“ . . . I’ve got the drums of my Father beating in my bones . . .”

It’s the moment in which we know we’ve fallen in love. It’s the moment we know we’ve let go, we’ve transcended the limits of our very humanity; it’s the moment we know we’ve lost control.

I am, and have been, so deeply moved by Belize. This country has brought me to my knees more times than I care to count, in reverence, in shame, in despair, and in love. I’m embarrassed, feeling like an emotional train wreck all the time: in front of my co-workers during a hard day at work, in the face of community mates who love my prickly self, and by my lonesome, swinging in a hammock and letting my soul moan and pray with God the things that my mind will just never understand. Belize, the country herself, is challenging my very essence. She is testing my limits, she is pushing me to a dangerous edge, she is whacking me behind the knees; she is luring from me questions of what constitutes a “good life,” and what it means to be a Christian, really and truly, deep in my bones.

At any one moment, I could cry, I could laugh, I could scream—at the top of my lungs—things that would make the Devil blush. I could run, but not very far; or I could stay. I could complain, or I could man-up. I could question, or I could accept. I could seek, or put off the search until later.

I’ve let my hand be held here—there’s been little choice—by small children who just want to be accompanied to their classroom on the first day of school, by community mates while blessing our blessings, by the unity and the cadence of the Our Father—twice—every Sunday, by care packages and letters expressing longing and love and bearing trail mix and silly pictures.

And I’ve learned that things don’t add up. Linear reasoning is a myth; things are not meant to make sense, but to coexist irreconcilably. Even reality and un-reality, they are meant to ride piggyback on one another; when one starts to weaken, to become parched, the other backs the tired weight. When my faith in this world, and in myself, begins to dissipate, my imagination picks up the slack. And when my imagination runs dry and shrivels, Belize carries me forward.

Someone once described to me the beauty of dance, and why it holds a key (on a large ring of jingling keys) to happiness: dance is good. Dancing precludes logic. It is meant for pleasure. It is meant for liberation, for a surrender of consciousness, and for the soul to beat according its own rhythm without interference. Dance is a living artifact, a four-dimensional approach to crossing cultures of past, present, and future. We don’t know why we do it, but we, God’s people, dance.

When everything else has gone wrong here, in Belize, in life, and I feel worthless and hopeless and I convince myself that I am utterly unhappy, I know that she, Mrs. Bee, will be dancing around the office: “Ms. Molly Dee!!!!!!!!!! Come dance with me!”

I will wallow; I will begin succumbing to the temptation to fill the pot of my spirit with misery and disappointment, and to stew. She will stop, stomp her feet and shuffle to my chair. “We don’t need music,” she will say to my protest. Her smile will melt my heart.

That’s the moment in which I know I’ve already fallen in love. That’s the moment I know I’ve got to let go, that I can transcend the limits of our very humanity; that’s the moment I know I’ve lost control.

“Come on and get up,” she will say. “I’ve got the drums of my Father beating in my bones.”