Spirit Sighs

I had my own tin-foil-brain, fried-soul kind of day. My rescue didn't take place until I had thrashed through most of the calamity. It was the kind of day when everything seems to go sideways from the moment you get out of bed; I’ll bet you’ve had one of these:

There’s no milk, so there’s no cereal, and you’re late anyways, so there’s no breakfast. You’re halfway to work when you realize you forgot your phone — and who can live without their phone these days — so you’re late to work because you went back and got your phone and now you’re behind on everything. People are tweaked at you. You can’t answer that urgent email someone keeps asking about, because you’re waiting for an answer yourself, but the person who has the answer took the morning off for a "doctor's appointment" (sure you did, you think, you're out for a ride, you slouch). On it goes.

You look forward to lunch as your first chance to come up for air, but the line at your favorite taco joint is out the door, and though you should have stayed, you’re already well on your way to totally fried so you leave in frustration, which only makes you skip lunch, which justifies your use of chocolate and caffeine to see you through the afternoon. But that completely takes your legs out from under you, and all you end up accomplishing is making a list of the things you need to do, which overwhelms you. By the time you get home you are seriously fried.

I was strung out, deep in a vat of anger, frustration, self-indulging cynicism, and fatigue. A dangerous place to be. The next move would be rescue or the knockout punch. After a cold dinner I went out on the porch and just sat there. I knew I needed rescue, and I knew the nearest hope of that was the porch.
 
It was a beautiful Indian summer evening, the kind where the heat of the day has warmed the breezes, but you can also feel the cool from the mountains beginning to trickle down like refreshing streams. The crickets were going at it full bore, as they do when their season is about over, and the sunset was putting on a Western Art show. I could feel the rescue begin to enter my body and soul. Nature began its gentle work.

I let out a few deep sighs — “Spirit sighs,” as a friend calls them, meaning your spirit is breathing in the Spirit of God and you find yourself letting go of all the mess, letting go of everything. They weren’t cynical or defeated sighs; they were “letting it all go” sighs. My body relaxed, which made me realize how tense I’d been all day. My heart started coming to the surface, as it often does when I can get away into nature and let beauty have its effect on me. Mind you — I didn’t get to the beach. I’m not canoeing some mountain lake. I’m simply sitting on my back porch. It doesn’t take much; rescue is always at hand.

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