This last weekend our family engaged in a “little known” tradition in our family.  We danced! Our family gathered together to celebrate anniversaries, 6 couples in our family had marked significant milestones and we wanted to acknowledge the beauty of that together. As the evening cooled and the sun went down we laughed while dancing to pop songs watching one another make some creative dance moves.  As the moon began to show itself in the sky we danced to slow songs from the 50’s;  there were tears in our eyes as we watched the sweet way our parents moved together like they were teenagers once again.

Dancing was an integral part of our parents history back when dancing looked significantly different then it looks today!  It is a memory of sweet times, laughter, and celebration.

Sadly enough, when I was a young girl the dancing stopped.  At the time we attended a church that didn’t allow dancing and my parents wanted to “do the right thing” out of reverence and respect.  It was sad that the dancing had stopped.

Years down the road, perhaps 10 years ago now,  family weddings and summer BBQ’s began to become a regular occurrence ~ first we just played really cool music and then toes started tapping.  We began to dance again. The laughter, silliness, sweetness, and extremely cool moves began again.  Nowadays, we look forward to the next time we will gather to dance again!

Take inventory for a minute.  Is there a life giving, joyfilled activity that you’ve either neglected or felt guilty about taking time for?  Is it time to give yourself permission to re-engage in it again?  Something nostalgic?  Something light-hearted or whimsical?

As the evening ended we watched some of the Iphone videos of our crazy dance moves and all agreed that the brothers-in-law had truly epic moves; most importantly we all left with a full heart and tired feet!   🙂