Tag Archives: breath

How to talk to yourself so you can be heard.

Posted on
20

Most of us think we don’t have anything to say. But the reality is that we’ve just stopped listening to ourselves. We’ve stopped allowing ourselves to speak from a deep place. The Deep Place where the soul meets sunshine for a moment of clarity and thought. If we aren’t willing to get quiet and listen, then we won’t have anything to say at all.

You’ll never find real answers if you’re afraid to ask real questions.

And, you’ll never find real answers if you aren’t willing to answer the real questions.

For example, what is important to me?

  • love
  • friendship
  • conversation
  • creativity
  • family
  • vulnerability
  • acceptance

What things are important to you?

These are the things that are word-worthy. That mean much to us. That are breath and life and living. Those things should have words. Words on pages that may never be read. Or in secret conversations in the late of night that fall between you and your love or you and your God or you and your friend. By all means, give them words.

Words cannot be words without breath. And so life cannot be life without breath. And faith cannot be faith without breath. What is it if it has no breath? It is dead.

Give your truth breath. Speak it. Say it. Offer it to the ears of the world. And to the ears of yourself. Declare it. Write it down. Breath it out to someone else. Make it real. Make it alive. Make it full of breath. Put your breath–your exhale–in it and send it on it’s way.

We cannot live our realities if we are denying them. We cannot live out our pursuits if we are being silenced. Surround yourself with people who don’t silence you, but who cheer on your voice. Bring them into your world and let them speak their words to you so you can find your own voice. Get used to the sound of your voice and let it be the vessel you use to declare truth and love to the world. What are we without our own voices? mute… lifeless… messageless…

Don’t mute yourself. Amplify yourself. You have something to say that’s worth saying. Say it. If it’s worthy of words, give it words.

Give it words.

5. Two More Days

Posted on
5

It just occurred to me that there are two more days in this week – this week of quiet and nothingness… We’ve done a lot of reflecting, thinking, and listening. We’ve done a lot of evaluating, clarifying, and maybe even some deciding.

I’ve been thinking about spiritual breathing this week – thinking about how God is the giver of life, by giving us breath. By lowering Himself to a very intimate degree of presence, and breathing life into us. Maybe that’s why the infant cries the most important cry of his life in that first breath- maybe it’s because his baby lungs have just been filled with a God-sized inhalation. Maybe it’s more than he can take in. And so he cries.

I think life does that to us sometimes. In order to truly live, we are taken through different God-sized moments. These moments usually come with intense emotion and discovery. And, well, sometimes the only way to react is to cry – to exhale with the deepest intensity of emotion.

So, in the last two days of this Selah – this pause to take a deep breath – I think the proper ending is a moment of exhale. Release what is in there. Journal it out. Talk it out. Blog it out. Cry it out. Whatever it takes for you to process the God-sized inhalation we’ve experienced this week.

Selah, friends.