Life is Serious - now BREATHE!

All too often I take life very seriously like it is mine to hold on to, to count and quarter, measure and maintain like some kind of special model ship or shiny crystal butterfly.  It is a fact that many of us feel that we can protect the essence by hiding it behind carefully constructed walls but in the end we smother the joy of really living. Breathing freely - exhaling as well as inhaling - is truly living.  Have you ever held your breath in nervous anticipation of something - good or bad - then exhaled in relief or acceptance?  I see this holding of my breath as an unconscious way to control something that is inevitable. You can, for a moment, control something but, in the end, life takes over and so you too must exhale.


I can now look back over many years of living and identify where I was holding my breath - sometimes too long - and losing out on the joy of just exhaling and going with it!  Every decision point along the continuum there is that moment when I instinctively held my breath in a last ditch effort to control the outcome: a marriage or a divorce; a healthy infant or a child with a challenge; a fulfilling career or a mundane job.  All part of the human condition called living and many outside of my control.

When I exhaled, sometimes what I faced was not what I would have chosen; other times that first breath afterward was filled with joy.  When you think about it, to do otherwise, would mean death - not physical death, but failure to breathe out in the next moment could and sometimes did lead to the death of  new joy, new life, new adventures and the anticipation of new experiences just around the corner. Thank goodness, God did not close the doors or windows on my soul at each crossroads and was there along with a friend or two, in the quiet, just waiting for me to exhale!

When you've got friends that wish you well.......shoop; shoop; shoop!  Now, hum along with me:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wrTuV4Szxzo&feature=kp