Shall We Dance?

Journal for Christa—

I think my favorite quote from last year—or at least one we got a lot of laughs from—was by our dance instructor. After Kathy watched us do the sequence, she stared into the space between herself and Jay and me.

Now, I’ve taught school for a long time, and I could read her look like a naked x-ray. She was at a loss for words. After a moment, looking rather perplexed, she stated (almost to herself), “you’re doing the steps…but you aren’t dancing.”

As you can imagine, dancing doesn’t come naturally for us. We started dance on a whim because Linda was teaching free lessons at church. We were beyond terrible. And though Linda has taught many gifted dancers, I sometimes think she’s actually the proudest of us simply because we had so little aptitude for it. We surely would have given up without her. Now, we enjoy tormenting Kathy each week.

We’ve learned a lot from dancing—how to follow, how to lead, how to step together. Learning the steps can be hard; but the more we dance, the easier it becomes. And when you don’t have to concentrate on the steps so much, whirling around the room is a lot of fun—dizzying, but fun.

Life is kind of like learning to dance. New experiences require new patterns. Sometimes you can just follow, but you still have to pay attention. (Jay likes to mix it up occasionally just to see if I’m really following.)

I figure as we travel through life, we can either dance or run on a treadmill. We might not be the smoothest couple on the dance floor, but we have a lot of fun.

Shall we dance?