Roller skating is like life.
When I was about 10 years old or so I fell in love with roller skating so much so that one year, my parents gifted me with my very own pair of quads. They were white with bright royal blue wheels and blue stripes down the side of each skate boot. The laces matched the wheels. They were my new prized possession. I proudly skated round and round my Dad’s garage blaring my favorite music (an ABBA 8-track tape was in my top five). In fact, I still own those skates. My daughter wore them during the roller skating unit in elementary school gym class. Roller skating is one of my fondest childhood memories, even still.
To my surprised delight, my husband whisked us off to the local roller rink a few weekends ago. It was my first roller skating adventure in about five years and I felt 10 again. I laced up those skates and glided out onto the rink.
I felt like Bambi.
I didn’t fall but I sure did stumble trying to recoup my “skate legs.” But once I did, it was like I’d never had that gap between years of skating.
It’s a sweet feeling, roller skating. You stream around the rink, the fingers of the breeze combing through your hair. It’s freedom on eight wheels.
Complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. ~Phillipians 2:2
When the DJ announced a couples skate, my husband rolled up next me and laced his fingers through mine. As we smoothed along the rink I got to thinking: our strides matched each other. We glided in sync, my left foot, his left foot…my right foot, his right foot. Once in awhile, I push off with one foot and sort of piggyback on his efforts, gliding along and riding instead of actually skating.
But I could only do that for so long and then I had to do my part as well. If I just let go and let him do all the work, I’d literally become a drag rather quickly. It was okay to let him carry more of the “load” for a few strides, but it would never be fair to let him be the only one making the effort.
And we needed to be headed in the same direction. If I were to veer off suddenly in one direction while he went in the other, we’d break apart. Our paths would be different. It’d end the delicate dance.
As we coasted along to the music, hand in hand, in comfortable silence, I was reminded how much skating mimicked marriage.
We hold hands. We have common life and relationship goals. Though we may have different dreams, they each include the other in some respect. We are one. I can lag for a time, maybe if I’m tired or feeling sad. He can pick up the slack but just for a little while because if I continue to not do my part, I will drag us both down. Then we’ll have a problem. It’s not 50/50 in marriage. It’s 100/100 and we both need to put forth equal effort, love, affection, and work to make us a successful couple.
If one of us starts skating faster than the other, the other gets left behind, skating with all their might to catch up. We need to match the other’s pace and remain in tandem…on the same page.
When you’re aligned and moving at the equal pace, harmonious, and in tune and step with each other, it’s a beautiful thing. A relationship is rich when each member can be mutually supportive of the other’s dreams while maintaining that synchrony. Both need to share the burdens and share the joys, moving along at a similar pace in the same direction.
And when that happens, it’s a grand love story.
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