And there I swim, in my one piece green and purple suit with it's pink polka-dots all over. I'm twelve maybe thirteen, making myself sink to the bottom of the pool. Eyes shut, mouth closed tight. I hit the bottom of the pool and it begins. My eyes open and the chlorine immediately stings them, No one else has joined me, there is silence at the bottom of the pool. I feel the water all around me, flowing endlessly, easily. I can feel my lungs start to burn and ache for air, for freshness, but I wait a little longer. Counting and waiting and counting and waiting. Soon my lungs are screaming and the water has no longer become peaceful but a force that is keeping me from the surface, from the freshness of new air. I kick off the bottom of the pool and surge upward towards the sky. My face breaks the surface and I gasp as my lungs fill with air. I lay on my back and let the surface tension of the water hold me up. Catching my breath until I can hold it again.
I spend a lot of time holding my breath in life. Making myself sink to the bottom, letting my lungs fill and ache and burn for freshness, but just counting and waiting. I'm always breathing in, but never breathing out. And I constantly find myself kicking and screaming at the bottom, my lungs screaming at me, my ears full of water, trying to push myself to the top but never really getting there.
I think in my head I have this idea. My head never has good ideas, my heart is much better. But I think my head thinks that if I know how to hold my breath long enough, when I step out of the boat I won't have to worry about sinking. That when the time comes and God calls me out to walk on the water, I'll be prepared, so when I sink I can just hold my breath.
But that is not the point. I'm not suppose to want to hold my breath. I'm suppose to want to walk on the water. I'm suppose to want to jump out of that boat with reckless abandonment, grab my Jesus's hand and run across those waves to wherever He takes me. But most days, that is not the case. Most days I prep myself to hold my breath. To sink under the waves and into the darkness of the depths.
I hold my breath and count. Hold my breath for the right job, hold my breath for that friend to call, hold my breath for love, hold my breath for Africa, hold my breath for my family, holding and holding and holding.... hold my breath and wait and wait and sit on the bottom. But God is teaching me something spectacular. Something life changing.
He's teaching me how to breathe again.
To breathe HIM in and breathe HIM out.
To stop waiting and counting and holding my breath. But to just breathe. To constantly breathe and never stop. To no longer hold my breath, but to breathe out in all the things that He's done and is doing and will continue to do in my life. To stop wasting away at the bottom of that crummy ocean or pool, but to finally push myself off the bottom and surge toward the sky.
It's hard. I've been holding my breath for so long it seems that I've got a lot to learn when it comes to breathing again. But slowly and surely I step out of that boat and instead of sucking air into my lungs, I'm reaching out my hands, I'm lifting my head up towards the sky and grasping onto my Jesus, breathing.
The easiest thing to do is to just sit by. To just hold my breath and watch others live. To spend my time waiting on everyone else, holding my breath and hoping things will fall into my life. But that is not who God created me to be. He created me to run, to swim, to laugh, to love recklessly. He created me to BREATHE. so I'm going to do just that. no more sinking, no more counting no more waiting.
I'm going to live abandoned, love recklessly and breathe like there is no tomorrow.
Just breathing.
HIS and yours,
Cami
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