Breathing. Breath. Air.
The breath I hold too tightly when the phone rings late at night. The way I fear losing my breath when I run. The way I do lose it, fear, and must stop the running. The sweet, deep breaths of my godbaby snuggling on my chest. The air outside finally so cold, the breath we can now see, the way it draws in quick and tight in the wind. The breath knocked out of us when the phone call brings frightening news. The way we then just breathe and must stop the talking. The wonder of it all.
Wondering how my kind pastor was able to breathe while having surgery. Wondering, are the lungs able to just keep pressing in and out on their own while the brain is exposed to the air all around us? Do the doctors step back, breathe deep, then move in and hold their breath still as their skilled hands remove tentacles of tumor from the brain? Does the wife in the waiting room have to remind herself to breathe, the way my dear friend does? The friend who is divorcing and told me, just today, that forgetting to breathe is actually easier than you might think. That men and sin and holding on too tightly to this world…these things can all steal your breath before you even notice that you are suffocating…
Thinking about Jesus being air. The Word being life. The Lord being light. The image of breathing in the life and light of the King. The fact that our King humbled himself into the form of a baby, somehow breathing deep inside of Mary. Then breaking through into the night air in a dirty barn, our King, suddenly breathing in the air that he himself had first imagined. The actual air that he created…using the system that he designed to send oxygen through blood to heart, to lungs, to brain.
Breathe.
I am blessed each year to take a messy group of at-risk students to a ranch to work on social skills and self esteem through time spent with some pretty remarkable horses. The kids start the semester in awe, seemingly forgetting to draw in breath when first introduced to the massive creatures. They have to be reminded to breathe steady, to find a calm rhythm that the horse will draw comfort from. These little complicated children dictating through breath how the thousand pound animal will behave.
My favorite moment of the 12 week course came this week. It’s the time when the students are asked to lay across their horses and simply breathe. They drape their bodies over the bare backs of the horses, press their cheeks against the soft winter fur, wrap their arms around the bulging bellies, and just breathe. The goal is to create a two-way trust by learning to breathe in rhythm with the horse….To synch the human and horse breath so perfectly that an unexplainable bond is formed right there in a way that you can actually see. In a way that you can trust.
One student, anxious from the start, was never able to get his breathing steady. He was gripping too tight as he grunted and tensed and tried with no success to somehow find the calm. The horse was moving, the boy panicking, the breathing from each sporadic and nervous and bent.
For others less frightened, or just as frightened but still willing enough in spite of it all, the breaths would eventually come. The rhythm would become visible. The calm, while unexplainable, was evident. And then there would come a moment…every single time there would come this perfect moment, when the horse would breathe in so deep you could feel it in the way the heat from a room can suck a door from open to shut, and he would let out a sigh, his head would hang towards the cold ground, his back would sway and create a perfect cradle for the child, and that elusive peace that passes right past any human understanding could be seen. A perfect picture of peaceful rhythm right there in a damp and cold and dirty, smelly barn.
How often do I get out of rhythm with the One who created me? Every time I fear, give in to anxiety, try to take control, put people in the place of God, try to find fulfillment and joy and rest and peace and validation in anything other than Him, any time I stop listening to His breathing…I am that scared little child, all out of synch, grasping for hold on a beast that is moving around beneath me, constantly just out of my reach.
Oh, to daily put all of these fears at His feet, lean back against His chest, and fall in rhythm with the perfectly peaceful breath of Jesus….
