Articles from Breath Prayers & Celebrate Life

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Breath Prayers
Celebrate Life: New Attitudes for Living with Chronic Illness

Breath Prayers Introduction

It's a privilege and honor to be able to share with you in the pages to follow how the Lord is teaching me to pray without ceasing using breath prayer as I journey through life on my way home to heaven. I don't want the focus to be on the events and circumstances of my life but on what God is doing through those events and circumstances. The Lord is taking the wonderful and awful, the best and the worst, the good and the bad, and is redeeming and blessing it all in His perfect wisdom, grace, and timing in each moment of each day!

Even as I write and you read, His redemptive process is at work. I have no illusions about what I have to say as being important, wonderful, or grand. The only thing important, wonderful, or grand that may occur is where what I might have to share connects with where you are, have been, and are going in your life. If the Holy Spirit can use any one thing to touch and carry you one step further on your journey, a miracle and victory has occurred.

I am just beginning to realize the power of what I am going to write about. Read with caution. Breath Prayers may change your life forever. They have been and are changing my life, breath by breath. I fear I may be totally inadequate to put into words what has and is happening. I can only trust it's not what I share that's important but how the Holy Spirit might use it in your life.

My only mandate is to share as honestly as I know how. I feel as if I am treading on holy ground. I stand in joy, awe, and wonder as I watch other people catch on to breath prayers and use them in their lives. I have experienced and witnessed transformation and transcendence of circumstances occurring in my life and in the lives of those who embrace and use breath prayers.

Life by itself without any problems is a daily struggle. When you add in complications such as divorce, illness, financial problems, relationship tangles, etc., life can become a raging battle. You need all of the victory skills you can bring to bear to keep your lifeship balanced, afloat, and moving. All too often, you can make your pain and trouble your main focus. Obsessional anxious thinking takes over your brain. Pain, fatigue, confusion, doubt, fear, anger, bitterness and depression can create a vicious tyrannical thought cycle and become your god and not a guide as they were meant to be.

Whatever you make your main focus becomes your god and displaces God. As a child of God, nurse, medical psychotherapist, writer, speaker, person with SLE (systemic lupus erythematosus), divorcee, single parent, recovering codependent, I have helped others on the battlefield of daily living. I try to teach people the victory skill I have found in using breath prayers in the middle of many life crises. Breath prayers have helped me survive moment by moment to make it one more step, day, task, feeling, and challenge at a time to take me further into my tomorrows. I find myself not just surviving but transcending and soaring!

Praying on the breath is not just a coping skill but a victory skill. Breath prayers is one of the greatest weapons I have found to wage the campaigns of daily living. It is very simply the claiming of a Scripture as about a seven-syllable affirmation as I breathe out over and over and over on the perfect breath. The average person breathes approximately 16 times a minute, 960 times an hour, and 23,040 a day. What an opportunity to pray the Scripture. The breath prayer is enhanced by saying it when falling asleep, waking up, and during periods of deep meditation when the subconscious mind is more accessible to the conscious mind. Meditating is mentioned throughout the Bible, especially in the Psalms. Western religion has excluded meditation which is very Scripturally based. In Eastern areas where the Lord lived, there is emphasis on "being."

The Western world and religion seem to promote becoming a "human doing" rather than a "human being." This is a "how to" book that tells you how to change from the inside out instead of from the outside in. In the following pages, I'll tell in devotional form of my journey in learning to breathe scriptural affirmations as a prayer on the exhaling of my breath. The devotionals will feature a Scripture followed by the the breath prayer and then some comments. There'll be a chapter on how to create your own breath prayers and appendices on the theory of why breath prayers work, and a listing of breath prayers by topic.

Breath prayers will open you up to the words and thoughts of the Great "I Am" and your own being. The end results will hopefully be your doing will become an overflow of your being and not the reverse. You'll find memorization of Scripture take on a whole different impetus and take off like a rocket. Some breath prayers may leap off the pages and right into your life. Others may not. The breath prayer that "fits" you at the time can be almost diagnostic as to where you are at the moment. There will be an "AHA!" experience when you find the breath prayer that suits where you are.

Breath prayers are a means of fulfilling the admonition in God's Word: Thessalonians 5:16, "Pray without ceasing;" in Philippians 4:8, "Think on these things;" Joshua 1:8 , "You shall meditate in the Book day and night;" and in Ephesians 6:17, "Take the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God!" Your thoughts are the gateway to your being. Most of your thoughts are in the unconscious mind, 90 percent of your mind. Every thought you have registers with changes in the hormones, chemicals, muscles, breathing, and immune system in your body.

