I Forgot To Breathe Again *Sigh*

 
Sometimes I wonder how it is that a person can quite literally forget to breathe...

I do it. A lot.

Okay...mainly when I am talking. :)  I can get excited.

Last night I forgot to breathe. A. Lot. I was being inundated with questions about my religious beliefs.  What made it so unnerving was that the person I was speaking with quite literally knows nothing. N.O.T.H.I.N.G. I kept having flash backs to Vacation Bible School or when I have taught Children's Sunday School...oh how easy those times seemed to me last night. If you mess up a story...no problem. They're kids. It is a completely different story when you are being asked these questions by a highly intelligent adult with no knowledge. I could literally hear my own heart pounding because I was quite sure I was butchering the key points of the Bible I was being asked to explain because those are the parts you pull from to support your beliefs...Right?!  I will get back to that...I literally felt the weight of their questions on my soul. It was unnerving...yet somehow...inspiring.

I have never...honestly never...had anyone ask me if I thought they were going to hell. I mean how does one answer that question? And what raw honesty that broke my heart that they wondered...are wondering. {Flash backs to my grandparents who lived a lifetime in the church and still wondered to the end. That. Is. Not. Right. :( We have lost our way.)}

I digress...

I was clearly not created for ministry.

Clearly.

I digress...

I believe in the Bible. Lets get that right out of the way, but when you are trying to explain Jesus to someone who has zero knowledge of who Jesus is, who the disciples were, the woman at the well, has never read the Bible...how in the world do you overwhelm them with all of that?! How do you pick where to start?  Well, you overwhelm them, and so did I...until I saw their yearning eyes...and I stopped myself.  Tears in my eyes, I simply started with unconditional love....and went from there.

*Sigh*

If you can understand unconditional love (or the desire for it), then you can understand Jesus....and then the leap is pretty easy...and as I witnessed firsthand...quite overwhelming (for both you and them).

I am pretty sure Christians forget to breathe...All. The. Time. We (okay I....I don't want to push off my shortcomings on others) get so caught up in the drama around the rules, the traditions, the legalism, the differences between us and them (other Christians and ourselves...not to mention non-Christians vs. Christians) that we get lost...in all of that noise. Noise.

Breathe.

When I finally stopped to take a breath last night...and just looked into this person's eyes...to see that quest for answers, wondering, searching in their eyes...expecting me to know the answers...I did the only thing I knew how. I told them about love.

I have wrestled with this for so long now that it should not be frightening to write about it, yet...my hands are shaking as I type. I will be judged for this. I know it. Frankly, I don't care.

I really think we have to meet people at a place of love.

My friend E sent me a link today to a beautiful song Breathe by Ryan Star, and I love it...and it was perfect for a day like today....for a day that came after a marathon night staying up and helping a friend to better understand this thing called love they say I am always talking about (funny, I always think I don't talk about it enough)...after a night and day I spent praying I had said the right things the night before...and wondering why in the world they came to me. Me? So unqualified to handle something of that magnitude and importance.

...and here I am forgetting to breathe again, and I am simply typing...:)

I am reading a book right now on radical obedience, and while I have the radical part down pat...I suck at the obedience part. I am learning, and the funny thing is that I see what God is doing in my life...I see him changing me through the strangest of situations and encounters, but I will be dad-gum if I can stop it...and the (radical) truth is...I don't want him to stop...it. ;)

There is no hope of me ever speaking nice and slow and quiet and proper. Give. It. Up.

There IS hope that I will learn to breathe more and tap into my heart more and my brain less when someone is looking for my heart...not simply the facts.

....and maybe that is the point.

Hmmm....

...and I just had an epiphany, but it is 11:20 p.m., and I have just completed a 16 hour work day...and epiphanies will have to work themselves out in my dreams.

More heart. More love.

Sweet dreams of sweet unconditional love poured on us whether we know or understand....whether we have read or not read....whether we know what discplies are....he still loves you. He still loves...YOU.

He still loves me. Thank goodness. :)))

Sunshine Dreams to You ~ Today and Every Day! :)