Dancing With The Stars and Other Elections

If you watched Dancing With the Stars for a few seasons, like our family now does, you know the tango and the mambo are in the Latin category. Yet you learn each dance has distinctive steps and emotional mindsets the dancers must adapt with finesse to win over the judges and the discerning audience’s votes.

This season my initial favorite star was actress Cloris Leachman, but football pro, Warren Carlos Sapp toes lightly for his 300 lb. stature.

More folks viewed the first presidential debate than Dancing with the Stars. Good.

When I think of the upcoming Election Day, I pray glitz and glittering mendacities of politicians yield to thoughtful substance. If you are a voting citizen, do know the distinctive achievements each candidate brings to the table? What has each candidate executed or voted to legislate? Have you researched and can you quote their core convictions?

Researchers at Princeton University have found that people take just a tenth of a second to make character judgments about the people they meet. How shallow we are post-Eden. Let's allow ourselves more study time before we characterize the candidates and cast our votes in the November election.

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My beloved expected a November trip to finalize a project, but during his October Texas trip, an email moved that trip to a few days after returning to our new Deep South home. The rush of back-to-back separations could have destroyed our times together. Instead, we had to dance the difficult quickstep. God’s grace held tension at bay by teaching us the new dance given us this life stage.

This new dance began when my beloved had to move deep South by himself and return home a few days of each month. We had to learn ways to rearrange roles in the dance. I led the family and the home for the most part, and then I had to relinquish the lead quickly for a weekend. Connects and disconnects sputtered and failed at times, as if we had lost cellular call space.

During nightly calls via speaker phones, we each had to learn the measured rhythm of polite conversation. If you know anything about speaker settings, any sound in the area of one phone caller can cut off the audio on the other phone. It can, in short, interrupt a person’s statement, as my beloved will say I often do. I’m impelled to fill in the blanks flow creative endings--not a good idea, unless you are in a room full of women.

Disruptors can sour discussion between spouses, between questions and redirects lead to opined judgments based on self-analysis which acts like salt to gnaw open, old wounds, emotions erupt. Then the static of verbal noise led to tears for one and silence for the other. Not good.

This husband/wife dance of dialogue improves with forgiveness and practice. May all our dialogue dances improve with humility and candid truth, even the political ones. Our attempts will not be perfect spot on seventy times seven, but we trust Him who continually forgives to sets us right.

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Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, "Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother
when he sins against me? Up to seven times?"
Jesus answered, "I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times." (Mt 18:21-22,niv)