Diving In

To be honest, I did not want to make this Trip to Belize. I would miss my baby, my husband, miss work and class time. But I went, saw so much that I could never learn about any other way and I survived. I did miss my family terribly, but I survived and so did they. This entry is about how not wanting to do something can prevent amazing discoveries.

I went to Mexico this past December with my husband David and baby girl. David bought snorkeling equipment and was in the water for hours a day. Every day he would return to the room like a little boy excited to share what he saw in the water during his excursions. To me, the water was just a little too cool, and I wasn't that interested to make that physical sacrafice. "A squid! I saw a squid today!" He was so stunned and excited to share his discovery, but I could only think about how scary that would be to have a squid under my dangling legs.

For the trip to Belize, I took David's snorkeling gear in hopes of saving a few bucks on our planned excursion and hoped also I would have fun seeing sea life in warm, turquoise water. It was very cool to see a shark and rays and giant fish and even the sea turtle. But it was hard. The fins were heavy, my mask leaked and I had a killer headache all day after. I felt uncoordinated and out of control. Still, I lugged this stuff all the way down there and told myself that I would snorkel again later in the week just off the dock near the hotel.

Every day, though, I was tired and dreaded feeling out of control and exhausted with another try at snorkeling. Not until my last day in Belize did I make the decision to give it another go. This time I would skip the fins and hope to see some things to take some pictures of to finish that roll on the underwater camera. I got in hesitantly but soon realized the reason David did this every day in Mexico. Without a life jacket and fins, I was free to swim around confidently. I saw hundreds of fish under me that you could not at all see from above the water. It was beautiful and I wanted to see more. I did not spend long in the water because my buddies were on the dock waiting for me. But how I wished I had done this more during the week. My worries that kept me from thinking this would be worthwhile vanished as soon as I looked beneath the water's surface this time around.

Summary point: I need to dive in to what scares me and makes me uncomfortable. I just don't know what is lurking under the surface that could bring true beauty in my life.