Breath Prayers

Lately in KidzHarbour as we’ve been working our way through a curriculum called Abide, we’ve been learning about how we can respond in scary situations. Sometimes when we feel overwhelmed or anxious, just like when we feel scared, we can make decisions that aren’t actually the best for us.

They help us out by giving us the acronym STAR, which stands for:

• Stop! Don’t try to fix anything
• Take a deep breath and calm down
• Appreciate and connect with Jesus
• Respond and ask Jesus these questions:  How do you see my fear or my worry? What do you want me to know? Is there something I’m supposed to do?

I’m not going to lie, a lot of the time I need these reminders for myself! Getting to teach these strategies and responses to our kids at Lifespring, at such a young age, is wild! Can you imagine if you had been taught these things when you were starting out in elementary school?

Maybe you were taught these things at a young age and you can attest to the difference it has made in your life as an adult.

It’s one thing to teach our children to “Abide in the vine” with catchy songs and silly actions… it’s another thing altogether to demonstrate to the people around us, that we live our lives by abiding in Jesus.

In our “Take a Deep Breath” lesson, I introduced our kids to Breath Prayers. (This is another tool for spiritual growth that I wish I had known about sooner!) When you inhale, you pray part of a phrase or a Bible verse, and when you exhale, you pray the second part.

The one we taught the kids was based on Psalm 56:3-4 “When I am afraid, I put my trust in you. In God, whose word I praise—in God I trust and am not afraid. What can mere mortals do to me?”

When they inhaled, they would pray “When I am afraid” and when they exhaled, they would pray “I put my trust in You”. Easy right?!

The most common/historic form of breath prayer is known as The Jesus Prayer.
Feel the air in your lungs. And then pray: “Lord Jesus Christ, son of God,” 
Exhale slowly and fully. “Have mercy on me, a sinner.”

While this might not be for everyone, there have been a few times when even as a joke I’ve used a “breath prayer” and found myself much more at ease. Even when it was as silly as inhale: “Oh dear Lord” exhale: “I really need to pee!!!”

There’s something powerful about bringing our physical bodies into our prayers, and especially when we’re feeling panicked or anxious about, say, needing to find a bathroom very quickly, even the process of focusing more on our breathing can help us calm down… how much more helpful when we repeat a simple prayer or verse at the same time?

Just this week in a recent newsletter, Sarah Bessey (a Canadian author and speaker) mentioned breath prayers!! I’ve included the ten she shared in her email below but, feel free to come up with some of your own. Get creative as you find practical ways to Abide in the Vine, bringing God into your moments of panic and/or anxiety. We were not created to attempt getting through it all on our own!