It’s Tulip Festival time in Holland, Michigan! Yes, it means crowds of people and crazy traffic for a week, but it is so much fun! How wonderful that the city keeps the Dutch heritage alive with parades and displays and tulips – lots and lots of tulips – and of course, Dutch dancers with their wooden shoes!

My curiosity got the best of me and I had to look up WHY did the Dutch dance in those wooden shoes anyway? Yes – the Dutch wore wooden shoes but mostly by laborers and farmers because the wood was available and affordable and the wood kept your feet dry and warm (with the help of woolen socks and even extra straw for insulation). The Dutch DID have folk dancing in their heritage and because of the wonderful sound that the wooden shoes made on the street (think tap-dancing taken to an extreme) there were dances created around the clogging and clomping wooden shoes. I’m sure that in the old days, after a great season of bountiful harvest, the villagers joyfully celebrated with song, food, and dancing wooden shoes!

Ecclesiastes 3:4 A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn and a time to dance.

In my previous blog I spoke about life and the path we journey. A Godly life is one where you try to walk a faithful and righteous path – a straight and narrow way. Life many times feels like we are always walking uphill, always climbing those stairs. The way is seldom straight with all the twists and turns that can challenge us. But there are good times, too. Times when the road is easy and the path is clear. And then there are times that we just want to dance!

Yesterday, as we watched the Dutch dancers, I noticed a lone wooden shoe in the street and quickly pointed it out to Ted. (Thanks for taking a picture of it, Teddy!) Well, with all those stomps and kicks, it is natural that a dancer is going to sometimes lose a shoe! Did the dancer stop and retrieve it? NO! The dance went on and the dancer just kept right on dancing!

Aren’t there times when we stumble on our life path? Take a wrong turn? Dance out of step? Stop walking? Pause and sit? Maybe we even kick off a shoe! God doesn’t want us to linger in the past. Life is about moving forward! Our missteps and wrongs and sins – God offers us forgiveness so that we can start each day anew – and keep on going forward!

Philippians 3:13b-14 Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.

I love the thought of dancing through life. I wish I could dance better than I do! Maybe I could skip or twirl? It doesn’t matter, I’m sure. I just want to dance more – and I hope you do too! There are so many blessings we all are given each day – and for our faults and sins of yesterday? That’s all behind you! …. just keep on dancing and moving forward!

have a marvelous day!

just Laurel