Day 57
Take A Deep…
Porpoises come up for air. It’s another thing we have in common with them. You have to exhale before you inhale. Breathing involves getting rid of the stuff that precludes the entry of fresh air in our lives. You can’t take a breath with your life full of CO2.
It was a Sunday afternoon when my wife knocked on my office door. She said, “You have a few visitors that want to see you.” With that, she opened the door and three of the Juarez sisters entered the room. We hugged and I told them to make themselves comfortable. It was clear that each of them had been crying.
They began by sharing that “We just can’t take it anymore!” Their father had, once again, launched into a rage upon the family that required them to escape from their own home. They snuck out of their apartment with their mom and three younger sisters, while their father was in the bathroom. They all piled into the family car and drove away. They dropped off mom and their three siblings at a friend’s house. The three oldest girls decided to come over and see me. They left their apartment with their purses and the clothes on their backs.
This wasn’t the first time I was called upon to intervene in their family’s domestic violence problems. They had confessed this family secret to my wife and I about a year and a half earlier. I had met with their father on two separate occasions and had an in your face dialogue about this will not happen again. Yet, this time was different for these three girls. They were done suffocating from being submerged in this insanity. They weren’t going back. They wanted me to come with them, back to their apartment, so they could get their things. We prayed. I agreed.
The apartment was locked. One of the sisters opened a window and crawled inside, opening the front door. I walked in to insure nobody was home. The girls quickly grabbed some large garbage bags and a few suitcases we brought from our place and began filling them with their clothes and other essentials. As the bags and suitcases began to fill, I asked the neighbors who had gathered outside to help us take them to the car. They agreed. Just as we were about to leave, I grabbed the last two bags of clothes and turned around to head for the door. It was at that instant that I was face-to-face with their father. He looked surprised and perplexed. He spoke a few things in Spanish I couldn’t understand. I motioned for him to move aside with an arm gesture. He complied. As we drove away from the apartment, not one word was spoken. I heard each of the girls exhale…deeply.
God created us to breathe. It’s an act of exchanging the unhealthy for the life giving. However, so many people I meet are living a life holding their breath. You’ve met them: People in a marriage where the love was gone years ago. They stay together with a spouse out of a sense of shame by some misguided interpretation of Scripture, a need to hold onto a lifeline of economic security, or some over-developed sense of responsibility (like, I’m doing it for the kids, who have since grown up and escaped the family). There are far too many people in the same situation as the Juarez family, living a life of secret shame, taking their punishment, and holding their breath. Why?
For many of us, exhaling is autonomic. Basically, autonomic means that you really don’t have to consciously think about it for it to occur. Exhaling, inhaling, sweating, your heart beating, these are all physiological autonomic functions.
For others, exhaling is a choice. The process of breathing is a fundamental aspect of the spiritual life, just as it is in the physiological realm. For those who have embarked on the spiritual journey, exhaling is not optional. As one author says, “While the journey is filled with promise of all that is yet to come and all that we are to become, our quest begins first with what we must relinquish and leave behind.” [i]
The Porpoise reminds us that we are a species that must exhale. We have to break through the surface of whatever is holding us back from becoming the creatures our Creator intends for us to be. We were not created to live lives holding our breath, damaging our own lives, the lives of those around us, and the relationship with He Who created The Porpoise Diving Life.
NOTES
[i] McManus, Erwin Raphael UPRISING – A Revolution of the Soul, Nelson Books, A Division of Thomas Nelson Publishers, Nashville, TN Copyright 2003 by Erwin Rafael McManus p.27.
