IN AND OUT

IN AND OUT

If one doesn’t let stuff go or take stuff in – death becomes one’s reality.

TRY THIS. Take a deep breath. Hold it for as long as possible. For most that will be around thirty seconds. The exception is someone trained for underwater emergencies. They can hold their breath for up to two minutes. What is inhaled must be exhaled or death is a certainty. If nothing is inhaled there in nothing to exhale, death is a certainty. Breathing, the thing that we do as much as 12 to 16 times per minute, 17 to 23 thousand per day, ought to be a great reminder that as a living organism, inhaling and exhaling is what keeps us alive. Life without this exchange is not possible. We take the privilege of breathing for granted until it is compromised.

On the wall adjacent to the orange loveseat where I sit to begin my day is a slip of paper with these words, “Disturb me, Lord, when I am too well pleased with myself, when my dreams have come true because I have dreamed too little, when I arrived safely because I sailed too closely to shore.” I don’t know their origin. They are not my words, but I found them unsettling. I am as capable of getting comfortable with the status quo of my life as I am with breathing - UNTIL something comes along and disturbs it. I am DECIDELY not comfortable with asking for it to be disturbed. Even as I had that thought, the opening sentence was playing in the back of my mind, letting go and taking in.

My friend and her partner were living very comfortably. They had found each other during the pandemic, had taken care of and subsequently buried parents and found their creative niche in the artistic world. As the political climate changed, they found themselves holding their breath more for longer periods of time. Said another way, it became increasingly difficult for them to inhale what their environment produced and even more difficult for them to exhale. They were dying (figuratively). Their comfortable lives had been disturbed. For them to end their slow death, they exhaled all that they were feeling and inhaled a new possibility of what life could be elsewhere. To make the possibility come to life, they had to leave a lot of stuff and a lot of people behind.

They are my current heroes…providing me an example of seeking disturbances. They inhaled and exhaled questions and doubts internally and externally generated before settling on the strategy to address their needs. Their fears and uncertainties became a part of the process without becoming obstacles. They left the comfort of the present to live life more fully in their finite time.

Dreaming is easy and mulling over what could be is even easier. Exponentially harder is having the courage to exhale the dream into the atmosphere, allowing it to either become a reality or fizzle out. One thing is certain, if not released it dies the slow death of unfulfillment. Everything is a choice.

Matthew 6:19-21

PONDER THIS THOUGHT---New life is made possible when some old stuff is released.

LEAVING TO LIVE