Letters Between Sundays

but Breathing Underwater

The silence of water emerging over your body fills in every gap of insecurities and critiques. The pain of water flooding your lungs softens the noise in your head. Everything slows while you sink to the bottom, the baggage of shame, guilt, and fear pulling you toward the dark, empty ocean floor. You watch the world move above you, still spinning, still demanding, while you’re finally at peace with yourself.

No one knows where you are. No pressure to be perfect. No expectations in this symbolic world of sin. Nothing can puncture you — not even your own critical thoughts. Who wouldn’t want to sink into the ocean and feel the peace of nothing?

Walking through life feels robotic. Repeating the same steps seven days a week, not knowing what next month brings. Suffocating on air. Dissociating on God’s beautiful planet, trying to remember to be grateful for every detail. Wanting to be okay… needing to be okay. Every step I take, I trip and fall, hitting every bone on the way down. I hide the scars from those falls, and no one notices the string I tripped on — from far away it looked like air.

I’m trying to catch my breath, but the air fills my lungs with stress and despair, making every second dizzy and confusing. Taking a breath underwater relieves the pressure of reliability and all the threads I’m supposed to hold together. I need just one split second to breathe in comfort, stillness, and silence. I’m naive enough to think I have the option to stay in the abyss.

But I know I have to come up eventually for that vulgar air, hoping my view of God’s world has changed after sinking into the unknown. But even in life, aren’t we all just walking into the unknown anyway? Into a future that blinds us with every turn, never having a tight hold on anything. Learning to let go of control — but not so much that I can’t swim back to the surface.

I need to reach out for God’s hand. I need to breathe — breathe in comfort, stillness, and silence. Who knows… maybe the air could bring me back to life again.