Just Breathe

 

 Momma, Emme, and our newest addition, Baby B

The last time I blogged I wrote a love letter to my sweet Emme girl, letting her know her baby brother Bennett would be here soon. Three weeks later, we moved into our new house. One week after that, my precious son was born – Bennett Christopher.

I stopped blogging. Why? Because I couldn’t do it perfectly. Life was busy and I didn’t have time to write perfectly, to post the perfect photoshopped pictures, to find the perfect recipes to write about, to have the perfect words to say.

And then last night I was raced to the emergency room for what seemed to be a heart attack. At 24 years old. And all I could think about were my two sweet, sweet children. I knew my husband would be OK, he is a strong Man of God and though he loves me to the depths of his heart and me him, he does not depend on me for life. My children do. And I wanted desperately to stay here with them.

Through divine intervention I was in the right place at the right time and I am OK. God is working in me through this situation and I am catching tiny glimpses of His plan unfolding. How unworthy I am, and how blessed and grateful I feel.

A few days ago I got an email from my mom asking me to watch a video. I of course didn’t have time. But as I sat on the couch moping tonight, moping and wondering, “Why me God? Why me?” I scrolled through my unread emails and decided to give it a shot.

And God spoke to me. Oh, how I finally finally opened up after so many months of being far from Him. It was my mistake as a mother to think that I was “close” to God simply through the acts of being a mother and taking care of my children, but tonight I realized that I must continue to search Him, seek Him, breathe Him in. It is not enough to go through the day to day tasks and expect to be filled enough to go on. God not so gently reminded me last night in the ER, quite ironically, to “breathe, breathe, just slow down and breathe” through the voices of the doctors and nurses.

The video that I watched tonight is an excerpt from the book, “One Thousand Gifts.” The words of the video are below:

She isn’t 24 hours old yet, still that heaven scent upon her skin. When I pull her close, I whisper right into her, whisper into her the meaning of life. The one thing she needs to know before she’s as old as I am and as messed up as much as I have. Moments. I tell her this: moments, this all we have. Microscopic, fleeting moments. Her eyelashes flutter in dreams, and I wonder how many moments of my life have my eyes been wide open, but I’ve been rushing, racing, sleeping right through?

How many of the popsicle days and the run and twirl and spin days, how many moments of the melting ice cream and crazy laughter, dangling bare feet, and the setting sun igniting the wonder of now. Someone wake me up to the beating of wings and splashing of water, the setting of fog at twilight, the ways the leaves and the childhood slip away  in the woods, torched with the last of summer.

I wanna tell her this: you have got to figure out a way to stay fully awake. Time’s blurring by, and everyone's slipping past. And how do we wake to the moments? How do we stop living like life is an emergency, something to be sped wildly through. Life is not an emergency. How do we start believing that life can we carried only in the hands of the unhurried, a bubble held in awe. How do we stop wolfing life down? Because life is our only dessert. To brief. Too sweet. Too delectable to hurry. 

And all this, all these moments, all these are for you. Isn’t that the voice we have to learn to hear? The voice that is telling the whole world that the earth under you, and the rain over you, and all the stars spinning all around you this is for you, for you, FOR YOU. Your true love’s smile and the nap and a patch of light and the world’s bike spokes and the wild rose on the sill and that one great puff of her flickering candles, these are all for you. 

What if we really figured it out? The gratitude for the seemingly small and insignificant, this is the seed that plants the giant miracle in the midst of it all. So count the ways He loves. A thousand more. Never stop. So that when you wake in the morning you can’t help but unfold your hands to the heavens. And though you grieve, and though you wonder, though the world is ugly, it is beautiful. And though time moves on, its moments are holy. And though the planet spins, a slow, a blur, you can slow and you can wake. And you can trust. And you can pay attention to the moments with this offering of thanks. 

Because this is how you spend your one life well. Receiving each moment for what it really is. Holy. Ordinary. Amazing Grace. A gift.

And this is why I am blogging again. Because I was given a gift last night. A gift from God to really see life again. I had stalled in my faith life and God cared enough for me to bring my back to the surface. At only 24 years old he chose to reach out and so strongly remind me of the gift I have here on earth and begged me to recognize it. To appreciate it. To fully stay awake for it. Who am I? That He should choose me to remind? I have so much of my life left to live and now I can live it fully awake. Instead of racing through it, rushing through it, sleeping through it.

I have chosen to come back to blogging to track these moments, these fleeting moments, so that I may have a memory keeper of my gifts, the simple, wonderful, spectacular gifts that we get to enjoy each and every day. I’m not going to be your perfect blog. I won’t write every day, maybe not even every week. But my intention is not for entertainment for others. So if that’s what you’re looking for, sorry. My intention is to capture these memories, so that on those days when it does feel hard to breathe, I may look back and be reminded of these gifts. So that I do not come to the point again where I have so forgotten His daily gifts that I am literally unable to breathe.

I’ll be posting the full story of how I got here and my current condition in days to come. And to all those who have been praying for me throughout this ordeal, thank you! If you do anything tonight, please watch the video that helped me get here.