Here’s a blog I wrote back in Costa Rica but never got around to posting – enjoy!
Breathe You in, breathe me out. Breathe You in, breathe expectation out. Breathe you in, breathe pride out. Breathe You in, breathe frustration out. Breathe You in, breathe me out.
Oh, breathing prayer. The comfort and peace that comes from visualizing everything in you that isn’t of Him, and watching it leave your body as you breathe. I learned about this type of prayer at the beginning of the race, but never had the patience to put it into practice. The thought of sitting in silence and just focusing on your breathing, giving God room to speak, stressed me out. I love to be physically doing things; sitting in the same spot, not thinking, not speaking, not moving, not for me.
A few of my squadmates and I are training for a half marathon at the end of the race, so we’ve been running almost every morning. I usually just run to run – I’ve never trained for something before, so it’s been an adventure for me. At first, when we started increasing the distance and it was getting to be harder than casually running, I didn’t know what to do to keep myself going. I would try singing a song in my head, or talking to God, or imagining random scenarios, or soaking in the beauty of nature. And to an extent, that worked. But after five miles, six miles…all I could think about was how exhausted I was. So I began focusing on my breathing.
Breathe in, breathe out. Breathe in, breathe out. I would repeat it over and over in my head, slowing my breathing down so I could finally catch a lungful of air. But that got boring real quickly. I’d get distracted, and before I knew it I was gasping for breath again. And that’s when the idea of breathing prayer came back to me. It started with exhaustion. Breathe You in, breathe exhaustion out. I’d repeat that one a lot. Then I’d move on to other things in my life.
Maybe I was stressed about my plans for the fall. Breathe You in, breathe stress out. Or I was frustrated that I was struggling to keep up with the lead of the group. Breathe You in, breathe competition out. Maybe the enemy was attacking my confidence, or trying to make me feel like I wasn’t good enough. Literally anything I was going through – running in the morning while doing breathing prayer became my way of making sure the day started off right. And it worked! I learned to surrender those things to the Lord first thing, instead of wrestling with them and then giving them to Him.
“He must become greater; I must become less.” John 3:30. I’ve read this scripture before, and I know that we must decrease for Him to increase. But there’s a big difference between believing something in your head and believing it in your heart. And I was still somewhere stuck in the middle before I started doing breathing prayer regularly. I’m a very visual person, and it’s so clear for me now. As I say it, I can literally see it in each breath. I can see me breathing in the Holy Spirit, picture it filling my lungs. And as I breathe out, I can see darkness fleeing. Every negative emotion in me, every unhealthy belief or habit. When the Lord fills us, there is absolutely no room for anything else. And the satisfaction of seeing the enemy running high-tailed out of there is pretty dang great.
So go give it a shot. Maybe you’re a person who can easily sit still and just focus on breathing in the Lord – good for you. Or if you’re like me, work it into your daily habits. Make time to practice while you’re working out, or while you’re cooking, or while you’re walking the dog. Even if you just have a minute a day to give it a shot, I promise it’ll help tremendously. Let the Lord fill you up, and you won’t regret it.
With love,
Brook
