I think dancing was always a part of my life.  But I didn’t start taking classes until 3rd grade when my parents enrolled me in a tap class.  And to be honest, I don’t remember if I chose tap or if that’s what was available or if my mom had a hidden dream that I would become the next great tap dancer in the world!  I don’t remember much from that year, but I can still do a mean shuffle ball-change.  I actually took a year off from dance (I guess tap wore me out!) to play soccer and then I went back to the dance studio.  Only this time, I did a little ballet and jazz.  And as I got older and better found my rhythm, it was the modern/hip hop classes that I liked the most.  My class even danced in the Miss Spartanburg pageant one year!  After 10th grade though, I stopped dance classes because there were so many other things going on that I had to drop something.  But that dancing bug never left me.

My group of friends in high school would shag dance on a fairly regular basis and I even took a couple of dance classes in college… for college credit!  Easiest A’s I ever received :-)  It was around that same time that I first heard about swing dancing and my church actually hosted lessons and dance nights for a couple of years.  It was a blast!

When Ben and I started dating, I found out a couple of months in that he wasn’t a big dancer.  I’ll admit that I was a little bummed, but I knew he had rhythm because he played the guitar and could sing.  So I had hope that he could easily learn to dance!  After several failed attempts of talking him into going Swing Dancing, I finally just left it alone.  It wasn’t his thing so I didn’t want to keep pushing it.  We’d occasionally slow dance to a song here and there and we did have a first dance at our wedding.  But most of the time when it would come up, I would do some goofy dance move and he would look at me like I’d lost my mind and I would end up doubled over in laughter!  Yes, my moves are that good that I myself can’t help but laugh!

The reason I’m telling you my dance history is because my husband surprised me one night last year.  And it was such a surprise because of how much I loved to dance, how much I wanted to dance with HIM, and the number of conversations we’d had about it over the couple of years we’d been together.  We love going to The Melting Pot.  It’s AMAZING!  And right across from their front door is the door to a dance studio.  I’d always been super curious about the place because I just didn’t know how adult dance classes/lessons worked.  The only exposure I had to that was the movie Center Stage!  So, for Valentine’s Day 2013 we had a date at The Melting Pot for dinner.  Actually, I think it was the day before or after so we wouldn’t be in there with EVERYone else in Greenville.  But, the day before, he’d put an event into our shared calendar for later that week and all it said was… Don’t schedule anything for this night :-* (that’s an emoticon kissy face if you were wondering).  I was SO curious but since I’ve been known to be hard to surprise, I didn’t ask questions.  I just got really excited and couldn’t wait to see what he had planned!  Well, at dinner, he told me what it was… he’d signed us up for dance lessons at the Fred Astaire Dance Studio across from The Melting Pot!!

So we took dance lessons for several months and it was SO. much. fun.  Our instructor was a blast and we have fun doing just about anything together so having an excuse for Ben to twirl me around the dance floor was amazing!

But believe it or not, the whole point of this wasn’t that I finally got Ben to dance… the whole point was that he pursued me.  We both grew so much over this one thing and it amazes me even now, a year later, to see how God allowed me to let go of something my husband wasn’t crazy about but at the same time He worked in Ben to let some of his guard down so that he was willing to try something that his wife loved to do.  And honestly?  That’s the beautiful thing about marriage.  Working together to learn each other.  Loving each other so much that we’re willing to step out of our comfort zones to show the other how much we love them.  We’ve seen that the more selfless we are, the more we’re able to love each other.  And it’s those times that I’m able to put one thing down to help Ben with something that I’m more fulfilled than if I’d just gotten my own thing done and scratched it off my to-do list.

We still have so much to learn about marriage.  But for where we are – just two and a half years into this thing – I’m thankful for a husband that pursues Christ and then continues to pursue me and love me as well as he does.

Happy Thursday, friends :-)