Holding Our Breath

In the months before having my first baby, I went to classes where they taught you all the basics of childbirth including breathing. I thought I had absorbed all the relevant information, but early on the morning of June 5th 1984 I soon realized I had not been paying full attention and certainly hadn't practised.

The labor pains came fast and unrelenting so I held Mike’s hand very tight and it seemed as though I held my breath forever.

Every time I felt a surge of excruciating pain, my natural reaction was not to calmly breath through as taught in the lesson. My extreme reaction was to ask for someone, anyone to take over and for me to hold my breath until eternity came and met me.

Of course both of these things were  wildly unrealistic, and so with the skill of the medical professionals and lots of strong pain killers, our beautiful little girl entered the world despite my best effort to keep her inside of me and for me to hold my breath forever.

I am particularly aware that at this moment it feels like the whole of the USA has taken a huge deep breath and isn't letting it out again until 2021 and it is all over.

We are all holding our breaths in case of another lockdown, we are holding our breath on the election, unemployment, the flu season and racial division. We are in one way or another hoping, like I did in, labor someone else will make it go away and we can be exempt from our responsibility or at least from thinking about it.

Our “surge” capacity has surged and gone, our adaptability and natural optimism has been left behind in March 2020 and we need to be reminded or at least coached into breathing again.

We need to breath, big deep breaths of faith and truth, we need to breathe in the fresh air of hope and to find our lungs being filled with thankfulness and peace. If you simply and honestly can’t breath, then get someone else to fill your lungs for you, like in mouth to mouth resuscitation until you can do it on your own again. We have to breathe- it’s how we are made. Otherwise we die.