gasping for air

Do you ever have a moment when you take a really big breath in
only to realize that you've been holding your breath
for a very, very long time?

That for months,
you've been gasping for air,
reaching for a safe place,
grasping to hang on,
struggling to be steady and true,
and you don't even realize the place you've been is killing you slowly?

And then, taking in a bigger-than-big,
deeper-than-deep,
fuller-than-full-kind-of-breath,
you see, finally you see
that you've been sick, or compromised, or dusty, or abandoned, or defeated, or deceived for a long time?

"I'm waking up to ash and dust
I wipe my brow and I sweat my rust
I'm breathing in the chemicals"
Imagine Dragons-Radioactive.

That's one way to breath in, waking up to the reality around me.

It is a harsh and cold reality.
It's candy-coated and it's blasted with sin; broken, jagged, scarred, and cut in a million tiny pieces.
We are a broken people.
I am a broken being.

But then, there are these moments of clarity,
moments of rest,
deep breath kind of moments
where glimpses of the unseen are around me.

There is this other reality that teaches that all is not what we see or possibly it is more than what we see,

"God knows that when you eat the fruit of that tree, you will know things you have never known before.   You will be able to tell the difference between good and evil."

"So she took some of the fruit and ate it.  She also gave some to her husband, who was with her.  And he ate it.  Then both of them knew thongs they have never known before."  And then they became afraid, ashamed, hiding and running away.

"The man has become like one of us. He can tell the difference between good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach his hand and pick fruit from the tree of life and eat it.  If he does, he will live forever." And I see that living forever, in the that place of knowledge without reason and rescue, would be an eternal state of this here and now reality. And this current place of now and not yet is maddening and one of patient endurance.  All is not what it is meant to be.

And so the curse begins.

And along side of it, begins a rescue mission.