each other and get along happily ever after because of the initial matching. A successful marriage is a system which persons who are sinful and contentious are so caught up by a dream and by a purpose bigger than themselves that they can work through the years in spite of the repeated disappointments and make the dream come true.”

He told my sister at the ceremony, “This has been our dance, my love – all the spins, all the dips and all the twirls… may we always be ready to make life’s difficult sacrifices and may God grant us the courage to weather them. May we be honest with one another , always and forever trusting in the love of the Lord.”

This blog is dedicated to PJ and Susan. They have danced well. Dance on.

Anna's Encouragement

One aspect of life that everyone needs is encouragement. My dear friend, Anna, is an amazing young woman who has a heart to share her faith, her music and even her love for dance. She went to Uganda for a month this past summer to be an encouragement to the people there. She helped in various schools, assisted in putting on festivals and made friends everywhere she went. Anna is a talented musician, and she was able to take a violin with her on this trip. She used the violin to encourage the people with music and even had the opportunity to teach several groups the Virginia Reel and play fiddle music for them while they danced. It is fun for me to think that some of the music and dance that we use to build community here on the Central Coast made its way to Africa to encourage the people there. I know that, through Anna’s gift, the people of Uganda were blessed.

Forever Friends

I’ve heard it said that there are friends for a reason, a season and a lifetime. As I look back on my college years, my “friends for a reason” classmates and I spent a lot of time together in the science labs and study hall as we worked to complete our classes and earn our degrees. We stayed up to late and ate too much junk food as studied and quizzed each other so that we could reach our goals. When college ended, most of us parted ways.

When I was pregnant with my first child, I joined a Mommy-and-Me class with a lot of other young mothers who were learning about motherhood for the first time. We shared this “season of life” as we pushed the babies in strollers, went to the park and had many discussions on the importance of raising children well.

One of these young mothers and I found that we shared more than just a reason and more than just a season of life. Even as our children grew and I moved four hours away, our friendship remained very close. This dear forever friend came up to see me last weekend, and we went on a “field trip” (a long time tradition) to a pumpkin patch with one of her daughters and two of mine. We went in the corn maze and bought pumpkins for our girls. I am thankful for the “forever friends” in my life.