I picture myself center stage in the most enormous and fantastically beautiful theater in the world. Its walls and ceilings are covered in impeccable Victorian paintings of angels in the sky. A single ray of light shines down upon my face, shining through the still, silent darkness, and all attention is on me and me alone. The theater is a packed house; however, my audience is not that of human beings, but rather the angels from the paintings on the walls come alive, sitting intently in the rows of plush seats. Their warmth encompasses my body, and I know at that moment that it is time to begin.

I open my mouth. From deep inside my soul a melody flows out of my chest, off of my tongue, and finally caresses my lips with the sweetest touch, and my song fills the air with a boldness like that of the glory of the angels. The sound of my song is that of unfathomable wonder, a voice as sweet and smooth as the face of a child. I sing and sing and sing my heart out, and I wonder and wonder and wonder in awe of the sound that is coming from my mouth and my throat and my soul, and I sing with more power than I have ever felt before. It takes over my entire body and the adrenaline surges like I never imagined it could surge. My whole world is aglow.

For those precious moments, everything is right, and then I am alone. The angels have disappeared, yet the stage is still mine, and suddenly, from out of nowhere, a piano begins to play. I can’t see it, but I can feel it in every cell of my body, and my voice again takes charge and rushes out to court the empty notes of the piano. The two become one, and never before have the theater’s walls heard such awesome music. In this enormous theater, I am alone, but I have never felt so fulfilled in my life. I look out to the very last row of empty seats, but there appears a man. A moment of shock and fear is quickly overridden by a quieting peacefulness. The piano stops playing, leaving my voice the only noise in the arena.

The melody I sing slows down to a soft and calm ballad that I sing wholeheartedly for the man, all the while with a locked gaze into the man’s eyes. His eyes are a mirror. They show me myself. They show me my beauty—my beauty on the inside that I never allow myself to see. He shows me who I am meant to be. The ballad ends. There is silence, but a continuous locking of eyes. They are the most beautiful eyes I have ever seen—more beautiful than in my dreams. The silence continues, and my feeling of peace continues, until finally I say, “Yes, I understand.”

In an instance He is gone. I take one last minute to breathe in the emptiness of the stage and to imprint the experience in my mind where it will stay forever like a fountain from which I will draw happiness. Then I pull myself back into reality. I walk off of the stage, down the steps, through the empty audience, and out the back door of the theater which has changed my life. I walk outside into the new world that has been created for me.