every breath we take...

I get so frustrated by little things. I mean, really insignificant stuff in the big scheme of things. Like this past Monday, which felt like a terrible, frustrating day. In reality, the worst things that happened were: 1) we couldn’t find the girls’ pencil cases so we started school super late, 2) the little bit we did get done was not very good quality as I struggled to get my 6-year-old to even understand what I wanted her to do, while her siblings were vying for attention too, 3) my 8-month-old was fussy and uncooperative during school-time and basically the rest of the day, 4) the kids and I went through and “organized” all of their toys, but it took waaaaay too long and I felt extremely overwhelmed by the sheer amount of them and lack of good storage options, and 5) the baby didn’t go to sleep at his normal time at night but rather two hours later (probably due to a tummy issue), and this all on a day when I really “needed” to get some R&R….

Nothing earth-shattering, but by my personal standards, it was a frustrating day. Very much so. I felt like I got nothing done, nothing accomplished, and actually reverted back a few weeks in some areas (schooling, sleep schedule…). It may not have been anything terrible that happened, but it felt like a failure of a day, and I hate failing. So, hence the frustration.

My hubby even tried to give me a pep-talk that evening: “Now, realize that you’re filtering this day through a really negative perspective, and after you’ve rested you’ll see that it wasn’t actually such an end-of-the-world day…”. And I knew he was right, but I was also just soooo frustrated. And disappointed. So I really just wanted to cry (which I finally did later in the middle of the night when my little one wouldn’t go to sleep at a decent time).

I know in my head that those kinds of days aren’t as terrible as they seem. But I feel so responsible for the progression of my kids’ education, for their personal development & spiritual growth, for the state of our house… So in the days when things don’t even remotely come together as I had planned, I have this feeling (that sometimes lingers for hours) that everything is going to fall apart, that I’m going to lose my bearings, that I’m losing control…

But today I’m reminded of something that was brought to my attention quite forcefully a couple weeks ago when our 8-month-old had his first-ever bad cold:

Our baby boy had woken up in the middle of the night coughing, and since his nose was plugged he was having a hard time breathing. In his sleep that night he had been breathing through his mouth automatically (for the first time ever since he hadn’t needed to before). But when he woke up he didn’t know how to breathe through his mouth on purpose so kept struggling to try to get air through his plugged nostrils. This effort caused him to cough more, which made him gasp for air, which couldn’t come in, which made him cough... To say this vicious cycle was terrifying for me would be a huge understatement.  

After failed attempts at cleaning his nose, I was on the verge of waking my husband up so we could take our littlest son to the ER.  But before doing that I decided to forget about his nose and just try to calm him down a bit, so started walking my little one around the room, talking reassuringly to him, patting his back, trying to get him to relax enough to breathe through his mouth again on his own. And, to my overwhelming relief, it started working!! He calmed down, stopped gasping, took good, deep breaths through his mouth, and in a few minutes fell back to sleep in my arms…

It probably doesn’t even need to be stated, but that whole time, for those seemingly eternal few minutes of struggled breathing, I was begging, begging God to help me, to give me wisdom, to save my baby: “Please, God, give him breath! LET HIM BREATHE!”  In that moment I felt so small, so helpless. Yes, I could try to clean his nose, I could try to calm him down, I could give him baby CPR if he needed it, and I could obviously take him to the hospital if nothing else worked… but I couldn’t make his lungs work. I couldn’t make his mouth inhale. I couldn’t actually make him breathe…

I’m not God. I can’t keep my baby alive. I mean, I can do things to help him along this path of life and to try to keep him safe, but I don’t hold his life in my hands at an existential level. I can’t make his heart beat, his brain transmit signals, his lungs fill up with air… I can’t actually give life. I cannot make him breathe.

Again, it’s so obvious. And yet, so often I pretend like I’m really in control. And I freak out when I realize how not-in-control I am. I get frustrated when others don’t follow my “divine” plan. But that’s just it: it’s not divine. It’s just my human plan, and usually it’s not even that important. And if it doesn’t work out, it’s not the end of the world. Because I’m not really in control. The earth is still spinning even though Monday’s school-time was lacking. The universe didn’t implode just because we still don’t have a good toy-sorting system in the kids’ room. There wasn’t a global crisis because it took us two hours to find pencil cases. Those things don’t matter at all in the big scheme of things.

We have life, we have hope, we have purpose, we have meaning. That’s what matters, and none of it comes from me. I do have responsibilities of course, but God gives breath, not me. And though that humbles me on the one hand, on the other hand it takes a gigantic weight off my shoulders. 

Our baby boy is doing great now; thank God, he’s happy and healthy! But in the middle of normal frustrations of daily life, like on Monday, I don’t want to lose sight of the important lesson learned: Don’t take breathing for granted. Someday, you and I will take our last breath here. So, let’s make the most of every breath we take, without freaking out about the minor details of daily life. Let’s look at the big picture: Today, I’m breathing, and so are you, and that in and of itself an enormous gift and a reason to celebrate.