I have been feeling an anxiousness lately that is not of the Lord. Technology makes me angry. The incessant impulse that I need to respond to texts and calls and emails and messages and posts ASAP literally makes my heart race and my ears burn. I homeschool two young children. I have homework and training and yoga that needs to be completed. I need time to read my bible and to pray. I have housework that needs to get finished. Your technological messages are going to have to wait! If I do not respond in a few minutes, or hours, in a day or in a few, THAT'S OKAY.
I used to feel a drive to reply as soon as something popped up. But this past year has been one of renewal, learning, surrender and compromise for me. Through it I have learned that I need to step away from all of these "advancements" in connection and I need to be able to REALLY connect with who and what is actually around me. I need presence. I have this deep longing for connection to where I am right NOW, who surrounds me in this time, and to whom I AM in the present.
God has been doing a great work in me, teaching me when to bite my tongue, how to speak in loving kindness when I do speak and when to surrender my thoughts and feelings to allow them to transcend me. I am beyond what this life is. I am bigger than posts and tweets and texts. I do not need to read every article and email. I need not respond to the things that upset me. In fact, often I need only remember, "Just happening."
"Just happening" is a concept that is fairly new to me, in fact only in the last few weeks new to me, thanks to my Yoga training reading. It is a concept that tells us that we needn't be upset by, defined by, judged by, nor held down or back by the things that happen around us or to us by other people. So often, I read things online that I let "rile me up." A sassy remark or a passively snarky comment gets me down. I let these things in. I let myself get bogged down by them. I take them in and I let them shape how I see my self or what I think of myself. I let other people dictate my time and feelings. But no more. I am saying stop. I am putting the barrier back up. There is a chain link fence around me, a net, that I get to choose what to let through, what to keep out. I have limits and places that are out of bounds. That is my choice. And this choice is a recent transition in thinking for me.
These last few months have been a time of such transition for me. I have been brought humbly to my knees before a great big God who has been leading me, if not carrying me, the entire time. It has been a time of insurmountable change. Changes in family dynamics, through loss and heart ache, changes in marital relations, through growth and compromise, changes in faith and church community, through spiritual seeking and surrender, changes in self, through reflection and care. But all of these things, and not all have come easily, not all have come without growth pains, they are each of imperative importance. Without change, growth becomes impossible, we become stagnant. When we allow ourselves to turn inward, to God, we open up ourselves to that growth again.
So much of what I am learning through my Yoga training is about turning inward and breath. It is about learning postures, yes, but even more so, it is about the movement through and between the postures. The in between. It is so much like life. We have these huge, monumental events that define our lives, weddings and births, deaths and graduations, the postures. But the simple living, life itself, is found in between all of those postures, the big moments. Life is found in the breaths that lead us into and out of the postures. Life is in the flow. It always comes back to the breath.
So during these crazy, advanced, "tech savvy" days, when I do not reply to your text or call or email in a "timely" fashion, just know, that I am finding rest in my "in between" right now. I am breathing in these everyday life moments. I am flowing through my sequence, acknowledging my postures, but really soaking in and enjoying living in my breath between. When you feel caught in the gales of life, battered by the storms, when seas are rising, when you can not stand, remember, JUST BREATHE.
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