by Rhonda Rhea @RhondaRhea

If you’re taking my blood pressure and you tell me to “breathe normally,” I hope you’ll understand when suddenly I can do anything but that. I could breathe normally until you told me to.

It’s not rebellion. It’s more…psychosis, I guess.

I might also subsequently be asking questions like, “Are you sure there’s enough oxygen in this room for the both of us?” and “Is it hot in here to you?” Maybe even “How normal is it to entirely forget how to breathe?”

Further, can a person forget how to…brain?

Sometimes my brain seems to make decisions I don’t particularly agree with. Like it doesn’t even consider the body’s wishes. My brain just decides and the whole rest of my body was never even consulted.

[tweet_box design=”default” float=”none” inject=”#Writinglife #BRMCWC #Writing”]As I Live and Breathe by @RhondaRhea on @BRMCWC [/tweet_box]

Anytime, for instance, someone starts a conversation with, “Don’t take this the wrong way,” I don’t mean to—honest, I don’t. But my brain begins all its preparations to take that something the wrong way. Just all the way wrongest.

Brain, could you hold up on all that business and just be normal, please?

Training our brains to behave better when it comes to interacting with others is much more about our hearts than it is our brains. So much of our brain wants to notice the negative in others. The differences and the shortcomings. Paul tells us in Romans 12:16 to “Live in harmony with one another” (CSB). That doesn’t happen naturally. A spiritual reset of the brain comes from focusing on Him as He fills and influences our hearts.

Oh what that influence can accomplish. The verses just prior in Romans 12 give us a clue. “Love one another deeply as brothers and sisters. Take the lead in honoring one another. Do not lack diligence in zeal; be fervent in the Spirit, serve the Lord” (vv. 10-11 CSB).

Instead of allowing my selfish-leaning brain to decide for my whole body how I will listen, how I will see others, and how I will treat them, I want to let God give me everything I need to see people as He does, and then to love them. Even serve them. And as I do, I’m serving Him. Yes, as I live and breathe, I want to live and breathe like that!

Lord, enable me to shove aside any selfishnesses or psychoses and any and all tendencies to take someone the wrong way. May I instead breathe in You. And breathe out Your love.

Living in the love of God, being humbly like-minded, is anything but normal. So much better than normal. It’s Holy-Spirit-empowered blessing. “Finally, all of you be like-minded and sympathetic, love one another, and be compassionate and humble, not paying back evil for evil or insult for insult but, on the contrary, giving a blessing, since you were called for this, so that you may inherit a blessing” (1 Peter 3:8-9 CSB).

“Called,” Peter said. I want to remember this calling with all my brain. And with all my heart. And with every breath. All my oxygen. It’s a blessed, worthy spiritual calling.

I’ve also decided to be relatively okay with the fact that I can’t breathe like a normal person when I’m told to. I think stressing over it might be raising my blood pressure.

Rhonda Rhea is an award-winning humor columnist for great magazines such as HomeLife, Leading Hearts, The Pathway, and many more. She is the author of 19 books, including the popular romantic comedies co-authored with her daughter Kaley Rhea, Off-Script & Over-Caffeinated and Turtles in the Road. Rhonda and Kaley have also teamed up with Bridges TV host Monica Schmelter for the Messy to Meaningful books and TV projects. Along with Beth Duewel, Rhonda writes the Fix Her Upper series, and she also co-authored Unruffled: Thriving in Chaos with Edie Melson. She speaks at conferences and events from coast to coast, serves on many boards and committees, and stays busy as a publishing consultant. Rhonda says you can find her living near St. Louis drinking too much coffee and snort-laughing with her pastor/husband, five grown children, and a growing collection of the most exceptional grandbabies.