breathe

Thursday, April 15, 2010


The baby is no longer sleeping through the night. I think he is on a growth spurt.

I get up early with him, put him back to sleep, find some quiet time that is just for me. I stay up late too, after the kids are asleep, to find some quiet time that is just for us.

We played Yahtzee last night. I retooled my photography blog yesterday. It is still unfinished. I've not had time to choose something for branding the site yet. It's not a big deal; I'll be getting a flash site after my wedding in May.

I've not been very active on social media this week. I am measuring time, trying not to measure time, being more vigilant here at home where Piper is into the pantry or the refrigerator every ten minutes or so. (I think she is also on a growth spurt.)

I have been breathing too.


The fight to rest is so difficult sometimes, unless I'm falling into Jesus - and the busy keeps me standing, running, pressing on beyond the rest He offers to the weary and heavy-laden. I don't have time for falling.

I have thought of God at times as a demanding Lord, but His commands are not burdensome. If they are burdensome to me, I know it is time to check myself.

I am told to stop.

Stop striving. Even to please Him.

Walk humbly. Me, at the end of me, trusting the grace of a God greater than my imagination. Enjoying the sun, the spring, the wind, my children. Breathing, resting. In love.

I wonder sometimes if the path He chooses for me is the hard path - that He actually calls me into the crazy at times so that I will long for His rest, stand firm in His grace, let Him quell the questions of "enough" and "too much" that are louder than the still of His quiet heart.

Oh, how those questions drive me, push me, break me.


There is so much I cannot do. So much I want to do - and yet, I can't define what I want.

God has always led me through desire. He places things in my heart to want that send me into Him, because He is the end of my desire, the joy of it, the treasure that causes every other to pale in comparison. His heart-Kingdom is the pearl of great price - redemption and rest and peace and hope. It is somehow possible to find this in time, to find Him in time, to live in this Spirit-place in this very visceral world of mine.

But there is the groaning.

And there is the busy, and the tired, and the surrounding need and noise that calls me away from His rest and bottles up desire when I would pour it out to Him.

Breathe now, redeem the time.

Redeem it with thanks, with love given and love received, with quietness and beauty and long soul-walks during busy hours. Redeem it with kisses and cuddles, pictures not taken and taken, and dream a little, hope a lot. Redeem it with prayer and communion and words that come easy into rest that is redeeming time too, because He is my rest, and He has redeemed me, and this is eternal life, knowing God and Jesus whom He sent.


Breathe, watch the wind in the reeds, in the trees - and shoot the breeze with a little girl who is learning what it is.

Breathe, rock soft in springtime, rock the smallest one while he is small, talk to him while he coos, before he screams, before they both grow away and don't want to be held as they did when they were tiny.

Breathe, ask who I am, who He is, who we are, and let Him answer. There is not need for self-justification or self-deprecation.

This is life; this is life abundant, this living and moving and having my being in Him. I don't owe it to Him, I do it because of Him - or I would not do anything at all, for I am frozen when I try to measure up, because I am not enough.

Take me as I am, where I am, or take me not at all. Today, I want not to worry about it. Today, I am breathing, not drowning.

How life came through breath...

It is enough.


(Image © Informal Moments Photography)

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