On the Importance of Breathing, Glue Guns, and Praising God in the Arena
There's nothing that a little hot glue and praise can't fix
I had a dream that I was in a physician’s office having my arm examined. The arm was mottled—purple, red, and white—and I was in tremendous pain. The attending doctor was a different sort than I was accustomed to in that he wanted nothing from me at all. Not money. Not deference. He was present to me without asking from me.
The physical pain was overwhelming but my fear had dissolved into the space he held. He didn’t say a word but I felt that this is what it’s like to be cared for, and I experienced a relationship between healer and patient that was uninterrupted by any material influence.
With great tenderness, he looked me in the eyes and spoke to me about my arm…
“Your body is carrying grief, and when you remember how to breathe again, you will be relieved of the pain. I’m inviting someone to help you…”
Another person entered the room. No words were exchanged. I couldn’t quite make out who it was—or whether male or female—but I felt my body relax.
We immediately started to breathe together as if we were one body. I was like an infant lying next to its mother, and my lungs were like her lungs. And her love, my identity. I felt the breath and was prompted to breathe. And I was fully myself yet wholly immersed in the breath of the other.
My pulse slowed and my teeth unclenched and my pain began to melt away.
I looked at my arm and I observed a transformation—the skin returning to normal color and the rest of me feeling like myself.
Remembering how to feel.
Remembering how to breathe.
When I was a child, I used to hold my breath so that I wouldn’t be noisy because I thought everyone could hear me breathing. Especially in quiet places, like church or school, I thought my exhalations sounded like a freight train. I didn’t want to be heard, I wanted to slip into the floor where no one would notice me. There were times I almost passed out from the effort to slow respiration and disappear.
It didn’t really work. I never was able to disappear. But eventually, breathing that way became a habit—a laborious and painful habit. I forgot how to breath properly. Decades later, I still revert back to those old breathing patterns when I’m anxious or busy.
I breath in my shoulders. My chest. My throat. My jaw. Maybe it’s a coincidence that, as an adult, I have injury, dysfunction, or disease in all those places. Maybe not.
But in the dream, I was healed. I breathed how I must have breathed as a toddler—relaxed, diaphragmatic, free—before I became aware of my autonomous existence and the desire to be nothing. As I was healed in the dream, my arm was released from pain and came alive.
The dream ended as I awakened and I checked my arm, as one does after such a dream. As I drifted back into sleep, I tried to remember who it was in my dream who taught me to breathe and how it was that I came to be myself again.
I didn’t know the name but I knew the breath. And I fell asleep in peace with the whisper of the Name in my soul and on my lips…
RUAH.
Breath of God.
Come, Holy Spirit, Come.
SPEAKING OF BREATHING…
I know you think you know how to breathe (you’ve been doing it your whole life, I know), but maybe you’re due for a tune up. Here’s a short video on restorative breathing for post surgical patients which I found generally helpful. If you’ve got any posture, pain, mobility, or nervous system trouble, it could be worth the ten minutes.
Breath work can sound a little like yoga frou frou (which I don’t do) but it is actually an important part of mobility because of the impact it has on posture as well as the nervous system and pain centers of the brain. It is a frequently overlooked player in recovery from physical and emotional injury.
I’m a Mobility Coach with The Ready State and I highly recommend their resources for pain management, restoring range of motion and natural ranges, and breaking down complex human movements in order to restore health to the body.
TRS also publishes a couple of my favorite books on restoring functional movement and minimizing pain. If you’re into a lot of detail, check out The Supple Leopard. (The spiral bound version is more expensive but it’s worth it if you’re going to be in the book a lot.) If you want to start smaller or just want a great and motivating read, try Built to Move. I’ve given both of these books as gifts because I like them that much (the books and the recipients, I mean).
ALWAYS PRAY BEFORE YOU HIT SOMEONE
Much of America was glued to screens this past weekend as Mike Tyson, at the age of 58, stepped back into the boxing ring to fight. The undercard turned out to be a much more exciting championship battle between Katie Taylor and Amanda Serrano. Generally speaking, I don’t like to see women in combat sports (and I only caught bits through half-closed eyes via others’ twitter shares), but I’m grateful to hear God praised in any arena.
As Katie Taylor started her ring walk in front of 70,000 people (280 million virtually across the world) this weekend, my daughter texted me…
The female defending super lightweight champion is walking out to worship music! It’s one of my favorites.
The effect of praise and worship playing in a massive combat sport arena struck me in the same way it did when I saw Impa Kasanganay win the PFL 2023 Light Heavyweight World in MMA. His walk out song was one of my favorite worship songs and it was a moment of unexpected consolation and praise.
Here’s Katie walking to Awake My Soul by Hillsong, which is now on my workout playlist…
Some say blasting worship music in the AT&T stadium was a contradiction to the message of her fists, but I say it’s not. Or if it is, that none of us can dare to praise and testify publicly again since the contradictions of our lives are known to many. It may seem odd to pray before we hit someone, but the inclination seems essentially good—definitely giving a King David kind of vibe.
Jordon Peterson once said he couldn’t call himself a Christian because he would perpetually betray God by the ugly testimony of his life. And yet we know that it is precisely because of Christ’s purpose and MERCY that we are compelled to praise and testify anyway, in times of both strength and weakness. We do not bear witness to our perfect goodness but to God’s.
Truly, the proper way to live a life of faith is to give praise without ceasing. At the very least, it is an act of justice. Better still, it is an outpouring of the Holy Spirit from a surrendered heart to a world desperately in need of hope.
Let us praise Him so often and loudly that all of hell couldn’t make us choose an eternity without the ability to give thanks and praise.
Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. — Colossians 3:16
WHY YOUR KID SHOULD HAVE A GLUE GUN
Making an awkward leap from praising with fists to praising with glue guns and cardboard…
You don’t have to get the kids in your life a hot glue gun, of course, I’m just saying it could be great. My kids use theirs frequently and their creations are wonderful. For twenty years I hoarded mine, thinking that it was too adult and dangerous and off limits to the kiddos. Total miscalculation. I have it on kid authority that they are “better than video games.”
If you have reasonably well-behaved kids (maybe ages 8 and up), they can probably handle their own hot glue gun. That recommendation comes with some caveats, of course, such as…
Also buy some burn ointment and I recommend this one.
Fingertip protectors are nice.
Use a large silicon mat under the gun instead of your dining room table.
Buying glue sticks in bulk can save you from mid-project run to the store.
Burns and whatnot aside, the purchase is worth it. Here’s an inexpensive kit that we got for our daughter when she was nine and which has been in regular use for two years. It includes a case, small mat, finger protectors, and some glue sticks: Hot Glue Gun Set
They’ve built doll houses complete with furniture, a dog house for a cousin’s stuffed animal, toy instruments, school projects, Christmas ornaments, and are now fixing some broken items from a family member’s old fashioned doll house. I’ve used mine for everything from party decorations and household repair to costumes, hair flowers, and all manner of crafts to keep and to sell.
We’re hot glue gun superfans.
Here are some projects my kids have put together in the past few months using Amazon boxes…
TINY GRAND PIANO
This is evidence that if you unshackle 13-years old boys from tech, they can probably rebuild civilization. He was just “messing around” with his sister’s glue gun. (He’s getting his own glue gun this Christmas... Sssshhhh)
Books pictured: The Church and I (Sheed), Unrepeatable (Burgis & Miller), Forever Strong (Lyon), A Cry of Stone (O’Brien)
A PARISH CHURCH
I asked my 11-year old if she would make a cardboard church her cousin’s First Communion so that we could put his card in it. The kids became invested in the “St. Simon” project and went above and beyond. The stained glass windows were made out of some plain Shrinky Dinks plastic we had.
The church turned out great and their cousin’s sister even used it as part of her All Saints’ Day costume. My 8-year old had such a great time that he built a church hall (not pictured) where their Lego figures could eat donuts after mass. It had a stage, tables, chairs, and even art for the walls.
The gold piece on the front of the church was made with hot glue on a piece of cardboard and painted with gold acrylic paint.
LEGO PLANES
This is what happens when your kid likes Legos but not the price tag. He found photos of the plane he wanted and got to work. We have a fleet of different ships. The cargo doors all work on the sides and back and hold troops and a smaller plane.
COSTUMES
This is St. Longinus, bedecked in old couch leather and glue. The medallions on this costume are made completely from hot glue, painted gold and then glued onto the costume.
IN WHATEVER SEASON YOU’RE IN, MAY YOU KNOW OUR GOD OF JOY…
I’ve got dozens of notes and photos on my phone about breathing and praising (and glueing), so I’ve just got to let this stack go with those few and pick it up again another time.
I’m hitting “publish” today from the trenches of a heavy season. The physical background music is the sound of coughing children. The interior space feels heavy like water in the lungs or the beach as a storm rolls in. My body has to move on while my heart is healing multiple fractures. One of my kids was in a highway wreck last week and a younger sibling confided “I thought that maybe this would be a time for a little breathing room, but it just gets harder.” A friend of mine going through a difficult time also recently wondered if maybe life just gets harder and harder until we die and that maybe we’re not supposed to be happy in this life.
I used to believe that. It was the way that I reconciled faith with persistent loss and grief, and so my spiritual life reflected a chronic sorrow, and yes, a belief that life is just an increasing burden of difficulty until we die.
My faith took on a spirit of perpetual mourning and the belief that life IS suffering. I was focused on the cross (rightly so) but with only a perfunctory nod at the Resurrection. I see this a lot in the Church, especially in traditional circles. I understand it but I can’t breathe fully in it anymore. In recent years, my spiritual and physical survival has necessitated a reversal of depressive spirituality. My focus rests more heavily on the Resurrection with just a perfunctory nod to the real weight of suffering. Suffering is no longer my idol.
Praise is an essential part of being in the arena. It is justice, nourishment, and good health. The Man of Sorrows is also the God of Joy.
That praise has got to come in the midst the blood and tears and whatever else, and it’s gotta be loud like an arena of a hundred thousand boxing fans. We can’t be about half truths but the fullness of truth, and the fullness of truth includes the reality of the JOY and the GLORY and the GOODNESS of God and the life which He breathes into us.
There are seasons—decades?—when we wonder how long we can go without air… but respite comes. Breath of heaven. We’ll get through. Praise Him.
Our kiddo is okay (though the car didn’t make it) and I’m giving thanks to God while also prayerfully—desperately—asking for a little bit of a breather and much healing for all of our loved ones. It’s been a helluva season. Praying for any of you slogging through a gauntlet of hardship (some names come to mind… love you all).
I want—and need—to testify out loud today that, through every painful season, HE HAS BEEN FAITHFUL. And His name is MERCY.
So we continue to give thanks and praise, even when we are blind and deaf and wandering through the desert. He is trustworthy and He does not leave. May His blessings continue to cover my family and yours with hope and joy, and may the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
I’m not one to decorate early for Christmas, but my tree is going up before Advent this year and I’m not ashamed. My soul needs Christmas. All of me needs Christmas. Speaking of which (because there’s something disarmingly light about crafting) here’s a super simple Christmas glue gun gift box tutorial we love.
Come, Lord Jesus, Come.
Blessed be God.
Melody
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