The Power of Belief.

One day I woke up and believed in myself.

Belief didn't come right away. When I started this journey a year ago, I had been traveling for over a year. I was on a flight from Atlanta to Akron and for the first time I had to ask for a seat belt extension. I sat in that flight ashamed that I could not fit in that seat and, knowing lent started in just a few days, I made the decision in that flight that I would change my life. When I made that decision what pushed me through the beginning of this journey was fear, not belief.

I remember being so fearful of what my life would be like if I didn't make a change. I feared failure. I feared I would let myself down again, give up again. I told others, for their support I said, but really so I would become terrified that I would let them down and push myself forward. It was the adrenaline of fear that kept me focused for a very long time.

And then one day, I woke up and there was belief.

What is the change that happens that lets belief come in? I don't know what changed, I could never tell you the moment when I believed in what I was telling myself I was going to do. I just told myself that I could do it often enough that one day I woke up and I believed I would succeed.

There are moments in a day when I become overwhelmed by the power of belief. Belief allows me to work out 3 or 4 times in a day off. Belief allows me to plan a trip that I shouldn't be able to afford. Belief gives me the freedom of living in a reality where success is an inevitability instead of failure a constant threat.

Fear can't live where belief does. I have often wondered why when I had lost so much weight in college I couldn't keep it off. Now I think it is because I lost all that weight through fear, not belief. Maybe success achieved through fear can never be sustained because living in fear is exhausting. When you live in fear, you eventually let yourself down and there is nothing within you powerful enough to pick you back up and move you forward again. It is the success achieved through belief that is sustained because it is the power of belief that can keep you going when you falter. Belief allows you to forgive yourself and forgiveness lets you always move forward.

I remember stories my mom told me about myself when I was little...that I would fall down hard, get up, brush myself off and take off running again. I don't know where that girl disappeared to but I think that part of me is back, all thanks to a little thing called belief.