Breathing Bigger

The phone rang and I picked up. She is a kindred spirit and wise soul. We skipped pleasantries and entered into free and honest speech, both of us seeking to understand the other. She said, "when it comes to this place, I feel abandonment, suspicion, and harm. I feel the need to protect the unprotected.” I sensed that I resemble that comment. The resonance was strong that as much as I seek to help and protect some it is against another. She had no idea that I awoke at 4am thinking these same things but she articulated the sense of her current reality with better clarity. I sensed that these words - suspicion, abandonment, and harm - awakened my own feelings of fear and sadness. I do not want to engage each day with suspicion or harm but with freedom and creativity. The phone conversation awakened what was unfolding in me the past 10 days since I started sabbatical.

I feel my hands unflinching and my heart unfurling with each new day. My arms are stretching out, and I am beginning to release all those persons whom I have held in captivity with my thoughts and feelings. What happens when the invitation to follow Christ from Luke 4 is a liberation of the captives? Does this also mean Christ is working in me to release those captives who dwell in the prison of my own thoughts and feelings?  I remember a friend saying to me after a tough interview, “release me and bless them….” This is my prayer whenever a person enters my minds, whether in the free space of grace or the constricting space of judgment.

I am entering my last night of sleep prior to boarding a plane and heading to Europe tomorrow afternoon. I sad goodbye to my son yesterday and will do the same with my daughters tomorrow. The grief of saying goodbye is significant, yet feeling it is a sense of love more than anything. The next days will be with Lindsay and then on Sunday, July 22, I will begin my trek into the Pyrenees - almost one mile up and fourteen miles out will be my first day’s walk. There is much to explore between here and there. I look forward to the questions and graces that unfold in these next days and weeks.