In this life it always seems that there is a little more stretching and a little more thinness that we’d planned on. There is always just a little less time and a little less money than we need to really be happy. And I can’t help but feel that at the end of it all, I have to wake myself from walking around like a human shell. Constantly saying “Don’t miss it.”

      It’s just that there can be so much life that gets lost between the breaths and the blinks, and it always seems that there can be something saved for tomorrow or simply done another day. Some days I want to shake it all and scream “Be alive. Don’t miss it. Don’t blink and don’t breathe. Because if you blink you might get caught up in it all and miss the whole point.”

    The worries of today weigh our slumped shoulder far closer to the earth in half delirious living that consists of bland tastes and weak lighting. It is fight, a constant struggle, to to drink our breaths deeply, to feel our feelings intensely, to ensure our time invested in the people that we love. It is far to easy to simply “call her tomorrow” or think “they didn’t send me a card for my birthday either.”

     But what if that is all that matters? What if the whole point is that we walk in this life awake enough to see? Alive enough to taste and breathe, awake enough to see the people and things that cry to us for intimacy and touch? Are we so easily silenced by our work deadlines and our calendars that hold us captive to ball and chain? Is life so easily satisfied that we can merely lay half dead on our couches after 15 hour days of craziness, simply wishing that the world had a slower setting, and the time would pass a little less quickly? Is there a way to fight the cataracts that continually disease our eyes to be blind to all of the beauty and excitement that awaits us if only we could see it?

   It is in the struggle of these these questions that we must sit. That we must drink in the life between the breaths. Inhale and hold deeply. To feel intematly. It is in this that I cry out “Lord dont let me miss the whole thing. All that is beautiful is in you Lord. Let me see it. Take the disease from these old eyes to see the places where you are crashing into my world. Give me ears to hear the symphony that is You all around me. Let me feel your grace that washes over me, declaring your truth in who I am. Rest on me in this place. Let the softness of your life wake me into something more than death. Let me not refuse your call, let me walk willingly in the adventure of it all. Let me sit at your feet and declare that you are the only one for me. That no one other than you can create a life that is worth living with. That at the end of it all it is you that never leaves me. That is you that walks me through the battles and equipts my sward. That is only you that provides and cares for my every need. That you have never left my side, that you have never left me alone, that you have always kept intently your promise that declairs ‘I will never leave you.’ Thank you for letting me play. Thank you for taking the death from my eyes and bringing my shell of a life into a vibrant creation that is worth being lived. Let me not miss it. Let me not feel the chains of death long after they have been removed. Let me not live like a small scared girl. Let me live free. Let me live brightly. Let me live dangerously and excitingly. Show me the places where the illusion of chains still exists, and show me how to move beyong into free new territory. Show me to slow. Show me to breathe. Show me to blink. Show me not to miss it in the breathing and blinking. And most of all, show me how to walk around being alive.”