Keep Breathing

I awoke this morning at my usual ridiculously early time to write. I poured a glass of water, started the dishwasher and washer, grabbed my notebook and headed towards my computer. I was greeted with a handwritten note from my husband. Expecting a sweet love letter, I picked it up anxiously and began reading. It began, “Your computer froze last night.” I scanned the letter to read, “Kernel panics” and “Won’t start.”

My heart sunk. Not only was this not a love letter setting right the tension in our home that we slept on last night, it was a knife, sunk deep into the one thing that seemed to be working for me right now, my writing.

Obviously, these words are proof I can write without my computer. We are incredibly blessed to have laptops, netbooks, iphones and ipads. The bigger issue here is my eBooks, my photographs, the big projects I’ve been working on, and none of them are backed up. I have had to kiss my digital creations good-bye before. I wonder if I will have to do it again.

I think about my exercise. We don’t have a TV. We don’t have a DVD player. My computer is both of those for us. I can’t do the Thirty Day Shred. It’s a part of my system. It’s a part of my health. How will I maintain my health? How will I maintain my sanity when everything is hanging in such a fine balance? (Inside I laugh at myself because I know there really is no balance that is endlessly sustainable.)

My mind flashes to a friend who just told me in an email this morning that her Father has Leukemia, and another friend who is fighting off fear as her son has been diagnosed with a brain tumor. I see the enormous difference in my lifeless computer and their fight for life itself. I feel guilty for my selfish thoughts. I feel numb. And then the small pools form at the base of my eyes and my nose tingles. I blink hard, fighting off the tears that want to fall. I’m trying to find a positive thought. I’m fighting hard for it.

On my iPhone I’m listening to a song by Ingrid Michaelson that I just bought recently called Keep Breathing. I breathe in and out. I think about all the huge goals we have right now. The paying off of debt, the stocking of a digital bookstore, the blogging, the speaking, the biking, the simplification of life, the airstream trailer and traveling dreams, the seminary commitment, the homeschooling and raising of 4 beautiful kids, the ministry. I wonder is it all too much? At what point do you stop asking so much out of life?

Everything seemed so possible yesterday morning. And today, today I’m fighting for a positive thought. Fighting hard.

My nose is burning again, and the words on the screen blur a bit. I blink hard again. I keep breathing.

I remember that nothing is final in this world. I remember the only thing that is consistent is change. I remember that we have gone after big, foolish things before, and even though it has been hard, it has worked out. It is a part of our story. I want to throw-up. I’m just tiny little me, and the world is full of real pain and real heartache, not computer kernel panic sized heartache, but my father has aggressive leukemia heartache. How can I hold hope up to that? How can I maintain dreams and joy when others are fighting to breathe? How can I write words that offer any sort of inspiration? How do I see the real in light of the ideal and so transfigure it? The story feels too big right now. But how can I ever give it up now that I’ve dreamed it up?

“All we can do is keep breathing. All that I know is I’m breathing.” Ingrid sings on.

I feel my fists rising, wanting to fight. I picture short jabs while in a half-squat. It’s the shred. It’s all I know of fighting in the physical sense. It’s a joke, but it gets the frustration out. I want to punch, and I want to fight for the lives that want to give up, for the lives that feel broken. Right now that also means I want to fight for me. I am actually thankful for the reminder that I am in the broken category too. Kernel panics and marital tension remind me that I am not perfect, that life is messy, that beauty is worth fighting for.

Right now I’m fighting for breath. The in and out kind. The deep kind. The kind that reminds me I am still alive, and if I am still alive I am still of good use. I can still fight. I can still believe. I can still create. I am blessed. I can’t waste this breath. I must use it while it’s still mine.

And there is the positive thought I have wrestled my morning away for. I will think about that when I’m hurting. I will cling to that when I am scared. There is still breath and if there is still breath there is still hope.

*Edited to add: I wrote this on Friday morning. Over the weekend Tony managed to get my computer backed-up and for now, it is mysteriously working again as if nothing happened. I’m glad I chose to breathe through it all. And breathing through these little things will teach me the endurance to breathe through the big things when they come.