The problem is not making up the steps but deciding which ones to keep.
Mikhail Baryshnikov
The last thing I want to do is go out.
This cold (I feel like a baby for complaining so much about a cold, but man this is a rough one) still has me in its nasty grip. I’d welcome the company of a cup of tea, a quilt, and my sofa, for the evening but we have a commitment.
Gerry offers me an out and I consider taking him up on it but, instead, buck up and head off to get changed. We’re going out for dinner to celebrate the 60th wedding anniversary of some friends. That’s something you don’t do every day.
It’s a pleasant and relatively quiet evening, with questions all around about the length of everyone’s marriage. Gerry and I feel like newlyweds in a room full of 50-plus-year married folks. A few words are spoken, God is glorified, and we enjoy good food and a few laughs.
The highlight, for me, comes after dinner when the anniversary couple urged onto a small dance floor by one of their daughters. Husband protests ever so slightly, Wife reaches for his hand and leads the way, while their kids pull up the song they’ve chosen for the occasion.
Anne Murray’s velvety voice croons Could I Have This Dance from a Bluetooth speaker as the couple waltzes. He, resigned to the dance now completely enjoying it; she, with a sparkle in her eye, looking up into the eyes of her lifetime partner. It’s precious.
When the dance is over, a slightly breathless wife tells the group how dancing was a big part of their courting and early married years—it was jitterbugging that got them on the floor back then. Some time later, Husband sits next to me and confesses he was afraid his kids were going to cue up a polka for the anniversary dance. The glint in his eye tells me he would have been up for giving it a go.
So we come home, and I’m still feeling rough, but I’m glad for the evening and the gift of celebrating the blessing of God on this family. And I think I might be inclined to release some of my reticence toward personal celebrations if they glorified the Creator and not only the created.
Something I’ll ponder . . .
Let everything that has breath praise the Lord
Psalm 150:6
