He grew up in a northern US city with plenty of naturally frozen skating spots all winter, and her childhood in Canada was replete with abounding enthusiasm and opportunities for ice skating over many winter months each year. With mutual friends from church, he asked her out on their first date to go ice skating. Wasting no time for feelings to melt, he gave her a Valentines Day card shortly following the skating date. Their romance quickly swirled into an engagement on her June birthday, and they married at the end of that summer. Their honeymoon included time in Lake Placid where they skated together at the indoor Olympic rink.
That first February ice skating date happened more than six decades ago. My parents continued to enjoy skating together over many of those years. They shared their love of ice skating with us kids. Virginia winters were milder than their hometowns, but we skated on rinks, and occasionally on the Washington Monument reflecting pool and the nearby C & O canal in years when they froze over. I remember buying my own full-size, good quality leather skates during a visit to family in Canada.
My parents also shared with us what it means to be married: “one man, one woman, one lifetime,” as Pastor Jeff at my church succinctly put it. Like pairs skating, marriage is magical, elegant, sensual, rhythmic, and risky – a dynamic partnership. There will also be bumps and bruises along the way. Marriage requires endurance and stamina, like the long program in skating competition. Couples can’t skate by on infatuation alone.
Marriage is God’s good and natural design for us, His creation (Genesis 2 v 24). Love is laced throughout the Scriptures. You’ll find romantic love stories and Solomon’s PG-13 passionate song in the Old Testament. Themes and analogies of weddings, the bride, and marital joy, commitment, and purity weave through the New Testament. Ultimately, we find God’s sacrificial love for us in the familiar verse John 3:16
For this is how God loved the world: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. NLT
Thank you, Mom and Dad, for your beautiful love story. Thank you, Heavenly Father, for loving us enough to give us your Son, Jesus.
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