Breathe

How long can you hold your breath before your chest starts to hurt, and your mind starts panicking for air?

For me it is about 15 seconds. That should tell you two things right there - one, I will never be joining the Navy, and two, I need to start amping up my aerobics to increase my lung capacity.

When I was a girl, I would play a little game with myself. I would lay in bed and think of different things, different people I was missing, or maybe a boy I had a crush on. Maybe I would think of a celebrity that was far removed from the life I knew, so far that they didn't even seem real.

And then I would hold my breath and count to 10. In those 10 seconds, I would tell myself, The whole time you are holding your breath, the person you are thinking of, missing, just breathed two times...three times....four....

A little, um....quirky, I know. But somehow just knowing that they were out there, still far away, but breathing exactly at the moment I was thinking of them, made them seem a little closer. A little more real. The fact that I was holding my breath right when they took a breath made for some strange little bond in my mind.

This past year I have been holding my breath. It's been a long year, a very, very long time not to be sucking in any air. Long enough that my chest started to hurt, and then my brain, and then I just wanted to shut down and lie on the couch and not think about any of it. It's the kind of feeling where you know you aren't going to die, but where you mind still goes crazy and you feel like you are trapped in a cave somewhere, claustrophobic, and it's hard to see past your immediate circumstances.

It wasn't just the whole not getting pregnant for two years thing, although that in itself knocked the wind out of me. It was a myriad of other things, like hubby starting his own business and suddenly being plunged into a world of financial stress. Worrying about house payments and bills and food. Stress. Stress. More stress.

So for awhile I quit breathing.

And then I found that sometimes holding your breath is a good place to be. Not fun. Not fun at all, but good.

Because you close your eyes and as your chest starts to hurt, you think about the One you need more than life itself. And in those moments, He is closer to you than you even realize. You feel Him feeling every pain, every fear, ever worry.

And you realize that you are still alive, even though you haven't been breathing for such a long time. You wonder how that's possible, and then you just know.

He's been breathing for you the whole time.

And even though your chest still hurts, and you want it to just be over, you know it's gonna be ok.

Because without Him, any breath that we take really isn't breathing at all.