Breath prayers can keep your thoughts focused on the scripture. and even access your unconscious thoughts! Hebrews 4:12 describes the power of the scripture: "For the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of thoughts and intents of the heart." What mighty power there is in using that scripture, which is the sword of the Spirit, as a means to pray on each exhalation.

With breath prayers you take the sword of the Word, pray it on your breath, and give it to the Holy Spirit. Your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit. By claiming a breath prayer as you exhale, you are wrapping your body and mind, the temple of the Holy Spirit, around the sword of the Holy Spirit, the Scripture. Wow! Read carefully! This is forceful stuff! Communing with God by opening myself to the power of the Holy Spirit's sword through breath prayers is taking me places in my life I could never have imagined or dreamed of. The impossible is becoming possible. The Lord turns crises into celebration, brokenness into blessedness, wounds into the wonderful, victims into victors, trouble into triumph, and trash into treasure! He redeems all things in His perfect wisdom grace and timing. Praise the Lord! Kathleen

My Daily Bread

"Give us this day our daily bread." Matthew 6:11 (NAS)

"YOU GIVE ME MY DAILY BREAD"

When I was first diagnosed with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), I became shackled in the prison of my yesterdays and tomorrows. I was stuck focusing either on what horrible or wonderful thing might come tomorrow or how great yesterday was and longing to have it back. I was constantly obsessing about fears, anxiety, grief, anger, fantasies based in my past and future.

Slowly, I began to break the bars of that prison by groaning from my spirit as I woke up and went to bed each day... "Help me make it through this day... thank You for this day." My pastor pointed out that I was praying this phrase from the Lord's Prayer. That gave the feeble groanings of my spirit the structure of formal words and understanding.

At first, present moment living was only a means of survival for me. At times it was broken down to millisecond living. By breaking what seemed to be monumental tasks into milliseconds, moments, days, step by step, I made it through my deserts to the valleys and mountain tops. In time, present moment living became celebration... the abundant life... to be anchored in the bread of the Lord centered and focused in the miracle of the mountain of the moment of now!

As the children of Israel traveled through the desert, the Lord gave them just enough manna or bread for each person to have one small bowl full a day per person. They couldn't save it one day to the next except on the sixth day so they wouldn't need to labor on the sabbath. If they tried to save manna for the next day, it bred worms and became foul. They survived on only what they needed as the Lord provided their portion for the day.

Christ offered His body to become broken bread for you to provide the grace you need day by day. The Lord's grace only comes in the moment as you step out in faithfulness to the task at hand. You can live by bread alone with the word of the Lord. You need to harvest only your portion of fresh bread within the moment or day. You can't hoard it for the next moment or day!

Celebrate Life: New Attitudes for Living with Chronic Illness,

Chapter 5: The Secret of Living in the Present

As people journey through life, they come across secrets that ease their burdens. Those who carry extra burdens, such as chronic illness, may be even more attuned to finding these secrets that lighten their load, enrich life, and give it greater meaning.

I've come across two secrets in my journey with chronic illness.... present-moment living and realistic hope. I discover more about these concepts every day. Ive even learned that present-moment living, which I initially wrote about from hard-earned experience with illness, has been used for years in 12-step recovery programs (such as Alcoholics Anonymous and Overeaters Anonymous).

Present-moment living and realistic hope may seem somewhat contradictory, but they are both essential. And really, each concept supports the other.

One Day at a Time

When I became ill, I felt I'd dropped off the end of the earth into an entirely new, fog-engulfed existence. I was consumed with fear of the future, and longed for my familiar, comfortable old life.

Slowly, images of my new life began to emerge, but I found myself rendered immobile, imprisoned by the bars of yesterday and tomorrow. Simply trying to survive, I prayed to make it through a single day. I focused on one moment at a time. I 'd need to consciously catch myself getting stuck in thoughts of the past of the future and force myself to concentrate on my todays. Taking one moment, step, task, decision, day at a time was more manageable. I was freed me to experience and enjoy where I was in the present moment.

Often, I would slip back into my old patterns and would need to will myself back to the day-by-day, moment-by-moment frame of mind. I realized that I couldn't control what thoughts came into my head, but I could control what I did with them. I could either focus and obsess on them or deliberately block them out and concentrate on something else.

