"The Best Things Happen While You're Dancing"
/KATHERINE FINNEY
One of my favorite Christmas movies (I have about 37) is White Christmas. There is some timeless wisdom sprinkled throughout the whole movie, but one of the most memorable lines is actually the name of a song: "The Best Things Happen While You’re Dancing.” For my husband and me, this happens to be true about the entirety of our love story, and it holds true for us even to this day.
PHOTOGRAPHY: JOY-MARIE MENDOZA PHOTOGRAPHY
The first week or so after I started to take a romantic interest in my now husband Jonathan, I decided enough time had passed since I met him for me to do a thorough Facebook stalk. The very day I chose to stalk him online, a news story had been released by a local news station featuring none other than this Jonathan Finney, spotlighting his dance moves as a medical student working in Children’s Hospital.
Apparently when film crews were filming the king of a Mardi Gras parade meeting children at the hospital, a live brass band was playing, and Jonathan took it upon himself to break into dance. The film crew took such interest in him that they decided to do a story on him. Imagine my stomach turning with delight as I stumbled across this video of Jonathan, dancing skillfully and doing his best to entertain his adolescent patients. If there was any chance for me to not be interested in him at that point, it rapidly evaporated after watching that video.
Fast forward a few weeks: Jonathan invites me and a group of other people to go dancing at Rock ’n’ Bowl, a local bowling alley with live music. Eventually, as the night went on and our friends left, Jonathan and I were the only two who remained. We danced and talked until the bowling alley closed.
At one point, while we were dancing, a lady dressed in denim-on-denim (my hero), danced past us and asked if we were married. “If you’re not married, then you should be. You two belong together.” We laughed and kind of joked about it after she went away. We didn’t admit it to each other until way later in our relationship, but we both felt like we agreed with her.
The best things happen while you’re dancing.
Our wedding reception could be classified as one big dance party. (I should preface here and say that most Catholic weddings in New Orleans typically have the same people and the same kind of good dancing music, so they’re all pretty much one big dance party.) New Orleans weddings are unique in that there is usually not a sit-down dinner. As a guest, you arrive at the reception, grab your food and your cocktail, wait for the bride and groom to show up, and then everyone starts dancing. There are usually no toasts, though sometimes there are short toasts from parents of the couple or the couple themselves.
At our wedding, we had no cute introduction of the bridal party, no bouquet or garter toss, no other extra events other than the cake cutting. We wanted everyone to just let loose and have fun, particularly through dance. Dancing was what brought us together, and dancing was what we wanted to do—what we wanted everyone we loved to do—all night of our wedding.
I’ve been reflecting on what it is about dancing that makes us so happy. Scripture mentions dancing as a direct response to experiencing great joy and praise for God. “You changed my mourning into dancing; you took off my sackcloth and clothed me with gladness. So that my glory may praise you and not be silent. O LORD, my God, forever I will give you thanks.” For my family, singing and dancing have been a natural response to blessings in our lives.
Dancing to good music has been educational for our kids. They have learned rhythm, genres, fight songs (very important to my husband), and memorization. My child may not know how to spell “cat,” but she can sing the entire LSU Tigers fight song—which includes the spelling of “tigers,” so that’s got to count for something.
Singing and dancing have not only been a response to blessings, they have been blessings in themselves.
Recently I found myself caught up in an unspoken anxiety about everything going on in the world today. Only over the past few days have I found myself really thinking about how much I’ve been emotionally affected by it. Only recently have I surrendered my feelings about it to God.
A few days ago, my kids and I were listening to one of our favorites, “Pumped Up Kicks,” when Jonathan came out of his “work from home” quarters. He said, “This is a good cha-cha dance,” and he started to move to the rhythm of the music, holding his hands out for me to join him in the dance. As I took his hands, I realized we hadn’t danced holding hands together in a long time. It felt like, even if just for two minutes, we were young again, we weren’t caught up in the middle of a pandemic. Just for a moment, we could have been newly dating, finding excitement in our relationship as we tried to find our step together.
We danced as a new couple. We danced the whole night away at our wedding. We danced when we signed on our first home. We danced when we left that house for the last time. We danced when we tried to get our first newborn baby to sleep. We danced as a family when that baby’s sister joined us at home for the first time. We’ve danced while decorating for Christmas, we’ve danced when we’ve been stuck at home in a pandemic, and we’ve danced when we didn’t feel like dancing. The best things happen while you’re dancing. I recommend you try it.
We’ve updated our Spotlfy Playlist “Uplift | For Uncertain Times” with some of Kat’s favorite sing-along, dance-party classics to offer a mood-boost or song of praise to persevere through a difficult season.
About the Author: Katherine (Schluter) Finney is proudly from New Orleans, Louisiana, currently living in Nashville, Tennessee while her husband Jonathan finishes fellowship training. She and Jonathan have two daughters, Miriam (3) and Joan (18 months). Kat taught high school religion for four years and has worked for Catholic high schools for six years. She currently stays at home with her two daughters, and she spends most of her time styling hamster play-doh hair and cooking some kind of creole dish for dinner.