Throwback Thursday: Anastasia

Yesterday, I finally convinced the boys to watch Anastasia with me.  It was probably my favorite non-Disney movie growing up.  I loved it!  But my boys saw it as a girl movie, so they wouldn’t watch it with me.  That is, until we were down to the last few animated movies the boys hadn’t watched recently.  Ha!

The film is a fanciful adaptation of what happened to the Grand Duchess Anastasia.  It features a young Anya who has forgotten her past and a couple of con-men who are trying to pass off a fake Anastasia as the real thing to the Dowager Empress who lives in Paris.

The music is fantastic in this movie.  When I was young, we even bought the soundtrack and would sing along in the car.  We each had parts to sing for the song “Learn to Do It”.  Amy and I would fight over who got to sing Anya’s part each time.  No, my Dad did not participate in these sing-alongs.  And the closing song, “At the Beginning”, oh!  I love it so much; Stephen included it on a CD of our songs.  Here are the lyrics:

We were strangers, starting out on a journey
Never dreaming, what we'd have to go through
Now here we are, I'm suddenly standing
At the beginning with you

No one told me I was going to find you
Unexpected, what you did to my heart
When I lost hope, you were there to remind me
This is the start

And life is a road that I wanna keep going
Love is a river, I wanna keep flowing
Life is a road, now and forever, wonderful journey
I'll be there when the world stops turning
I'll be there when the storm is through
In the end I wanna be standing
At the beginning with you

We were strangers, on a crazy adventure
Never dreaming, how our dreams would come true
Now here we stand, unafraid of the future
At the beginning with you

And life is a road that I wanna keep going
Love is a river, I wanna keep flowing
Life is a road, now and forever, wonderful journey
I'll be there when the world stops turning
I'll be there when the storm is through
In the end I wanna be standing
At the beginning with you

Knew there was somebody, somewhere
Like me alone in the dark
Now I know my dream will live on
I've been waiting so long
Nothing's gonna tear us apart

And life is a road that I wanna keep going
Love is a river, I wanna keep flowing
Life is a road, now and forever, wonderful journey
I'll be there when the world stops turning
I'll be there when the storm is through
In the end I wanna be standing
At the beginning with you

Yeah

Life is a road that I wanna keep going
Love is a river, I wanna keep going on
Starting out on a journey

Life is a road that I wanna keep going
Love is a river, I wanna keep flowing
In the end I want to be standing
At the beginning with you...

I can’t help but see how some of these lines apply to us today.  When we got married, I never dreamed what we’d be going through.  We’re “on a crazy adventure” and “unafraid of the future”.  And we sure are “starting out on a journey” and, in some cases, back “at the beginning”.  I’m so grateful for the man God has placed by my side.  I’m so grateful for God’s guidance and peace.  I’m so grateful for Stephen’s can-do attitude and task-oriented nature.