“Oh, how I long to just breathe.”
The first time I noticed my breath, I was already in my 4th decade of life.
In fact, I have that very moment documented in an assignment I wrote for my Narrative Focused Trauma Care training. We were asked to write a story about a childhood memory (mine is from when I was about 10 years old), and then we were to evaluate what we wrote.
Below is an excerpt from my evaluation:
“I noticed as I reread my story, that there are some gaps. And I have spent many hours trying to fill these gaps. Exactly how old was I? Exactly what did I confess? I knew the truth in my heart, but did I actually confess all of it, or did only tell part of it? What was everything that was said to me? Did anyone hold me? Did anyone comfort me beyond only talking to me? I don’t remember if anyone turned on the lights…or did we just sit in the dark?
And then there are the “million and one scenarios running through my head”. This alone causes me such angst, and is still something I still experience today. Oh my word, is it ever still a reality for me. Whether work, church, friendships, relationships, my family, I suffer this ‘over evaluation’, ‘scenario driven’ reaction to anything in my life that has the potential for a negative outcome or reaction from others. I have, and still will find myself, sleepless, tossing and turning, churning out scenarios. Even as I write this, I can feel the tension in my chest. The inability to breathe deep. In fact, since I have recently attempted to take up Yoga, I am so aware that I really don’t even know how to fill my lungs with air.
I simply can’t. I don’t know how. I don’t believe my lungs have ever taken in air to what would be considered their capacity. It saddens me. It makes me think something is so wrong with me. Why can’t I allow myself to enjoy a full, deep breath? (PAUSE) Immediate reaction: As I wrote that, I literally held my face in my hands, and wept out loud. I am 44 years old. And for 44 years, I don’t think I have ever enjoyed a full deep breath, without feeling like I am suffocating when I come anywhere close to filling my lungs. If I had to assign a percentage… I honestly feel like I am only reaching 50 maybe 60%, if that? Who am I kidding?…Oh how I long to breathe, to breathe deeply. To savor safety.”
You may have got a sense from the above excerpt, that I struggled with a relentless chaos inside my head, as a result of this particular childhood experience. Maybe you can even relate? And if I’m honest, it wasn’t just this one isolated experience, but many combined experiences, over the course of my childhood and adolescence, of loss, brokeness and harm that all worked together to create the chaos in my mind, heart and body. As we know all too well, our struggles don’t end with our childhood. They follow us into adulthood and all too often, we end up turning against our own bodies, blaming ourselves for what happened to us, or punishing ourselves for what we did or didn’t do. For me, this would come to mean years, better said, decades upon decades of self-harm. Not only was I looking for safety from my surroundings, I was no longer safe in my own body.
Trauma disconnects us from our body, including from our breath. Re-discovering our breath is one way to find healing.
So much of my perosnal healing journey has been through the repentance and repair I have done with my own body. And a large part of that has been to find my way back to my breath… to learn how to “breathe, to breathe deeply. And to savor safety within my own body.”.
One of the ways I have come to practice reconnection with my breath and with God, is through writing ‘Word by Word Breath Prayers’. In this particular prayer, based on an excerpt from Paul’s letter to the people of Ephesus in Ephesians chapter 3, I found new hope and understanding when Paul prays, “…may you be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being…”
For it is in our inner being, in between our inhale and exhale, that the very Breath of God fills us with strength and power.
So if you need strength today, I invite you to settle in and take the next 15 mins to join me in today’s ‘Word by Word Breath Prayer’ to reconnect and find safety in the very breath of God within you!
