Choking

The first question Dean's nurse had for him today was "Have you been chewing your food?" Then I remembered last week that Dean almost choked on a piece of meat from his "Meals on Wheels" while she was here. We both heard him say that his meat was too tough to cut, but we kept on with our conversation till he stood up suddenly with a scared expression on his face and we knew instantly that he was choking.

Even though Carla, the nurse, is a good foot shorter than my tall husband, I'm sure she'd have stood on a chair to give him the Heimlich any second if she had to. But he instinctively pounded his own chest and up came a gigantic piece of meat. It was a miracle it came up. And we were all shaken and thankful that the emergency was averted.

One of the first things that Dean said after it was over was that now he knows how I feel when I have breathing episodes and we've had to call paramedics. I said yes, that's exactly how it feels. It's pretty traumatic when you can't get air.

God breathed into us the breath of life. Our breath can't be underrated. Each one is a gift of God. I feel sorry for those individuals who feel they have to supplement their air with tobacco smoke. They are poisoning the air that God gave them to breathe. I know it's a hard addiction to break, but it's also worth every effort. Recognizing the true source of help in quitting should be easy though. If God gave us our breath in the first place, He must have an interest in restoring it to us. As a woman on oxygen myself and seeing my dad die of lung cancer and emphysema, I encourage everyone to keep trying as many times as it takes to quit the habit.

Staying Connected

There's nothing like the sinking feeling when you discover that your supplemental oxygen was turned off all night and you were breathing with a Bi-PAP and some flimsy stuff they call room air. Instantly, I just wanted to re-do the whole night--to go back to bed and start over. Does this mean I start out the day with fatigue, instead of ending it that way?

I tried not to let it matter, but questioned my stamina all through the day. Amazingly, little difference was noticed, but how many nights would I be able to pull this off and not have my blood gases suffer? I'm not willing to find out.

This thinking got me to wondering how long it would be for me to miss God, if He were to disappear from my life. Would I notice right away? Would I want to start over? What difference would it make for my strength and stamina for daily living? Just as with my oxygen, I'm not willing to try.

It may be called supplemental oxygen, but we all know it is vital. And God is no different. He not only gave us the breath of life when He created us, but He IS the Breath of Life when we are born again. One is for our mortality, and the other for our immortality. I choose to keep my life support for both every day. And to make sure I'm connected to Him when I go to bed and when I get up in the morning. My prayer check. Gotta' stay connected.

Watching the Gauge

This afternoon when I decided to take a nap, I discovered that my oxygen concentrator had a problem. It didn't seem to be a big problem--the gauge that tells you how much oxygen you're getting wasn't working. After a phone call to a repairman and some simple troubleshooting, I found out that there was a small crimp in the oxygen tubing that caused the gauge to malfunction. How alarming that a tiny crimp in the tubing would be so important to my getting enough oxygen.

When I think of my spiritual life, I wonder if there are any "crimps" in my lifestyle that would cause the full delivery of the Holy Spirit to miss reaching me. I don't want anything to stop the flow of God's Spirit, sometimes referred to as the Breath of Life.

The only way to discover a malfunction is to keep monitoring the gauge. So, in this case we must keep our eyes on the Bible, our measuring tool for discovering any problems in our life. It won't fix the problem. For that, you'll have to get on the phone with the Master Repairman Jesus. He knows just where the "crimps" are and what to do about them.