The Plight of Living a Breathless Life

Get busy! Get moving! Get on that frenetic treadmill. Nothing robs the peace and joy from a Christian's life more than constant busyness. That busyness for the Christian may be veiled as some super-spiritual drive for excellence, some kind of way to work out our salvation. But in the end it comes down to just plain fear-driven, can't-stop-moving, don't-want-to-deal-with-it, got-to-please-everyone busyness.

If that is you, I understand. See, I know what it is like to live a breathless life and not even realize it, not even think about the spiritual erosion daily distractions are causing to my soul ... that is until my life became literally breathless.

And I say literally because that is exactly what happened.

When an air conditioning unit quits in the middle of the hottest, sultriest week imaginable, it takes a bit of humor to beat the heat. After ranting and raving about my condition, my plight, my rights, my pathetic state, it struck me as humorous. This was the weekend that the air stood still. I thus deemed this time "the breathless life."

And then it dawned on me. One evening, while lying listlessly, I realized something. See, you get really introspective when things don't work out the way you think they ought to. In times of suffering, questions aren't far behind. At first, I asked the typical why me? But eventually, I began to ask instead, "What do I need to learn from this experience? Is God trying to tell me something?"

I know, it sounds cheesy. But the fact is I believe God had something very profound to tell me, and my statement said in fun was ironically not far from the truth.

God had given me this amazing blessing that took inquiry and prayer to see. To the human mind, this was disaster, but to God this was time for me to learn about resting in the Lord.

Now if you are me, you would initially note this season as forced rest — a not too pleasant term for being unable to do what you really want — just keep on doing. But when you have done all you can and there isn't anything else you can do to get back to life as usual, you have two choices:

1. Continue being frustrated or take life as it comes.
2. Try desperately to regain control or give up control.

Not being the kind of person who lives one day at a time, after readjusting and going with the flow and living each minute to the fullest (because there wasn't much else to do), I was amazed to find a peace and refreshment that I confess I have not experienced in over five years.

"The LORD's promises are pure, like silver refined in a furnace, purified seven times over." (Psalm 12:6 NLT)

Copyright © Laura Bagby, used with permission.