Let Me Tell You A Story About Breath

Recently we heard a testimony from a friend who lives in Northern Africa where his family helps fledging farmers build dairy herds. He shared about a season of deep discouragement, where it felt like too much heaviness, too much death, too many questions.

He got a call late at night from a farmer with a cow struggling to give birth. He drove to help and on the way it sounded like the calf would die. He told us how all the discouragement felt too weighty, too deep to keep wading through.

As he drove, he prayed for breath. Just that one word. Breath for the calf but also breath for all of them who were struggling. Just that simple prayer for the one thing that would bring hope back when discouragement was deflating all life from their lungs.

When he walked into the barn, the farmer met him, calling out, “We have breath!”

And there in that North African barn, Yahweh, the Breath-Giver, was present.

As I listened, I felt this testimony to the depth of my being and to be honest, it wasn’t a hopeful feeling at first. While my heart clenched with joy as I listened, another part of me recoiled. The circumstances we’ve been praying over for years now seemed to grow before my eyes and one question filled my heart: “How long, Lord, until we get the chance to hear that there is breath for us? How long?”

Just weeks before this day my husband and I were placed in an impossible situation where EVERY option we had would cause deep emotional pain to us both, and still, we had to choose WHICH pain we were going to experience. Like someone saying, “You have to be shot or stabbed, your choice, but you have to choose one.”

We survived, but it hurt like hell.

And after hearing this friend’s testimony, all day I felt the questions spin out of control. “They got breath, Lord. Isn’t there enough to go around? Can’t you breathe on us all?”

How long can we live without someone bursting through the doors crying, “We have breath!”?

I cried most of the day. Not sobbing, just hot tears that burned my eyes every time I remembered the question.

Will we ever have breath? Ever?

Now, I don’t know if we will ever experience a miracle of breath in the places I’m worried most about, but I can tell you that later that night, when evening light was just slipping across the sky, I sat by my husband and father-in-law at a bonfire, while my son and my youngest were swinging and laughing, and the air was light and Autumn-like, and I breathed.

In. Out. In. Out.

Hymns played on the speaker, filling the backyard. When peace like a river attendeth my soul, when sorrows like sea billows roll…

And the wounds were still real, still there, and I was still angry I had them, but I breathed anyway.

In. Out. In. Out.

I thought of the words, “We have breath!” And for the first time that day, I didn’t feel abandoned at the thought of them.

Instead, I just breathed. Soft, shallow, still painful, but definitely, positively- breath.

As I’m writing this there still isn’t breath all the places I want it to be, but in my own body, I’m breathing.

And this is it’s own miracle. Not as big or grand as the one I still beg God for, but a miracle just the same. Because on the day when I thought I had no faith left, I still breathed.

I told my husband later, as we lay beside each other in the dark of our bedroom, that I still feel hopeless–like I’ll never see breath where I am desperate for it to be– but I don’t want to miss the way God is moving.

“I care more about these other places than I do about me,” I said, “but maybe God cares just as much about my heart as he does about all the other areas. Maybe He views my quiet evenings of gentle, slow breaths, as just as miraculous as the surprise breaths on North African farms. Maybe I matter to Him as deeply as everything else matters to me. Maybe this breath tonight is the hope we all need to move to the next day, the next moment, the next miracle.”

I know that all of you reading this are probably carrying areas you are desperate to see new life poured into. Hope for dearly loved ones who are so lost, children who are searching, a nation that is floundering, homes that are crumbling, churches that are failing.

I want us all to keep praying and reaching for miracles in all of those places, but I also know the hope of each of those giant miracles is rooted in our knowledge that God cares about each individual person. We are each the hundredth lamb that the shepherd searches for, the lost coin the woman seeks, the lost son the father runs to hug and celebrate and weep in joy over when he comes home.

The hope we have for the world– for our neighbors and daughters and friends– it exists because we know that God meets each of us right in the middle of our suffering. Right in the middle of our brokenness. Right in the middle of complete loss, God shows up and breathes life into that which was dead.

So the miracle of peace in my small moments, this is the miracle that proves the possibility of new breath in all the other places that matter the most to me. God’s care for small little me, is the good news for this great big world.

My breath today is proof that my hope for redemption for the people who matter most to me is a hope in that which is true.

Dear ones, let us hold onto hope. Yahweh still breathes. And life is still available.

For you, for me, for our neighbors and daughters and friends.

Amen. Amen.