Day 2 // Life Lessons Through Marriage: Welcoming New Rhythms + Kitchen Dancing

Growing up, the dance floor was my favorite place to be. My mother enrolled me in a variety of different dance companies where I learned ballet, tap, jazz, hip-hop, praise dance, and more. Yesterday, I was in the sunroom watching Marquis cook salmon for dinner. I wanted to disappear and go into my bubble after a long day at home with our children. Instead, I grabbed the speaker, turned on the Bluetooth, and played some of the tunes from our wedding day. He stopped, grabbed my hand, and we danced. We were lost in the smell of good food and music. But if I am honest, over these past five years, we had to learn how to welcome the space to dance through challenging, joyful, and frustrating moments.

In marriage, I have learned how to keep dancing through every season. I have learned to grow in the sound of love even through hardships because truly, hardships do come. I used to believe that hardships are major destructions to life but what if they aren’t? What if enduring hardships are meant for you to connect and grow stronger together? The trials of learning to be selfless because you’re factoring in another person that God has brought you into union with. The trials where you aren’t sure about the next steps in life but you lay down your own ideas and gather a perspective that helps you both to win in the end.

Since I was a little girl, the rhythm of music always appeased my heart. Year after year I would grow to dance. I invited new styles of dancing while I grew apart from other ones. Marriage is like that. Sometimes your style changes because you’re constantly growing. You learn the ways your spouse is changing because God is pruning and stretching them. Change doesn’t mean you have to grow apart from all the things that brought you close together. Change helps you grow apart from things that no longer serve your marriage because new things are coming to that refresh and deepen your journey. 

Dancing together is a key part of marriage. You learn to dance through major life adjustments, uncertainty, disagreements, and laughter––even when dancing feels silly. You dance through the seasons where you lean on Jesus to mend your hearts together all the more. You dance through hard seasons that help reshape, reset, and refocus your marriage for better seasons.

Marriage is as beautiful as we allow the Lord to make it. It remains beautiful as we allow hardships to not tear us to the ground but strengthen and build us up. It remains beautiful as we keep dancing to old rhythms while inviting new ones in.

This blog series is dedicated to my husband Marquis D. Harris and my readers as I write about the marital life lessons I have learned as we count down the days to our fifth anniversary. Click the tag #fivedaystofiveyears as you visit the blog to find a new writing piece on this series.