Dancing Through It
Over the weekend my husband officiated a wedding for two dear friends. It was a beautiful ceremony and we both had a great time. We smiled, embraced, and danced the day away as we celebrated the beginning of a marriage filled with hope and promise. That night as we lay in bed, stripped of our fancy wedding guest attire and back in the comfort of our pajamas, Zach confessed how difficult it was for his heart to rejoice when the ache was still so palpable. It had taken tremendous strength and courage for him to remove his sackcloth of grief and try on joy, even for an afternoon.
Two days prior we got word that my husband’s friend and ministry partner from our former church in Arizona passed away under horrific and tragic circumstances. We soon learned this friend was one of several significant losses our previous church family had suffered over a few short days. Our hearts have been heavy. We are hurting for our friends and former ministry leaders as they guide their church congregation through a season of immense grief. We are all attempting to reconcile our pain with our trust in God’s goodness. But there was still a wedding to go to.
That night in bed I took Zach’s hand and gave it an empathetic squeeze. As he drifted off to sleep, I whispered into the quiet, “It was sure nice to dance with you today.”
Perhaps the gift of grief is that we don’t have to choose it over every other good thing. We can feel despair and celebration simultaneously. Our hearts can be breaking while our feet are dancing. It’s okay to laugh even when sadness surrounds us. God has mercifully given us the ability to feel more than one emotion at a time.
When we are trudging through the muddy waters of sorrow, joy is not the enemy. Finding a reason to be happy is not mocking our pain. I would argue the opposite in fact; joy is what gives us the ability to withstand suffering. Hard as it was for my husband to put on his suit and tie and move his feet to the music, his smile was genuine. A wedding was just what his heavy heart needed. Rejoicing in our friends’ marriage did not eliminate the pain. It’s not an either/or situation. But it did give him the strength to carry on.
When I think back on seasons of grief and loss in my life, I marvel at the way God provided balance. I was often tempted to sit in my pain and allow the sadness to envelop me like a thick fog, but whenever I came close to succumbing to my sorrow, the Lord offered me a faint ray of hope, a reason to celebrate. For every death, God showed me a new life being born. For every loss, God provided. For every hurt inflicted, God gave me words of encouragement. He has given me the strength to laugh through tears, worship in the waiting, and praise Him in my pain. The Lord is just. He gives and He takes away (Job 1:21). No matter how we suffer, we can trust that God is good and He is fair. He will not make us choose our pain over joy.
The balance He provides is like a dance, in a way. He weaves us through the trials and triumphs like a partner guiding us through dips and turns on a dance floor. Even if we feel we are grounded in our grief, He will take our hand and give us a reason to move our feet. We won’t know the steps and it will feel clumsy and unnatural, but His strength will keep us steady. We can trust His sure footing to balance us. In the throes of unspeakable suffering, God is there to show us what we still have worth celebrating. Our broken heart tells us what we’ve lost, but our dancing feet show us what we love.
My heart is still aching for the families of friends we lost in Arizona this week, but I can’t help but smile at the memory of my husband spinning me across the dance floor. We moved to the rhythm of the beat under the glow of neon lights, surrounded by friends, laughing louder than we had in a long time. We didn’t stop grieving, we just danced through it.
“You turned my lament into dancing; you removed my sackcloth and clothed me with gladness, so that I can sing to you and not be silent. Lord my God, I will praise you forever.” -Psalm 30:11-12
Zach and me at our friends’ wedding, dancing our way through it.
March 24, 2024