All we really have any certainty about is the present moment. You can combat immobilization by learning to live in the present moment. Getting in touch with your "now" is at the heart of effective living. That precious moment is tarnished and wasted if you constantly invest your energies and hopes of living in future goals, remission, or magical times when things might get better. The future can also loom ahead as a great, feared unknown.

Clinging to the glories, the hurts, the resentments, or the guilt from the past can also be confining. Live where you are, not where you use to be in the past or hope to be in the future. Victor Frankl, a psychiatrist who survived a Nazi concentration camp, observed that you can't always choose your circumstances, but you can choose your attitude what you do with those circumstances.

The elusive present moment that comes and goes in a flash can be most beautifilly experienced if you let yourself get lost in it. Drink in all of moment with every sense. Tune out the past which is over and done with and the future that'll arrive in its own good time. Embrace this very moment with everything in it (joy or sorrow, laughter or tears, pain or ease) as the only time you really have.

For me, present-moment living slowly evolved from a survival tactic to a means of celebration. It is the ultimate in living and experiencing all of life, whether you are confined to bed or not. This is the abundant life. The significance of your life isn't measured by its length or doing but by how deeply you experience your days, and the totality of the wild open abandon that you give yourself, day by day, to your days.

There is something of beauty and value in every moment, no matter what your situation. A relationship, an inner sense of peace and joy, the unending beauty and drama of nature, the sheer determination to stick things out, a total awareness of all about us, deciphering a doubt, discovering a truth -- all are worthy of celebration. Little by little, month by month and year by year, the grip of fear and mourning loosened their chokehold on me so I could venture out into life and risk once again. The spontaneity and novelty of the future with its strange newness and unpredictable happenings always outwits me. To venture out, I need a deep confidence and flexibility to trust the process. I need to learn to live life with the light touch and go with its flow.

Gradually, cautiously, I allowed myself to emerge from the safe cocoon I had wrapped myself in to wade back into life and test the waters. I had needed that isolation in order to ready myself for this new life. Like a delicate winged butterfly, I ventured forth as a much-changed creature -- fragile, but stronger than I appeared, and beautiful in a much different way. I was now far more aware of myself, of life, and of others. I knew what it was to die and be reborn. I am still trying to learn how to totally experience and gently kiss the joy of my present moments, as if they were lightly floating butterflies, and to lovingly let them take their places in the past as others replace them. To cling too tightly to them would crush and destroy them.

"To kiss the joy of life as it flies is to live in the Spirit; it is to live bodlty immediately with gracious abandon, daring to risk much, willing to give oneself " (Raines, p.85) became my motto for living early on in my illness. An Olympic Event In going through the uproar of divorce, school, illness, and launching teenage sons, I found that making it one millisecond at a time was a gorious victory! I was bed bound during the Olympics after one pretty radical surgery. They showed with camera magic slow motion how one athlete's victory and another's defeat was measured by the millisecond.

I was definitely moving in slow motion or barely moving at all. My Olympic event for the day might be making it to the bathroom or just sitting up...the glory of victory... the agony of defeat... "millisecond living!" I certainly wouldn't have passed a drug screen test for steroids!

I felt like I was on Stone Mountain, a large rounded granite mountain, on roller blades. It seemed like someone kept moping the floor and waxing the handrail of my life at the same time. With seemingly nothing to grab hold of for balance, I found myself focusing on one task at a time gave me sanity. If I looked at the whole mess, I was done in even before I started. I tried to break each day down into reasonable manageable tasks and celebrate each victory in the moment.

You are called to be faithful to the task in the moment, not successful. Many days I find myself with great effort fumbling, stumbling, falling, and crawling through the day on my knees... living by Braille. As I make it through each day in the journey of my life, I find myself closer to going home to heaven.

Where Are You?

Describe where you are in your life at this very moment.

What is the next step ot task after this moment? (i.e. brush your teeth, comb your hair, get dressed, eat breakfast, cry.)

What has been a millisecond victory for you recently?

How did you celebrate it? (i.e. call someone to share it. Eat a Snickers bar. Give a joy whoop!)

Celebrate Life ~ Kathleen Lewis
Email Kathleen
Kathleen S. Lewis, RN, MS, LPC, CMP
2821 Penncross Dr. SW, Marietta, GA 30064
678-355-9784
www.letscelebratelife.com