True Son in the Faith

I hope the bride and groom are holding up over these last few days til the knot tying better than I am. I feel like I am on the continual verge of a panic attack. This was somewhat accelerated when I read the bride's schedule of events she sent out today. The list sounded doable until I reached the event:

Mother/son dance

In a cruel stroke of timing, right after the mother/son dance, there will be a session where we will all learn a dance. I sent a polite request that we reverse that order....could I be taught to dance before the mother/ son dance?  Now I don't want to give the impression that I am totally hopeless....I actually can do a very creditable polka. Somehow I suspect the mother/son dance will not be a polka. Since a waltz is just a slow polka, I could get away with a waltz too. I am not sure young people waltz anymore.

When I was at Amy's house, she was watching me "move" to some music. I was cleaning and had started to dance a little to the background music. She watched silently from her perch on the couch, going through the stack of papers I had laid in front of her to sort into piles: keep, toss, shred, or eat before someone puts together the incriminating evidence. You know, the piles we all have....

Anyway, I became aware of the silence and the sensation of being watched and glanced up. Amy looked incredulous. Let it be known that Amy can dance. She can move with rhythm and grace without effort. She has always looked good on the dance floor. On the other hand, I have never been able to dance. I can't even clap more than 2 or 3 claps before I get off rhythm. It is truly miraculous that I made the elite highschool "Tigerettes of the Grid Iron" dance team. But that is another story, and one I think I told long ago in one of my posts.

"NO," said Amy, "Don't wiggle your shoulders that way...."
I gyrated my hips keeping my shoulders still.
"That's worse," she advised.
I began to twist.
"Stick with twisting," she said, "You can do that."
So I am hoping for "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy of Company B," "Twist and Shout", or the "Beer Barrel Polka" for the mother/son dance.

But in the end, thankfully, it is not about me.

Which is good, since I suspect I will be holding back a torrent of tears, and humming "Sunrise, sunset." Is this really the little boy I carried...the one who had undiagnosed allergies and was like an energizer bunny on uppers? Can the little whirlwind, tree climbing, non stop smiling torrent of energy that used to fit (momentarily) in my arms really be that 6 foot tall, handsome man that somehow I must reach up to dance with? Is he really the serious law student who told me I might have severely ruined his hopes of college by not buying him an xbox or Wii during the formative years when everyone else was practicing those game playing skills?

Paul of the Bible has a similar spark of incredulous pride, as he describes the young man he mentored and brought to faith. Of Timothy, he writes,
"Timothy, my son, I am giving you this command in keeping with the prophecies once made about you, so that by recalling them you may fight the battle well,  holding on to faith and a good conscience"
(1 Timothy 1:18-19)
Those prophecies about Timothy had to do with the gifts he had been given by God. Those gifts appear to have been unknown initially to Timothy- it was when the "elders laid hands on him" that the gifts were revealed to him. No one knew what the untested Timothy, new to faith, might become. In the end, it was all good however, as we know from Paul's warm greeting to him as , "Timothy, my true son in the faith." (1 Timothy 1:2)

 I may stumble on my son's toes, and look rather ungainly and spastic as I dance with him on this most memorable day soon upon us. I hope he will know that inside is a soul that is flowing with grace, and dancing with gratitude in the hands of God with my true son in the faith.

Deuteronomy 16:14
Be joyful at your festival—you, your sons and daughters

Proverbs 23:24

The father of a righteous child has great joy;
   a man who fathers a wise son rejoices in him.