Learning to Dance

You’ve seen the dance.  It’s so great that it almost goes unnoticed.

A senior adult couple is best at the dance.  A young married couple is surprisingly not nimble at it, contrary to what I thought when I was half of a young married couple.  (Perhaps contrary to what you think as well.)

Next time you’re around a couple that has been married for decades, observe the dance.  It will take your breath away.

In the manner of highly-skilled dancers, this couple moves together while retaining their separate identities.  Their movements are separate & unique, but they work in combination so well that it seems choreographed.  They anticipate each other’s moves & reactions & wants & needs.  In the great description of a friend of mine, they go beyond completing each other's sentences...they complete each other’s thoughts.

(And that’s why young married couples don’t dance so well.  Not an indictment at all, but the dance as I’m describing it above only comes after years of studying each other & living in very close proximity through good times and bad.)

I’m learning to dance.  I’ve come a long way, by the enabling, transforming grace of God through the love of my wife.  But I’m quite certain that I still have a LONG way to go.

Today is Lisa’s & my 29^th anniversary.  When I got married, I basically didn’t have a clue.  (I may not have many clues now, but I have lots more clues than I had June 2, 1984 in that church in southwest Alabama!)

A couple doing the dance will laugh a jokes unspoken, but shared in memory.  They’ll finish a sentence that the other one hasn’t even started yet.  They’ll smile at each other, knowing that they just shared a thought & perhaps a reaction to the thought…without a word ever being spoken. 

Lisa & I have had multiple instances recently of one of us saying something that the other was thinking at that very moment.  Maybe we’re learning how to dance.  It seems so.  I hope so.

I can’t wait to learn more of the dance, for among men, I am most blessed in being given the extremely high honor & privilege of being Lisa’s husband.

With thanks for 29 years & hope for many more,
Mike