breathing & becoming

from Ann Voskamp...

"Our every breath is a surrender to His sovereignty.

YWHW.

It's always fear that brings tension--
the tension that brings the pain. And then it's the pain that makes us think we can't go on ...

So when the world contracts tight
breathe deep and let it all come
with no fear, no fear.

'Remember? You're a bag of sand, and there's a hole in your toe, and the sand just keeps trickling out.
Just let everything that comes on, trickle on through.
Don't hold on.
Just breathe and let go.'

All the torn places in a life show us how to let go... We breathe slow together, letting what He gives in this moment fill us, run through us,
move on out into the world."

I've been doing this a lot lately ... breathing.
Just breathing.
I so love this analogy of being like a bag of sand with a hole in my toe and letting it all keep trickling out, slowly but definitely.
In the good things and the harder, good things, I must remind myself of this image. It all flows out of me -- whether it's bitterness or sweetness, love or hate, anger or joy. It all comes out. And the ways that it comes out can show me if I'm really letting go or not.

But it's not just about the letting go, is it?
It's about the letting it come, too.

"let it all come, with no fear."

How does one do this? Gaze out from this place in life with open hands and an open heart? What do you do when you accept what's already happened to you -- accept the reality of your pain and your past and your process -- and how do you still welcome it, welcome all?

In the fuzz and fog of these questions-- and honestly, this fear-- I see him here.
A man of strength and sacrifice and immense love. I see him standing and gazing, just like that, and he's unafraid. Because he did it. And he does it. Every single day. He's not bound in this time-capsule of an earth, but he's still here and he moves and he shows up when we can't. I'm not sure how, but the childlike dreamer in me can imagine and hope and trust in what I don't understand. Madeleine L'Engle says it well,

"Only the most mature of us are able to be childlike. And to be able to be childlike involves memory; we must never forget any part of ourselves... 

For growing up never ends; we never get there. I am still in the process of growing up, but I will make no progress if I lose any of myself on the way."

It's a beautiful thing to love yourself as you are and as you once were; "to never forget any part of ourselves." I find this in the breathing and the becoming. I breathe it in, breathe it out, and become something from it-- whatever it is. I can take everything as some form of grace, even when it hurts. Especially when it hurts.
Because in the hurt I have become what I could not have been before that painful experience. As Brooke Waggoner sings... I have to break inside, before I die to me. 

Whatever the breaking looks like -- we'll breathe slow together & we'll make it through.

Whatever the joy looks like-- we'll let it fill us here & now, let the tears and the pee-your-pants laughter flow out, and we'll want for nothing more than this moment.

Whenever the fear seems louder than the hope, we'll fix our gaze on him who is fearless, and we'll choose to have no fear.


And when the torn places seem to be outnumbering the healed & whole places...

"We trust the one we call Abba as a child does, knowing that what seems unreasonable now will be seen to have reason later."

&

"We have to be braver than we think we can be, because God is constantly calling us to be more than we are..."