Believe

I just spent the last 30 minutes crying.

To explain why I am crying is a bit embarrassing and even a little convoluted, but it relates to this portion of my journey which is headed somewhere new.

I express emotion quite easily, and this time it was manifest while watching a YouTube video...one from the Shamu show at SeaWorld, of all things. You see, I have been to that very show in person twice in the last year, and I am perfectly capable of sitting in the bleachers at that show and bawling my eyes out. While the mother next to me removes cotton candy from the hair of her 4 year old and the camera-laden tourist takes enough Shamu pictures to fill an encyclopedia, I cry.

If you have been to this show, then you know it is more than an orca whale jumping around. Actually, the whales do little more than that, but while Shamu leaps and splashes in his pool, the stadium fills with music and fancy video displays which tell the loose story of a small boy kayaking into the ocean for an encounter with a killer whale. And the deep voiced narrator takes you though "the moment in everyone's life when you begin to BELIEVE."

And that's about the spot where I could no longer subtly keep the tears in my eyes and I began to cry.

I was outside in the sun, a place I love.

I was watching a beautiful, powerful, graceful creature swim, a sight I love.

I was listening to music, a sound I love.

I was inspired, a feeling I love, but unfortunately have truly experienced far too few times. That was months ago, but watching it on YouTube brought it all back.



This week, I began a project, with the name quite shamelessly swiped from Shamu himself, simply called BELIEVE. The project represents my desire--and more importantly my need--to be restored and to move foward and to be whole and to begin believing again. There is so much to this for me, so much at stake, yet my project remains somewhat unstructured on purpose, allowing it to evolve and grow and change.

I keep coming back to that word: BELIEVE. Packed within are so many levels of change:

Believe in my story.

Believe in God.

Believe in change.

Believe in progress.

Believe in this journey.

Believe in me.

This is no school project, yet I am giving myself homework: There will be some real honest and tangible products that will come out of this for me. I am working toward several goals, some emotional, some spiritual, and some physical, all inspired by 7 sequenced letters which have been floating around within me for months and even years. BELIEVE. I don't even know what all will come, other than to say that today I have a little bit of hope and a little bit of courage and I'm going to run with it for now. That hope came from some incredible friends who don't even know they gave it to me yet, and from a killer whale who will probably never know.


I know some of what is coming, and that may just unfold on the pages of this blog. I will try to chronicle what comes next. For now, I will....

come touch the face of a mystery,
call in your heart to live,
to breathe,

BELIEVE.