I am confident of this

I LOVE the movie, The Sound of Music.  It is my all time favorite movie.  Not just my favorite musical or my favorite family movie or my favorite movie from childhood.  It is my all time favorite movie.  It came out when I was a mere 4 years old.  (If you are so inclined you can do the math and figure out how ancient I am.)  I remember seeing it in the theater.  I remember wanting to BE Julie Andrews when I grew up.  I still do.  I remember playing Gretl when our 5th grade choir put on our version of The Sound of Music.  I was the one chosen as Gretl because I was the littlest one in the class, and I probably did a phenomenal job of falling asleep on the stage steps to "So Long, Farewell."  I'm sure I did. 

Anyway I still love singing along with all of the songs, and someday I want to host a Sound of Music party with a bunch of chickas (and hunks, too, if they are man enough to handle it!) so we can watch the movie and sing all the lyrics and dance and boo and hiss at the Barronness Schroeder and sigh when Maria and the Captain fall in love and ooo and aahh at my very most favorite scene from the entire movie - when Maria is marching down the aisle in her wedding dress with the train trailing behind her and the song "How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria" singing in the background.  Even just typing this, I get tears, because I love that scene that much.  (Yes, I am a sappy wimp!) 

Or maybe the tears are because that was such a grammatically horrific run-on sentence. 

Nah, it was the sappy wimp reason...

And someday I want to take a trip to Salzburg with seven of my closest friends and sing "Do-Re-Mi" on bicycles through the streets and end the song on those famous steps.  And dress in re-cut curtains.  Ok, maybe not the re-cut curtains part but everything else, definitely.

But the song "I Have Confidence" is my least favorite song from that musical.  I hardly ever sing those lyrics.  It isn't a bad song, per se, and I get why it's there.  Maria has left the Abbey and is headed to become the governess for the Captain's seven children.  Scary prospect, no doubt.  And Maria is justifiably nervous, so she sings this song to herself to make her "feel" the confidence she doesn't really feel.  Not a bad coping choice.  I get all of that.  But there is one line in the song that trips me up philosophically or theologically if you will.  "I have confidence in confidence alone."  Um, really?  Now possibly Rogers and Hammerstein just needed 11 syllables to fill out a set of notes and create a bridge and it means nothing, but it's stuck with me.  Does having confidence in the idea of confidence actually give a person courage and confidence to move forward?

I saw a video clip recently of a little child on the end of a diving board afraid to make what appears to be his first jump off into the pool.  We see water, so we know that he isn't automatically going to hurt himself when he jumps.  And we presume that since there is a videographer taking pictures of this little guy, he has the skill set to jump and survive.  But he is clearly afraid.

Then we see a pic of his mother.  She is in the water with her arms outstretched, smiling and encouraging him to jump to her.  And he jumps, and he lands in her arms, and he laughs, and he's ready to do it again.

But did you catch that?  He was jumping to her.  He had confidence in her.  He wasn't confident in himself or in his swimming abilities.  He had confidence in his mother, because she had proven herself to be trustworthy to take care of his needs all the years of his life - his entire lifetime.

Which takes me finally to this blog's title - I am confident of this.  I am not just confident.  I am confident of a this - of a something or someone else.  I am not just confident in the idea of confidence as a means to bolster and hold me up against an unforeseeable future.  I am confident of something more, something trustworthy.

And that yields courage and strength to move forward - to "feel" confident even when I don't feel it.

And who knows, maybe someday I'll sing the lyrics to "I Have Confidence," too if I ever find that Austrian Abbey live and in person. 

Oh, who am I kidding?  If I am ever able to do this dream vacation, I will sing every line from every song from that movie with much joy.  And probably sing each one more than once!