I have always been a believer in the truth that our breath is God given. “And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being” Genesis 2:7.

We don’t own our breath. We borrow it. He supplies it for life on this planet and when that last breath leaves our lungs we return to Him.

Humans have no ability to create the absolutely necessary intangibles of breath and air. They belong to our Creator and thus, we belong to Him.

The evening I returned home to find my late husband dead, I instantly couldn’t breathe. In fact it was difficult to breathe in the weeks, months and even the first year following that life changing event. For months, I gasped for air in the middle of reoccurring panic attacks and often held my breath without realizing it. Breathing, which occurs involuntarily and without thought, became something I was constantly and noticeably aware of in Mike’s absence. The loosing of him literally took my breath away and I wonder now, if the abnormal heart arrhythmia I began experiencing in the months that followed, were tied not only to my broken heart, but possibly a full lack of oxygen it needed to function properly.

In this pandemic year, the literal masking and partial breathing of the oxygen our body needs to fully function has been hard on all of us. We’ve become afraid of the people and air around us. Breathing has suddenly become scary. Fear, suspicion and grief hold us in their grasp as we deal with a variety of great loss - health, loved ones, finances, safety, security, freedom and a lack of cultural civility.

During the past several years the importance of intentionally taking time to stop and breathe has often rescued me. Father God has repeatedly reminded me, His breath is inside me. He holds my life in His heart and hands.

I need not fear what is happening around me. Do I still? Yes. Of course. More than I should. But He is patient to reassure when my thoughts wander into crazy territory. He understands how afraid and emotionally frail I am. He has deep concern for my humanity.

He doesn’t condemn, but calls me to be still.

Sit quietly for a while. Turn off the noise. The news. The social media. Eat a healthy meal. Drink some water. Share my thoughts with a trusted friend. Stand outside for a few minutes. Walk in nature. Take in the beauty of His creation. Talk to Him with raw and open honesty. Exhale the anxiety and the pervasive and swirling negatives. Inhale Father’s goodness, allowing His peace to permeate the spirit and soul once again. 

And put this on repeat, like a reminder notification, popping up daily (or even hourly) on a mobile phone.

In the midst of these trying times, every now and then, we have to take the mask off our face and our soul and simply breathe. Don’t forget.

Breathe. Breathe. Just Breathe.

“The Spirit of God has made me and the breath of the Almighty gives me life.” Job 33:4 “..he [God] himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything.” Acts 17:25  

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It took about three weeks of random days, doing a section at a time, but I finally finished pressure washing the pool deck today.

As I was pulling the weeds that grow between the pavers with pliers, because my arthritis crippled fingers aren’t strong enough to grasp them, I was thinking about how adaptable humans are. How we endure and adjust to life’s difficult twists and turns. The Serenity Prayer has been quoted for a long time: “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, Courage to change the things I can, and Wisdom to know the difference.”

I‘ve had to adapt to many difficult challenges through the years and realize of late, that I have always had a problem with the acceptance line of this quote. I‘ve never been good at accepting what I can’t change because I’m not sure I should. To me acceptance means giving up, giving in to a thing and allowing it to rule, and I see little in scripture or history where that has ever been a good idea.

My first son was born with a genetic disability, and while I accept and love HIM for who HE is, I have never fully accepted the imitations disability has placed on him. Otherwise I wouldn’t have done everything possible to help him reach his full potential through the years. Have I adapted to how his disability affects him, me and our family? Yes, and continue to adjust daily. But I have never rejoiced that my son has not been able to live his life the way others do. I have never stopped grieving in the depths of my being that he still needs continual supervision as an adult.

I know in my heart God’s original creation was never meant to be this way, so complete acceptance still alludes me. All the ways I’ve adapted to having a crippling chronic illness, beginning in my mid-twenties, are too many to list here. Pulling weeds with pliers is just one of hundreds. Learning to eat properly to reduce inflammation in my body is another. Acceptance means I would give up. Lay in my bed, drink soda pop and eat donuts, howling in pain, expecting others to do everything for me.

