Just Breathe

“Surely the lowborn are but a breath, the highborn are but a lie. If weighed on a balance, they are nothing: together they are only a breath.” Psalms 62:9 NIV

I am not an economist. I do not have a lot of money. I typically do my work and go home. Most of the time the work does not really follow me home too much. That is mostly the product of the type of work I do. My territory is 3 hours away or more. I am thankful for the drive in some ways. It is good time to talk to God. It is good time to listen for God.

The downside of the drive is the amount of time I spend listening to the inner voice in my head telling me anything but good. Sales are tight lately. I see a clientele that tends to have very little extra money. When gas costs almost $5 per gallon clients get more cautious. When gas costs $5 per gallon I notice the miles more, just over 900 this week.

A good friend reminded me of a story this week. When our daughter Jordyn was about 4 years old, she began having trouble with a cough induced asthma. Easy enough to deal with, but the memories start dripping off that sentence pretty fast. Cold air helped her. However, in summer where do you find it? The freezer.

I remember holding her with the freezer door open and her face tucked in as far as she could. When it was cold outside, we used to wrap her in a blanket and stand outside. “Just breathe Jordy”.

That worked for a while, but eventually they prescribed a medicine for it. I remember the night. My wife and I sat on our porch knowing we did not have the money for the prescription. We talked. We prayed. We made a change. We decided to start doing a better job honoring God with our money. We committed to it that night.

At the time my wife had a job that had placed her in contact with a family going through a divorce. She had been asked to be a witness at the trial, which was approaching. This is relevant only because less than 12 hours after we made that commitment, the mailman came. I remember the envelope. She received a check in the mail for expenses related to traveling to the trial.

Guess how much it was. It was a little more than the cost of the medicine, clearly an answer to prayer. But why the extra? As it turns out it covered the cost of the medicine plus the amount needed to tithe on that amount. You can call it random if you want, but man you have to believe pretty hard in random to believe that. God sent us what we needed plus the amount to honor Him.

That story still drips onto our life. Telling her to “Just breathe” turned into a common thing when the trials of life tested her life experience. One of her friends came over after she died and was just struggling. It was pretty emotional. Our son was sitting on the floor seemingly not connected to the conversation until he looked up and said “Just Breathe”. Again, if you have faith in something random you have to believe a non-verbal autistic kid decided to speak for no reason. We feel it was certainly not random. God has used Korbin many times to say things to us.

This week it has been a good reminder to just breathe again. Financially struggling clients struggle to find the extra money to buy something. If I stare at that problem long enough I start to think about how I need to do things differently. I need to change something. That can be true. But it can be a lesson God has been reassuring me with my entire life. He will take care of me when I honor Him.

Why do some lessons have to be repeated? I have no idea, I’m seriously asking.

Why do I sometimes feel like I am the “lowborn” in the verse above but I want to be a “highborn” in life?

Challenge: What would have been her 29th birthday is this week. As we have learned over and over, times are tough right now for a lot of people. You are not alone. Just breathe.

Rick Claiborn