First, there was last week’s bout with the flu, then there was that retail therapy outing which resulted in a bank account balance just a bit too close for comfort. Somewhere in between those two was a panicky conversation with my dear husband. Actually, before all that, it was a tender conversation with my mom, whose memory is failing her, and my impassioned pleas to explore further medical options in an effort to stave off this loss, and her calm and candid response, without judgment: I guess I’ve just accepted that this, but you haven’t.

It seems God, or the Universe (I think of them interchangeably), has had a lot to say to me lately about how to be with my own and others’ limitations.

When my soul has been overcome with anxiety and doing life feels like hanging onto a rope tied between the farmhouse and the barn in the blizzard of the century (did you read your Laura Ingalls Wilder?), and when it feels that just one step away from that line may leave me lost and eventually frozen, I have found a very simple spiritual discipline that has become that lifeline for me.

It’s called the breath prayer.