"Breathe"

“ Breathe”, “ Breathe”. I caught myself saying this a few times this weekend. First when a friend took a little spill and had the wind knocked out or her and then with my mother as she was drinking water.

With my friend, for a moment she didn’t have a choice on whether to breathe or not, with the impact from her fall caused her diaphram to go into a spasm, similar to a ‘charlie horse’ in the leg and it wouldn’t move and she couldn’t breathe. It took a few seconds for the diaphram to relax and for her normal breathing to resume and no damage done.

In the case of my mother, her Parkinson’s makes it difficult for her to do more than one thing at a time, like when she is drinking. We think nothing of it, to pick up a glass of water, drink and breath in between sips without putting the glass down. With my mom, her brain is sending signals to drink and breathe, but the involuntary signal to breathe gets lost and the result is that she starts choking. Again the chocking is a normal reaction of our body, but it could cause more issues if the chocking continues and she is unable to catch her breath.

Breathing isn’t something we really think about, it happen involuntarily and without much thought. There are times however we feel as if we are sufficating from the pressures of life. For me it usually happens when I get overwhelmed, which usually comes when I think I have to fix everything. I run around trying to fix stuff for my mom, I try and fix things for my friends, I try and fix things for my husband. The reality is that I just can’t fix any of it so why do I try. You would think I would learn that the only thing we CAN do is pray. The more and more we pray when things happen the more and more we develop the response of prayer to any problem and soon it becomes involuntary.

I know for me I just need to remember to “breathe” when life brings a little chaos, breathe a little prayer and as I breathe, things seem to return to normal and I can make it for another day.

So for today, I will remind myself to “breathe”.