There are times when we need others to do for us, but ‘the wisdom to know the difference’ is part of adjusting to our situation. I can never accept coming home from grocery shopping to find the man I loved for forty three years, dead. Just like that. Gone. No. Never. Because I know physical separation, death in this life, was never God’s intention from the beginning. Death was chosen and since then, we all live with the physical consequences of this choice. So after a lifetime of marriage, I’m at a new level of adaptation. Learning how to be single. How to be alone. How to get things done that are hard for me to do. So many of the tasks Mike did are now mine and I’m slowly adjusting to all these new responsibilities; knowing when I should and who I can call for help, who I can trust and when I can do a thing myself.

I‘m certain I‘m making mistakes, bumbling along, asking for wisdom, help and endurance to figure it all out but I also understand I have to be patient, even with myself. I’ve been dropped suddenly into new territory, without a map or GPS, and this journey requires a steep learning curve.

As humans we grieve all our losses. Some impact us so deeply, that we never think of them without feeling that sludge hammer of sorrow to the heart and it is a huge misinterpretation of scripture to believe God asks us to deny this reality. What He wants is to be invited into it. To meet us there. To walk with us in and through.

So while I will not blindly accept any of these things that were never His original intention, neither will I pretend they don’t exist. I meet them head on with HIS strength and guidance. I have little of my own. Many days are exhausting and difficult, but I must not, cannot, settle into acceptance. I must keep trying. Keep asking. Keep seeking. Keep enduring.

By Father’s great grace I adjust. Adapt. Pull weeds with pliers and keep going.

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I admit, I‘ve run out of words.

Well, ‘run out’ might not be the exact terminology. Words still exist, but they are a continuous whirlwind of thoughts, crashing into each other and shattering in uselessness to the bottom of my brain.

I‘ve been asked, why I‘m not writing and posting regularly like I was. When you can’t make sense of anything, expression can be difficult. Everything I once thought I knew, believed, subscribed to, seems trivial and irrelevant. All the knowing-of-things I once held dear, is nothing but the fluff of a spent dandelion blowing in a tornado.

I need to drown out the noise of this world, the constant chatter both past and present, ricocheting off the walls of my heart and mind. So many words and ideas others have spoken into me since childhood. Piled deep and high. I’ve been stripped inside to the nakedness of my soul and exhausted by years of ideas, opinions and dogmas I have heard and still hear.

Confession time? Complete honesty? All my cards laid out on the table? I‘m too tired to figure it out anymore. Too broken to put me back together. I‘ve reached the end of myself and I don’t care how unspiritual it looks. The mask is off. I can’t fake it ‘til I make it. Can’t stomach the cliches and pat answers I always thought were truth.

I am asking God to help me understand Him in ways I never have before. I am begging my Father to reveal Himself to me. Not from the interpretation of others. And not from my own contrived misconceptions of who He is. But for Himself.

What about Him do I not know? What about Him do I not understand? If I’m going to move forward from here I desperately need to hear His voice and understand His heart. For me. There’s little to say right now. I must be still and learn to know He Is God.

I‘m like Mary, who after the angel appeared to tell her she would bear God’s Son in human flesh, pondered all these things in her heart.

Or Job, who after striving with so much sorrow before his Creator, put his hand over his mouth and shut-up, realizing he had spoken things without knowledge, from the limits of human reasoning.

Or Paul, who considered everything he had ever accomplished prior to knowing Christ, the power of His resurrection and fellowship of His suffering, nothing but garbage. Manure. Useless.

The encouraging news in the dark night of my soul is this; even the dandelion, that blooms, withers and blows away, is rooted in solid ground and when the winter is over, lives again. Even the garbage heap can be recycled into new usefulness. Even the manure pile is tilled back into the earth to enrich a new harvest. In the fullness of time and the proper season of renewal, all can be restored.

So in this season, I exist on what I still know that I know to be true. God is good. He is faithful. He does not abandon. And He loves me. At present little else matters to me.

It is all the words I have. And it is enough.

For now.  

Psalm 46:10 “Be still and know that I Am God.”

Luke 2:19 “But Mary kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart.”

Job 40:4-5 “I lay my hand over my mouth. Once I have spoken, but I will not answer; Yes, twice, but I will proceed no further.”

