You Need Space to Exhale (a five minute friday)

My Five Minute Friday on: Exhale

I stood, shoulder to shoulder in the crowd. Surrounded.

The throng of people stifling my movement and invading my space.

I was there to listen to a band I liked, but I found myself preoccupied. Like I had to fight for the little space I had.

A tension I cannot explain swept over me and I felt like I was just another head in the crowd. Unseen.

When it was over I weaved my way to the back — to what felt like freedom. And I could finally breathe again.

Relief swept away the tension. And I could see and hear things I couldn't before.

I've needed to step back for awhile now. And it's only in this still and quiet place that I can see how, although alluring, the busy crowd was a deathtrap.

The pressures I've succumbed to, to chase illusive — to be more, have more, do more.

For awhile, maybe, I thought I could do it all. But I lived in the tension and pull from all I had said yes to.

And then change happened. I fought my way to the back of the crowd and sitting on it's fringes I'm recovering from its deafening noise. I see how it restricted and squeezed life out like a boa coiling itself around your chest.

I'm not sure what tomorrow looks like, but I know I cannot return to the pit of busy. The pit of scraping and climbing to be seen.

For now, I'm letting relief sweep over the tension in one healing, cleansing exhale.

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I'm in a quiet season, on this blog and everywhere it seems. I'm learning things, life changing things, about myself here. And it's beautiful and it's hard and I believe worth it — whatever God is working out in me. Thank you for grace and for still checking in with me. I am still here, on the fringes.
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