Simply breathing

Is your life so busy, so pressured that you feel you are on the verge of 'losing it'?
This is where I found myself and speaking to friends and family I found I was not alone in this.
Every two minutes, floods of tears, exploding with frustration about seemingly impossible situations.

It takes an intervention of God to bring His take on the problem, His Light to illumine the next step!

I had just rushed from the hectic schedule to my Pilates class. If you know about these exercises you will know that they are very much around breathing. Deep breath in, then slowly out as you exert the effort of moving that part of you body as per instruction. Breath in, then raise the leg on the out breath. In when you drop the arm, out when you lift it. Got it?
At the end we simply relax our bodies on the floor and breath deeply, in and out and in and out very slowly, very deeply. We get up from the floor refreshed and ready to face the world again.

It is cold outside when I leave, I feel pretty good about myself walking down the pathway towards the car. Then I sense the Lord speaking in my ear. 'If you would take life like this, with Me. Take Me in on the deep 'in breath' and then exert the effort with the strength of that 'in breath' gently using the oxygen of My Holy Spirit, My Word to complete the necessary movement. View every task as an individual movement, effort'.

I understood in a flash what He was saying but this is not so easy to explain to another. Then I was reminded how I try to swim, it's laughable.
Although I like the sense of weightlessness and movement in swimming I am not good at it, in fact I can't really swim! This is what I do.....

I take a deep breath, hold it and push off the side of the pool, take one stroke, two strokes, three, four, five but in this I have not breathed more than once! All that effort on one breath means that I arrive back on the surface having moved only a couple of feet, I am gasping and struggling for breath and in great danger of drowning. Hence I never attempt to go into the deep water, too dangerous for someone who expects to swim the channel on one breath!

Do you get my drift folks, we expect to get through our days on one breath of God, when He had sufficiency to give us a new breath for every stroke, for every necessary effort to get the job done. We can't move an inch without breathing, but that does mean one breath after another.
Masses of effort on one breath means we are more than likely to get into a mess, a drowning situation, dangerous!

I am now trying to take the first 'in take' of Christ at the start of the day, take one task as though it was one stroke in the sea of life, then coming up for another 'in take' before starting my next task. Regular breathing is the key to life, dah! And He is the breath of my life!

So away with trying to do everything in the flesh, it's not possible without drowning in the swell!

Pilates is all about strengthening your inner core, need I say more!