When I was in my late teens and early 20s, I was very goal-oriented. Almost everything I did, I did with a goal in mind. Crafts turned into Christmas and birthday presents, books were useful to educate myself on whatever it was I was studying, and food was safe to make into art because it could be eaten. Even on the trail, the goal was the point: Get up to the high point; down to the river; to the trail’s end. I expect a lot of my goal-orientedness was an outgrowth of the pressures of college life, but it didn’t change the fact that I shot for the goal and almost always achieved it.
It’s not that I didn’t enjoy life along the way. I saw spectacular views; enjoyed good books; learned a lot; and made some pretty nice presents and tasty food. Meeting the goal was a sense of accomplishment and an opportunity to push for an even higher goal.
Goals are good. Goals are great. But unless you learn to take breathers on the upward path, you 1) won’t enjoy life fully, and 2) will burn out before you reach the summit.
We weren’t made to trudge upward indefinitely. It can be tempting when you have your eyes on the summit or the end of the trail to just keep pushing through. We don’t feel like we’re tired, so we just keep hiking. There’s nothing wrong with that per se. But if you’d just stop for a breather – even for two minutes – you’d start hiking again refreshed and more likely to hit the summit faster than if you’d just kept going.
Breathers give us a chance to rest, an opportunity to look at the view, a chance to see what’s going on around us; to put ourselves and our journey into perspective. It also gives us time to hear the people around us giving encouragement and tips for how to best succeed.
The trouble is that we also weren’t created for a life of breathers. If all we ever do is rest on a rock beside the trail, we’ll run out of daylight long before we reach the mountain peak. We also won’t build stamina, enjoy our hike, or end up with the sense of accomplishment that we met our goal, let alone enjoy the view at the peak.
On the path of life, we need to remember to take breathers. God seems to be infinitely creative when it comes to making sure we get time to breathe even in the middle of spiritual battles. We can squander those breathing times by worrying or filling it with other needs, activities, and thoughts. We can also refuse to leave the breathing place and let the battle be lost – much like sitting on a rock next to the trail instead of hiking.
Be on the lookout for the breathing spaces that God brings into your life. You never know how much stronger just breathing for two minutes can make you, or how much that breather will be the key to reaching the goal God is leading you toward.
