The Breath That Carries Everything

There is something about a beautiful Monday morning that makes you want to start well.

Coffee in hand. Sunlight through the window. The good kind of tired that comes from a full and genuinely happy weekend. Allen and Adi and laughter and all the ordinary things that have started to feel like answered prayers.

And underneath all of it, a message from Sunday that I cannot stop thinking about.

What happened in worship before the message even began.

Yesterday at New Life North Metro, we sang “Great Are You Lord” by All Sons and Daughters during worship.

I have sung that song many times. But there is one line that never fails to reach somewhere deep in me:

“It’s Your breath in our lungs, so we pour out our praise.”

I stood there singing it and I felt the familiar wave of gratitude that comes every time those words leave my mouth. Because for me, that line is not poetry. It is testimony. It is 2022. It is a hospital room. It is my son.

And then Ps. Mara Morales, our Lead Pastor, stepped up to preach. And her very first point was this:

Breath was the first gift God gave us.

I nearly came undone right there in the pew.

The breath I prayed for.

Let me tell you about Adi. He is four years old now; full of energy and laughter and an absolute refusal to sit still. He is the boy who sprints off church stages into my arms. He is the boy whose voice calling me “Mommy” is the best sound I know.

He arrived at 33 weeks in 2022.

Premature. Too early. And in the most frightening circumstances I have ever navigated.

The night before I went into preterm labor, I felt an unusual prompting from the Holy Spirit to pray. Not just any prayer; a deep, urgent intercession. I prayed in tongues and declared Psalm 91 over my life without fully understanding why. I simply obeyed.

The very next day, my water broke.

My husband had just tested positive for COVID and could not be with me. I was admitted to the hospital alone, afraid, and completely out of my depth. And yet in that moment, I felt the presence of God in a way that defied the circumstances. An old friend I hadn’t seen in nearly a decade showed up at the hospital to be by my side. I didn’t ask her. God sent her.

One of the greatest concerns with premature babies is their lungs; among the very last organs to fully develop in the womb. In those early fragile days, every breath Adi took felt like something I was witnessing rather than simply observing.

Because it was.

So when I stood in worship yesterday singing those words; “It’s Your breath in our lungs”; and Ps. Mara opened her message with breath as God’s first gift to humanity, I felt something only God could orchestrate. A Sunday morning becoming a personal altar call. A worship song and a sermon meeting the memory of a hospital room in 2022.

That little boy running around my house today, now four years old, breathes because God breathed into him.

I will never stop being undone by that.

Jeremiah and the calling you didn’t ask for.

Ps. Mara walked us through the book of Jeremiah, and I want to share what struck me most.

Jeremiah was a young man who felt completely unqualified for what God was asking of him.

"I can't speak for you. I'm too young." (Jeremiah 1:6)

Sound familiar? I have said versions of that sentence more times than I can count. Not about age necessarily, but about worthiness. About whether my story is significant enough. About whether I have the right to take up space with my words.

And God’s response to Jeremiah is the same response He keeps giving me:

"Don't say I'm too young. Go wherever I send you and say whatever I tell you. Don't be afraid, for I will be with you."(Jeremiah 1:7-8)

The calling was never about Jeremiah’s capability. It was about God’s. And the words that came from Jeremiah’s mouth were not ultimately his own. God put them there.

That is both humbling and freeing. This blog, these daily reflections, the book I recently finished writing; they were never really mine to begin with. They belong to the One who breathed them into me.

The six things God asked Jeremiah to do.

What I found most practically powerful in Ps. Mara’s message was the six-part assignment God gave Jeremiah:

Uproot. Tear down. Destroy. Overthrow. Build up. Plant.

Notice the order. Four acts of clearing before two acts of creating.

God doesn’t ask us to build on top of what is broken. He asks us to do the hard, unglamorous work of removing what doesn’t belong first. The idolatry; anything we have placed above Him. The corruption. The strongholds that pull us down. The false beliefs we have been holding onto.

Only then: build up. Plant.

I have been living this pattern without fully having language for it. The past months of my life have been an uprooting. A tearing down. A destroying of things that were never going to hold. And it has been painful and necessary and I would not trade it.

Because now I can feel something being built. Something being planted. Something that has roots this time because the ground was properly cleared.

"Whatever is destroyed, God will rebuild again." (Jeremiah 31:34)

He does not demolish without intention. Every clearing is preparation.

Coming back to today.

My sister Kimberly is coming home today from Dubai. I am already excited; the kind of excited that belongs to people who know exactly how good it feels to be reunited with someone you love after time apart.

Today I am returning to some things I have let slip during the hard months. My work. My financial tracking. My Pilates practice. The practical rhythms of a life being rebuilt.

None of that is glamorous. But it matters. Because building up and planting require showing up consistently; in the small, faithful ways that don’t make for dramatic moments but form the actual substance of a life.

Ps. Mara reminded us that the Holy Spirit brings life to dead things. Not just spiritually. Practically. In our bodies, our relationships, our finances, our work, our words.

The same breath that sustained Adi in those early fragile days is available to us today. Right now. On an ordinary Monday with coffee and sunlight and a week full of possibility.

Use your words, she said. Not to tear down people. Not to perform or promote yourself. But to speak life. To declare what God has already declared over you.

For anyone stepping into a new week:

Maybe you are in the middle of your own impossible situation right now. Maybe you are sitting somewhere alone, or facing something you did not see coming, or waiting for a breakthrough that feels long overdue.

Here is what I want you to know from the other side of my own impossible season:

He shows up. He sends people. He breathes life into things that have no business surviving on their own.

The breath you are breathing right now is a gift. The first one God ever gave you. And it carries more than air.

It carries purpose. Calling. The capacity to speak things into being that don’t yet exist.

Don’t say you are too broken. Don’t say your story isn’t significant enough.

Go where He sends you. Say what He tells you. Trust that the words He puts in your mouth will do exactly what He intends them to do.

He is not done with you yet. And neither are your lungs. 🌿

“It’s Your breath in our lungs, so we pour out our praise. 🎶“

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What moment in your life has shown you most clearly that God is the one breathing life into things? I’d love to hear in the comments. 🤍