Aug. 4, 2015

I hope it leaves a scar

As I sit on my back porch listening to the sounds of Kenny Chesney, my heart is aching for the Tropic of Cancer.  Yes, I know I just returned to North Texas after a 10-day stent snuggled up in the belly of Mother Ocean.  What some of you don’t and can’t really understand is how I constantly hear the water calling me.  When I am not able to smell the salt there is always something missing from my life.  To kneel on the bottom of the ocean floor, 80 feet from the surface, while sharks swim figure 8’s around me, touches my soul like nothing else.  It is a feeling of truly coming home.  No stress, no responsibility except for staying alive.  It is magnificent.  The way the sun glistens through the water and lights everything up to the most perfect shade of azure blue…sometimes during a dive I truly think I have died and am in heaven.  I literally have to pinch myself to make sure I am still alive.  Gazing in to the eyes of a grouper the size of my torso and wondering what he’s thinking…how they just stare back at you, unafraid; It’s as though they, too, are wondering what thoughts you are having.  

 

On one of my morning dives, I was blessed to swim with a gorgeous Hawksbill Turtle.  We just swam, side by side.  He would occasionally glance over as if to make sure I was still there.  Not out of fear but instead he was glancing almost as if to say, “Thanks for hanging out with me today.”  What a glorious gift it is to actually share the water with its inhabitants.  To have the ability to be part of their world, if even for a short time, cleanses the spirit and clears the mind like nothing else does. It was on this dive that I scraped the palm of my hand near my thumb on some coral.  It was painful.  It bled.  It still hurts a week later.  I catch myself running the roughness of my healing wound across my lips and remembering how I felt at that very moment and something occurs to me…I hope it leaves a scar.