Last night at church while playing this song I had a vision of being lost without light or direction in an old inactive underground mine with miles and miles of passage ways... and bad air.

The desperation of gasping for breath, of lungs crying out for oxygen, of a pounding head, of vision beginning to dim as unconsciousness is slow pulled over me like a veil.

I am without light or direction, not knowing where inside this mountain is the passage way out - fearing any moment of totally losing consciousness, or stepping into a shaft and plummeting hundreds of feet to a lower level and certain death.

Lost.  Desperate for air, for direction.  Panic seizes me as  I realize I could wander for weeks and be no closer to an exit than I am now.

Hungry, cold and wet, walking through ankle deep water, with feet numb due to the cold, and even on the dry stretches there is no relief..  I am thirsty, but the water is poison, tainted with minerals leached out of the rock.  It is bitter and tastes like battery acid.  Even the air, just to breathe it sears my lungs with the same acidic vapor.

I despair.  Blindly testing each pitch-black side passage for an exit.

Then I encounter a cross passage and sense it!  A wisp of fresh air!  Every fiber in my body revels in the air, and as I turn a corner, the light ahead..  Leading to safety and salvation.
 
 
 

Breathe: words and music by Marie Barnett c 1995 Mercy/Vineyard Publishing
 
 

lmv: June 7, 2000

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