Breathing is good!

I love the song “Fill Me Up”.  In 2005, my husband sang bass for an acapella group that sang this song.  There was this awesome alto that did the lead for the song.  It was incredible.  It became my own private theme song during a very hard time in my life.  When they sang, my husband’s rich bass started with “Will you…”  Then the alto and rest of the group complete with voice created percussion chimed in for the chorus with

“Fill me up

Bread of Heaven, fill me

Enlighten me, Bright and Morning Star

Build me up, Master Builder, build me

Empower me, Mighty Great I Am”

(lyrics by Will Reagan, according to http://us.search.ccli.com/search/author?Authors=4294893075&Sorting=Popularity)

The funny thing is, until just now when I looked up who the artist was so I could credit the above quote, I honestly never knew the word was “bread.”  You see, as I listened to my husband and the group sing, I heard “Fill me up, breath of heaven, fill me.”  I wonder if I didn’t make the mistake because subconsciously, I knew I needed breath.  I wanted so badly to be filled with breath.  At that time I was on the lung transplant waiting list due to end-stage pulmonary disease caused by cystic fibrosis.  Cystic fibrosis is a genetic disease that affects the lungs and digestive system.  It is a fatal disease.  Even today,  the average life expectancy of people living past childhood is only 37.  (According to http://cysticfibrosisnewstoday.com/cystic-fibrosis-life-expectancy/)  In 2005, I was 45.  

Being 45 sounds great except to go on living, I needed different lungs.  I had to wait 16 months on the lung transplant waiting list before receiving The Call that changed my life.  My husband and I drove 2½ hours to University of Alabama, Birmingham.  (We lived in Mississippi at the time.)  They got me ready for the surgery and about 5PM, I went to the operating room.  It was around midnight when everything was done.  I actually woke up in the OR.  I remember the ride in the bed to the ICU.  It didn’t even bother me that I still had a tube in my throat and was breathing by mechanical ventilation.  (This is perfectly normal after a big surgery like that.)  I remember thinking, “These are my new lungs and I’m breathing!”  Later that morning around 6AM they removed the tube and just left the oxygen via a tube to my nose which is what I had been wearing for 18 months.  The next day, the nurse came in and took off the oxygen.  She said, “You don’t need this anymore.”  I cried.  

You might think that all was going to be well.  But that didn’t happen.  I went from great to very very sick.  Once again, my lungs weren’t breathing well.  It took the next 2 years to get all the issues dealt with.  It was hard.  I just kept thinking that God had a purpose for me and that’s why he hadn’t taken me home.  After all, He had ample opportunities many times.  

On December 20, 2016, it was 10 years since I got my lungs.  They are working perfectly now and every day because of God’s gift, I can breathe again! I am filled up with breath from heaven.

Yes, Breathing is (most definitely) good!