All We Can Do Is Keep Breathing

Breathing. It is one of our most basic instincts.  From birth to death we breathe – most of the time without giving it any thought. It wasn’t until recently that I considered myself pretty good at breathing.  After all, I was alive. Then one day, while meeting with my therapist via Zoom, she asked me “How are you breathing?” I was confused – I was alive so obviously I was breathing! She noted that in almost an entire session, I hadn’t truly been breathing – not deeply at least.  My chest was held tight and I was only taking shallow, measured breaths. After that moment, I made it a point to monitor my breathing and I had no idea how right she was – I was not, in fact, breathing fully very often, if at all.

It is amazing the physical effects that the mind can have on our bodies. My anxiety had exacerbated to a point that I was not breathing and didn’t even know it.  Now that I was aware, what now?  How was I supposed to retrain myself to breathe properly, and more importantly, how was I supposed to ease the anxiety that was causing the tightened breaths? I found that when my anxiety grew, I became painfully aware of how shallow my breathing was. Those realizations made me more anxious and I was slowly moving into panic attack territory.  Something had to change, and it had to change fast.

In the midst of all of this I had a “lightbulb” moment and a song came to my mind – “Keep Breathing” by Ingrid Michaelson.  I recalled those early days after having my twins when I was at an all-time low and I cried myself to sleep listening to the song on repeat.  I was depressed, but somehow it was cathartic.  For the Grey’s Anatomy fans out there, this is the song that Meredith “drowns” to in the earlier episodes of the show.  At that time, it was exactly how I felt.  I was drowning in a sea of emotions and hormones. I have always struggled to release emotions when I feel overloaded and overwhelmed and this song has a way of triggering me to breathe and let it all go. It comes as no shock that God guided me to it in my current time of need.

In this song, Ingrid Michaelson sings,

“I want to change the world, and instead I sleep

I want to believe in more than you and me

But all that I know is I’m breathing

All I can do is keep breathing

All we can do is keep breathing.”

I have always latched on to the line about believing in more.  Even when I was lost in my spiritual journey and not necessarily thinking of God, I found that believing in something more – or “some type of higher power” as I used to call it – helps ease the anxiety and emotional pain. There’s a comfort in knowing or even just feeling like you are not alone. 

I realized that while focusing on taking my medication, following up with my doctor, talking with my therapist and literally just breathing, I forgot one important component to my mental health – my relationship with Jesus. It’s not that I wasn’t praying to Him or thinking of him throughout my day, but I was forgetting to give it all to Him – to let it go and leave it in His hands. As Paul writes in Philippians 4:6-7 “Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your mind in Christ Jesus.” At a time when I was deeply longing for peace in my soul, I was forgetting to seek the one person who could give that to me.

Since then, I have been making a conscious effort to pray daily and offer my struggles to God. I know that doing this will not cure my depression that I have struggled with for over 20 years or my anxiety that has persisted for the last 6 years, but it will give me some peace in knowing that I am not alone in my journey and that He is with me, helping me breathe every step of the way. And all we can do is keep breathing.

ABOUT OUR BLOGGER

Lisa Replogle has had a long, ever-changing journey in her relationship with Christ, and she is excited to share what she has learned along the way.

She is a certified early childhood and special education teacher and currently teaches high school multiple disability support.

She spends her time outside the classroom sharing her passion for dance with local groups for individuals with special needs.

Lisa and her husband are the parents of six-year-old identical twin boys. 

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