Fun Fact: I was a dance minor in College. You wern’t expecting that were you?

While in college, dance is what brought Cindy and me together. We would go and square dance, round dance, line dance, or folk dance any chance we got. I learned to call square dancing and made a pretty good second income for a number of years. I also taught international folk dancing to schools and groups who wanted to learn.

Dance is still in my DNA. I drag Suzanne out on the dance floor every chance I get. I even embarrassed my youngest at the Biergarten Restaurant at Epcot when in the middle of dinner, I unwillingly got Suzanne to polka with me. As far as I’m concerned, a wedding dance isn’t over without a waltz or a good polka.

For me, dance is just a synonym for life, how you approach it, live it, and share it with others. Enter my passion for music, especially country music and you have a great combination. Here are my favorite country songs that you will find me singing aloud and shuffling my feet as they embrace my love of: Music, Dance, and Life.

George Strait is Suzanne’s favorite artist and I want to Dance with you by George Strait is by far my favorite song of his. It’s one of those songs that not only do I sing along, I have a hard time not swaying to the music or getting up and taking Suzanne’s hand into the kitchen, at least until the other night. On the drive home from Rush Tuesday evening I was right on key and well into the second verse when: “If we have a chance to make one heart out of two, I just want to dance with you”. It was at this point as the chorus hit that I began to sob as thoughts of not being able to dance with Suzanne for years to come filled my soul.

‘Looking back’, the first time, and every time I hear The Dance by Garth Brooks, the choices I have made in my life pass before my eyes; asking that tall skinny girl at Parkland out on a date; changing careers; moving the Chicago suburbs to a little town in east-central Illinois; having a second child; getting re-married. Every one of these decisions and even more has always been left to chance, and although some of them have led to pain, I’m so glad I didn’t miss this dance.

No song that I have ever listen to epitomizes my philosophy or serves as my anthem in life than I hope you dance by Lee Ann Womack. That sense of scale I feel near the ocean; That opportunities will always be present; That the beauty around us is ever-changing; How grateful I am for the fulfilling life I have lived, a life of optimism, faith, and love that continue to serve me well.

When it’s all said and done, and my life on this earth is finished, my hope is that everyone who knew me can say when I got the choice to sit it out or dance . . . . I Danced.

And David danced before the Lord with all his might.
2 Samuel 6:14