Breathing Room For My Soul

What word comes to mind when you look at this picture?

Solitude?

Space?

Freedom?

Relaxation?

Vacation?

This is one of my favorite photos from our vacation last summer while beach camping at Carlsbad State Beach in California. I have learned for my personal health, I need to escape the concrete world I live in and spend time in nature.

Walking on the beach.

Hiking a mountain.

Or simply taking the dog for a walk.

It renews my perspective that God has created a big world out there. It is breathing room for my soul.

Psalm 62:1-2 MSG - God, the one and only— I'll wait as long as he says. Everything I need comes from him, so why not? He's solid rock under my feet, breathing room for my soul.

There is one problem with this picture, however. It is a moment of stillness captured through the camera lens of my daughter, but it is not reality.

The reality is: I am not alone on that beach. My family is with me and so are other vacationers.

The reality is: there is a major freeway off to my right with strip malls and shopping centers less than a 1/2 mile away.

The reality is: we hardly spent any time enjoying the beach as we did the Mud Run and the San Diego Zoo and Disneyland and squished as much vacationing as possible into four days.

The picture is an illusion.

The lazy beach vacation I envisioned didn't happen. Vacations, just like life, don’t always measure up to reality. And I'm discovering that's OK.

So when I look at this picture, I see breathing room. But I also see reality and perspective and that reality tells me that God has breathing room for me in the midst of my crazy, chaotic life.

And that is like a breath of fresh air for me. A lifting of weight off my shoulders.

Because for too long I lived with the false idea that if I could just try a little harder, if I could get up one hour earlier or stay up one hour later, I could organize and control the details of my life so things could be perfect. Which is ludicrous, when written down like that, but as an organizer and a doer, it was a belief system that drove me.

And it drove me to burnout.

I tried to live differently in 2010. Sometimes I was successful. Sometimes not, but I am encouraged by the breathing room I sense again in my life.

Where do you find breathing room?