In and out

I'm just a girl who grew up between a swamp and an ocean.

A girl who shelves books in the library for minimum wage.

A girl who watches too much television and not enough sunrises.

A girl who skips too much class and does too little laundry.

I'm the awkward girl sitting on the side lines in your gym class. The girl with more paint on her dress than on her canvass. The girl who puts her finger in front of the camera lens.

The girl that God looks at and says "I have placed My Name on you and all that you do."

God has been gracious enough to place His name on everything I am, on everything that I do. My very existence proclaims the name of the Lord.

I worship a God who when asked His name simply replies YHWH. We add in an "a" and an "e" because it is easier to pronounce during a 25 minute sermon on Sunday mornings. Yet in doing this we lose the force behind His name. His name is one we cannot pronounce and cannot spell because it is the sound of breathing.

In and out.
The thing that is blowing in me, around me, through me.
That is the Lord.

The very air I breathe says the name of the Lord. The inhales and exhales as I watch the sunrise along the ocean or the sunset over the swamp all cry out, "Lord, you made this!"

The dust-filled air I breathe as a shelve books chokes "I will rejoice in what He has given me.

When hate is sputtered over me, the words I exhale in reply say "This is who my God is."

The air that runs through my nostrils as I nap in my bedroom instead of studying in my classroom says "Lord, this is how I treat Your gifts. Forgive me."

The tears I unleash on the couch of a friend's apartment cry, "Do I put my faith in You? Or man?"

Sometimes my life is a mighty, deep breath. Sometimes it is a quiet sigh. Sometimes it is a sputtering sob or a choking cough. Sometimes it is a belly laugh. Other times it is a simple rhythm. In my cries, in my joy, in my mundane - He is there.

In and out.
The constant life force that propels my entire body and being forward.
That is the Lord.

The power of the wind is unstoppable. Its direction is unpredictable. It's everywhere at once and beyond what we can control or measure. It is a mystery. I cannot see it, cannot taste it, cannot contain it - and yet its very existence proves itself. He is as the air is.

As the atheist sits across from me, his very breath cries out "I am not my own."

Before the newborn babe has learned to speak, the first word she must utter is the name of the Lord, or she will surely die. His name is our beginning and our end, our first and our last.

We rely on the air to sustain life within us - is that not what the Lord does? I plunge under water and hold my breath for thirty seconds and am left gasping for oxygen. I have left my God for a moment and am left on the other side heaving, puffing, and unable to collect myself.

Yet the air is always there upon my return. And I need air.

In and out.
The power that never leaves me nor forsakes me.
That is the Lord.

Is it that I breathe, and He moves?
Or that He moves, and I breathe?

When we stop living, do we stop saying the name of the Lord?
Or when we stop saying the name of the Lord, do we stop living?

Moses said to God, "Suppose I go to the Israelites and say to them, 'The God of your fathers has sent me to you,' and they ask me 'What is his name?' Then what shall I tell them?"  God said to Moses "I am who I am. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: 'I am has sent me to you.'"

Exodus 3:13-14