We didn't know we were dancing onto the minefield. At the beginning, it feels like the completion of so many promises now kept; how could we ever be sad again, when joy suddenly rides unbridled in our hearts for the first time?
We've lost so much. Innocence. Sometimes romance. A church and friends. Babies. You face it resolutely, gripping my hand in your warm, strong one.
But I fear the very clumps of our broken life you cradle carefully in your hands are the very ones I'm trying to break with my pickax of anger and despair. You are shoveling earth into the crater, but I'm shoveling it out just as fast. I didn't mean to be this way, depressed, lonely, frustrated. Just like you never meant to yell at me for it. I worry sometimes that I am the foolish woman in Proverbs, tearing down her house with her own hands. Without you, this life would have been in shambles long before now.
I cry as you lift away the dross of life. You tenderly held the clippers as hunk after hunk of hair drifted down to the tile floor. You lifted me up with love in your dark chocolate eyes when I couldn't face the mirror. You coat my ugliness in the beauty of grace.
I knew loss was inevitable. I tried to stave it off with optimism and hope. If you hadn't been there to catch me, the destruction of both my positive outlook and my tenacious dreams would have destroyed me, too. But you wouldn't let me drift into the abyss. Although I was drowning in the unfathomable depths of my own coal black soul, you never let go of my hand. I could always see your reflection dancing above me as I looked up through the water and tried to wave goodbye. The hands you held wouldn't wave, and you pulled me toward the surface.
I love that you fight off loss with both fists. You never let yourself drift down in the murky water. You're always treading, surviving, growling at fate with your deep bass, and, even though I'm underwater, your grit is what propels me back to breathe in air.
We went dancing in the minefields
We went sailing in the storms
And it was harder than we dreamed
But I believe that's what the promise is for
I do are the two most famous last words
The beginning of the end
But to lose your life for another I've heard
is a good place to begin
Cause the only way to find your life
is to lay your own life down
And I believe it's an easy price
for the life that we have found
So when I lose my way, find me
When I loose love's chains, bind me
At the end of all my faith
to the end of all my days
when I forget my name, remind me
Cause we bear the light of the son of man
So there's nothing left to fear
So I'll walk with you in the shadow lands
Till the shadows disappear
Cause he promised not to leave us
And his promises are true
So in the face of all this chaos baby
I can dance with you
~Dancing in the Minefields, Andrew Peterson~
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