Job 42:3 “I have uttered what I did not understand, Things too wonderful for me, which I did not know.

Philippians 3:8-10 “ Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith— that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death.”

Lamentations 3:22-24 “The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. “The Lord is my portion,” says my soul, “therefore I will hope in him.”

Matthew 28:20 “I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.”

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There was water all around. No land in sight on any horizon.

So small and insignificant in the sea, the cork was lost and floating aimlessly. Disconnected from her original purpose. Identity gone. Afraid. Alone. Without hope of rescue. 

Suddenly a wall of water loomed in the distance, racing forward, a formidable tsunami wave that would certainly be the end of it all. The force of the wave shoved the cork, flipping and swirling, to the bottom of the ocean and the overwhelming despair and fear accompanying it became far greater than the violence of the water itself. Instant panic seized her. She would never survive. Not this time. 

The swirling current subsided and the cork drifted to the top, exhausted and disoriented. Just when a moment of relief came to the great sea, another wall of water appeared, sending her to the bottom of fear and loss again, this cycle continuing in never ending successions.

In slow agonizing increments, the waves eventually pushed the cork toward shore. She tumbled back and forth in the swirling breakers until she was finally left lying for days, with little energy left to care, in the sand.

On a bright sunny day a woman and her child walked the beach looking for treasures to fill their plastic pail. They found the cork, took her home, washed her and made her part of a useful and beautiful display in their home. The cork had come through the deep, dark waters and found purpose. New, different, even foreign, but a purpose just the same.

In my deepest despair I asked God for something, anything, to reassure me I would survive the devastating death of my husband.

He gave me this dream. I am the cork. Can new life be restored after such loss? Can the thing meant to destroy, become the catalyst for rescue and new meaning? Can the waters of dark despair bring forth renewed hope?

God promises I will not drown. Hope, like a cork, rises again. It’s true, life will never go back to what it was. I will never be the same. There are moments, hours, days, nights when I hate the reality of this truth, but I long for the time when I might be excited about living, when I finally wash up on the shore of hope and find new joy, new purpose.

As each reoccurring wave continues to bury me in the depths, I hang on to Jesus, my life preserver, until hope floats again.  

“Do not fear, for I have redeemed you, I have called you by name; you are Mine! When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they will not overflow you.” Isaiah 43:1-2

“And now, O Lord, for what do I wait? My hope is in you.” Psalm 39:7

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I’ve gone to the grocery store almost every week in my forty two years of marriage and family raising. Multiplying fifty two weeks in a year by forty two years equates to two thousand one hundred and eighty four times. Other than a parking lot ding on my car’s bumper, an occasional broken jar, squished peach or the bottom falling out of a full bag, it has been a nondescript task. Tuesday, October 3rd, 2017, I came home from the grocery store to find my husband dead in the front yard. There is absolutely nothing nondescript about that and I’m not sure I’ll ever look at buying groceries the same again. Mike’s last words to me were, “I’ll see you when you get back.” He didn’t. Now I attempt to navigate from here. The shared weight of responsibility Mike carried for Jon has been added entirely to me. It is heavy. I feel as if I’m suffocating right now. I’m hanging on to Jesus like the leaf of a tree in a hurricane. I see and feel the concern, love and prayers of those around us and am incredibly grateful to all who are rallying around me and Jon. But I’ve noticed the frequently asked question seems to be, “How are you doing?” So I’m feeling the need to explain to those who have yet to experience this particular type of storm, the difficult answer to this question. Quite honestly, I don't even know how I'm doing. There is no answer. However, an attempt to put it into words might go like this. I am a bucket of mashed potatoes. I have been picked, peeled, quartered, boiled, whipped, shoved through a sieve for extra fine-ness and tossed onto Florida’s Interstate 4 at rush hour to be run over by three hundred vehicles a minute. For the unforeseeable future, my answer to the ‘how you doing’ question will be “Mashed Potatoes and God is still good!” Just have a spatula to peel me off the pavement and a little salt and butter when you see me. I’m hoping these mashed potatoes will eventually be able to feed a hurting, desperate soul somewhere on the interstate of life. “The LORD is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.” Psalm 34:18

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