There are days when breathing comes easily, days when the rising and falling of your chest simply happens.
Life is sweetly involuntary. It is an effortless thing just being.
On those days the air around you fills your lungs and propels you upward and forward—you’d swear you were flying.
And from that lofty place above it all you can see everything clearly: possibility, change, redemption, recovery and joy all stretched out in front of you.
Whether you name it blessing, fortune, favor or mojo there is a lightness to living because in these moments Life carries you. In these moments the world is weightless.
But on other days every breath is work, every second contested, every movement labored. Life sits leadened upon your shoulders, rubbing your skin raw. Your bones creak and your knees buckle beneath the sheer, crushing weight of it all.
And down here with your head forcefully bowed to the ground the view is decidedly different. Here, your eyes stinging with sweat, you can only see struggle, regret, failure and grief. Both air and hope are hard to come by.
It’s so easy for your soul to suffocate down here.
These may be heavy days for you. You may be straining to take this very breath. I understand. I know that heaviness well. I know it well enough to know that some of that heaviness is actual and some of it is internal—and that all of it is temporary.
I won’t tell that you’re wrong, or that what you’re carrying isn’t really as heavy as you think it is. It might be fully terrible and you might rightly feel overwhelmed by it all.
What I do want you to know is that all of those things that were once so easy to see: possibility, change, redemption, recovery and joy—they’re all still there even if they’re out of view. They are as real now as they were when you could see them clearly. All that you have upon your shoulders right now can’t destroy these things, they can only obscure them for a time. But you will see them again.
There will again be a day when you will feel lighter, when breathing will again come easily, when Life will carry you. Your chest will rise and fall without effort and you will swear that you are flying.
You probably won’t even realize it when it happens, because you will be too busy living to notice.
But that is not right now. That is not today. Today is heavy.
Maybe in these moments it’s enough to know that these are heavy days for many of us; that we’re struggling too; that our heads are bowed and our shoulders are raw and our bones are creaking and our knees are buckling. There’s hope that we can’t see anymore either because our eyes are stinging with sweat.
And maybe the kinship of our struggle is enough. Maybe that solidarity will lighten the load just enough to lift it from your shoulders so that your chest can expand fully and you can take this next breath—and keep going.
Maybe it’s enough for us too.
Carry on, friend—and be encouraged.
