The following was written in 1995, shortly after my husband's sudden death. The Youth Director at the church where I worked asked a number of people to contribute a "daily devotional" for the youth group going on a week-long retreat. It was a unique coincidence that the youth were going on retreat just when we would have celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary. Karl died 6 months shy of that anniversary.
For most of the last 10 years of my marriage, I looked forward to my 25th wedding anniversary, which would have been April 11, 1995. To me, to be able to say you shared a relationship with someone for 25 years, through good times and bad, said a lot about your character and your faith and your commitment. I looked forward to spending that very special anniversary in the aCaribbean "paradise" of the Bahamas, a celebration of that relationship and a beginning of the next 25 years.
We never know how much time we have in this earthly journey of ours, and we never know what circumstances can change our plans, our dreams, our lives. Knowing that would surely alter decisions and choices we make in our lives. Although my husband died just 5 1/2 months short of our anniversary, for 24+ years we had a great dance! I truly wish I could miss out on the pain that I'm feeling now, but not at the cost of missing that dance.
Even in times of disappointment and sorrow, you must look for the good and the positive that is there. I've lost my husband, my lover, my best friend, and a co-parent. My teenage boys have lost their loving dad, their helpful mentor, and their best pal. Even though we've lost so much, we have been blessed to experience the love Christ poured into our lives through so many family, friends, neighbors and even people we hardly knew. We have been able to see how just one person, in his own quiet way, was able to not just touch, but to impact, so many lives just by living the faith he believed. That is quite a memorable dance, quite a memory, and a memorial to leave for those of us left behind.
This life is just a passage to the real life that awaits us ... the eternal life with our Creator and Father. There may be pain in our present life, but if fear of the pain causes us to miss out on the dance, we also stand to miss out on all the blessings God has intended for us both now and in the next life. Karl is there now, I know. He is experiencing the Perfect Love we can only taste in this part of our journey. I don't know what plans God has laid for the rest of my life. But when this journey comes to an end, I look lovingly to the hope of dancing that anniversary waltz with Karl for the rest of eternity in the only real paradise.
Looking back on the memory of the dance
And I, I'm glad I didn't know
Holding you I held everything
And I, I'm glad I didn't know
© 1998
by Garth Brooks
we shared beneath the stars above
for a moment all the world was right.
How could I have known that you'd ever say good-bye.
the way it all would end,
the way it all would go.
Our lives are better left to chance,
I could have missed the pain,
but I'd have had to miss the dance.
For a moment wasn't I a king.
If I'd only known how the king would fall.
And who's to say, you know
I might have changed it all.
the way it all would end,
the way it all would go.
Our lives are better left to chance,
I could have missed the pain,
but I'd have had to miss the dance.
Get your own Free Home Page