why we all need to exhale today

When I met Deidra Riggs, I wanted to sit real quiet and listen to her wisdom for hours. That’s Deidra — she lives this idea of  Jumping Tandem with God — huge leaps of faith — and she makes these safe places to ask tough questions and to figure out — together — how to tear down the walls we have built to keep one another at a distance. She’s really something else. She writes about life as she sees it; about race relations in the Body of Christ; and about living with courage, even when you’re scared to death. Most of the time, she’s just trying to figure it out. But always, she’s saving a place at the table for you. It’s a grace to welcome the profound wisdom who is Deidra Riggs, to the farm’s front porch today…

words and photos by Deidra Riggs

Sometimes, breathing is the only prayer we can pray, and God hears our sigh and once again breathes the breath of life into us.

We exhale, and it seems like such a little thing. But some days, it is everything.

It is communion—intimate and more than breathing oxygen and exhaling carbon dioxide.

It is sacred and it is holy: this agreeing with God that we need God, for all of everything, and His joyful entering in to our lives and ourselves and our very souls to make us one with Him.

We are gulping and breathing and sighing and gasping, and we realize our deep, deep hunger inside.

The biblical account of creation reveals an extremely intimate relationship between humanity and God.

Out of silence and darkness, God speaks, creating light and water and wind and waves.

God populates the earth with creatures that gallop and slither and hop across the ground.

God fills the sea with eels and whales and starfish and catfish. God creates trees that bear fruit and grass that reaches into the soil and up toward the heavens.

And then, from the ground, God crafts humanity.

The entirety of God’s love toward us tells this story of God Himself—all-knowing, all-powerful, all- and ever-present God—bending toward us, reaching out in our direction, coming toward us before we even knew there was a difference between up and down.

God loved us first, before we could rack up points or accomplishments or ever-increasing feats of genius to impress God and make Him want to love us.

We keep reaching, reaching, reaching up as if there is some ladder we should climb. Our vain attempts at getting God’s attention and improving our rank belie the truth that God is love, and because He is, He couldn’t help but love us first of all.

God stoops down and bends over us, even now, just as He did the day He scooped a handful of clay from the earth and made of it a human form, letting the soil pack itself around His cuticles.

Genesis tells us the story of creation, numbering the events in categories we call days.

All manner of living things were crafted from the spoken word of God.

Living trees and flowering plants and birds that fly and fish that swim and cows and dogs and ducks and llama; each one birthed into being by the Word of God and released into the world to make more of the same and to fill the earth.

But we’re the only ones over whom God stooped low and pressed His knees into the earth and welcomed dirt beneath His fingernails and shaped us with His very hands.

Ours are the bodies, created in His very image, beneath which God slid His hands while heavenly fragrances hung in the air and stars danced in the universe.

We are the ones God Himself lifted toward His heartbeat, and we are the only ones into whom God Himself breathed the breath of life.

Did you just inhale?

Almighty God. He is the first and the last; the beginning and the end.

This very same God bowed low to form us, and He also lifted us to Himself to give us life.

We are the children of the living God.

We didn’t do a single thing to make that true.

We didn’t score extra points or run the fastest race. Before we were created, God chose breath for us. He chose it from the beginning, and He continues to choose breath for us; for you. He reaches out to us, and He lifts us to Himself, giving us form and filling us with life.

There are days, or nights, or long stretches of weeks or months or even years, when breathing is the only prayer we’ve got.

The breath of our lungs, given to us from the beginning, and offered up as an act of worship. We inhale, and then we exhale. Each breath signs our names on the dotted line of dependence, whether we’re thinking about it, or not.

We inhale so we can keep on going. And then we exhale, marking the cessation of the striving and the seeking; the end of struggling and the sweating to be noticed and to win and to arrive.

How long can you hold your breath? Eventually, you’ve got to let it go.

We let go so we can live. It is a sweet surrender.

Here is a magnificent and true dichotomy: we cannot truly surrender to the Holy Spirit without the Holy Spirit first breathing surrender into us. It is a surrender unto surrender.

We want to live a life of significance, but we can’t live it until we release our hold on it.

A life surrendered to the Spirit of God is a life lived with open hands, palms turned upward in letting go. We have to let go so we can live.

We either want God, or we want significance. This is the crux of the matter.

There is no need for building ladders to the sky or jumping through hoops to be noticed by God.

The path to a life of significance leads to a dead end without the breath of the Holy Spirit to infuse us with the character and the image of an almighty and everlasting God. This is the God who loved us before we first gasped for air.

Surrender to the work of the Holy Spirit and you will come alive.

Exhale, and you will live. It is our direct reminder of the Holy Spirit at work in this world and on our behalf.

It is our immediate reminder that God is always reaching toward us and lifting us to Himself to breathe life into our long reach for a life that matters for something.

Breathe.

God will meet you there and receive your one, beautiful, miraculous breath as an act of worship —

and as a surrender of yourself into His purpose for your life.

 

 

Deidra Riggs is an influential blogger, as well as DaySpring’s (in)courage and The High Calling, for which she is managing editor. She’s has been a speaker for TEDx, organized her own women’s retreat, and a mother of 2 adult children and is a pastor’s wife in Lincoln, Nebraska.

I’ve read Deidra’s new wonder of a book and wrote a forward to all her wisdom — one to get on your reading list for sure: Every Little Thing: Making a World of Difference Right Where You Are. In this empowering book, Deidra calls you to accept God’s invitation to join Him in making a difference right where you are, regardless of your current life stage. For when God calls and we look over our shoulder and answer, “Who, me?” God always emphatically answers, “Yes, you.” Cannot recommend highly enough.

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