Breathing room for my soul – Where does that come from? Certainly not from trying harder, good intentions and daily tasks, rushing to meetings or practice, raises and promotions, badges or awards, or another day turned on the calendar. We can live our whole lives without breathing room for our souls, can’t we? The harder we try, the harder it is to inflate our lungs. In Western culture, we run our oxygen-starved bodies on adrenaline. What feeds our glory-starved souls?

In the apart-ness of grief, the enforced time alone, my vision, often blurred with tears, clears to a fresh reality. Raw grief strips attachments and resets priorities — richness in relationships and memories.

As I sort through my mother’s belongings, bits and pieces of my life are exposed. I recall how many times God worked, spoke, protected, provided, healed and nurtured me.

How precious the ability to recall!

And for the first time in my life, I see there isn’t time to learn all the things I’ve wanted to learn or do all I’d planned to do.

“Teach us to number our days.”

I never would have guessed I would find breathing room for my soul in sensing my own mortality.

Rather than sadness or panic, numbering my days is setting me free.

I don’t have to become.

I simply chose to live now, love well and share as I am able.

Ahhhh. Big breath.

“I’ve learned by now to be quite content whatever my circumstances. I’m just as happy with little as with much, with much as with little. I’ve found the recipe for being happy whether full or hungry, hands full or hands empty. Whatever I have, wherever I am, I can make it through anything in the One who makes me who I am.” Phil 4:11-13
The Message

Letting go of trying-so-hard releases me. It is enough to be me. ‘Who I am’ is the only thing that I will take into eternity.

And ‘who I am’ is good enough because I am a child of the King, fearfully and wonderfully made.

Relationship with Him undergirds my life, and promises my future, forever.

For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. Psalm 139:13-14 NIV

If you cannot see the picture or video, click on the title to read from the website.