Have you ever been so lost in the fear that you couldn’t think straight?  It sounds cliché but I’ve actually been there.  Unable to breathe.  Not knowing what the next step should be or even how to start figuring it out.  Who or what do you reach out to in the storm? What are the lifelines you use to catch your breath?

ComeSoAlive.com offers many of the lifelines I’ve used over the years.  Bible verses that gave me direction and hope when I didn’t know what to do or believe.  Songs that helped me breathe through a panic attack.  Books that, no matter when they were written, were obviously written for me and the situation I was facing right at that moment.

Adding Scripture to my own photographs, filling out joy bomb and gratitude journals, taking daily pictures on my phone of the beauty around me (because, really, we always have our phones handy, right?), practicing yoga and contemplative meditation. I have used so many practices to keep my focus on what is good in life no matter what storm was swirling around me…not because I’m just that advanced in my spiritual life but because I’m that messed up most of the time.

Catching your breath

A friend told me recently she was having a really frustrating morning and realized she needed to listen to something to help her calm down.  She texted me:

“I’m buzzing around here this morning getting three kids through distance learning schedules, 2 Google Meets within 10-minute start time of each other, having only been on 1 other meeting this school year.  Juggling a little guy trying to break into their rooms.  Starting to cook things to make for lunch, I was trying to find something positive to fill myself with (podcasts)…leading to dead ends.  Pause, think of how I need Carrie’s brain at my fingertips…decide immediately to go to our previous messages and blindly select something that you have forwarded me.”

She then sent me what she had selected. Now the amusing twist about this text is that she was texting me in response to my text to her earlier:

“I’m designing a Come So Alive Facebook page…and getting lightheaded…crap”

She found the lifeline she needed that morning from something I had sent her – which turned out to be both the meditation that had previously helped me take a big step in moving forward on starting the blog and which I obviously needed again in order to catch my breath amid anxiety as I continued to work on the blog. (See “Why I’ll write a blog even though I don’t want to“)

The lifelines are there if we just remember to reach for them. But that takes a lot of practice! So, let’s catch our breath together.

Every Friday I will post on Facebook about a specific lifeline that has helped me through years of storms.  Please feel free to comment on it or add your own lifelines.  You never know when someone else may need it – or you’ll need someone else to send it back to you.