Life Support

The human body can survive approximately three minutes without oxygen.

Three minutes is the average time of a love song, the average time of a commercial break, and the average time it takes for a person to become brain-dead.

Kind of morbid, right?

But the point of all that is, when a person can’t breathe, when a person needs oxygen when a person can’t function on their own anymore, they turn to life-support.

And sometimes in life, we need a little life support of our own.

Life support comes in various forms depending on the person.

But sometimes the life support we choose isn’t actually helping us breathe… it’s taking our breath away.

When we get to a point in life where things get rough, when we’re feeling lost, when we’re running out of oxygen; who and what we turn to can determine if we survive or if we go brain dead.

Some of us use people.

We use people to keep us afloat. We crave human connectivity. We crave intimacy.

We call them friends, lovers, co-workers, sisters, brothers, or family.

And for some of us, that human connectivity is the right type of life support we need.

They offer guidance, they tell us when we’re wrong, they hold us up when we feel down, they truly love us.

But what about the life support that isn’t actually helping? The people we become blind to?

The people who claim they care but never seem to be there.

The people who convince other’s they love you, but never seem to show it.

The bigs who claim you on Instagram, but don’t check in on you.

The lovers we let enter our bodies, but never want to enter our hearts.

The “sister” or “brother” who’s down to party with you, but has never really prayed for you.

The family that’s blood, but really nothing more.

When we let that type of life-support enter our airways, nine times out of ten, they don’t fix us.

They break us.

And oh it’s so easy to let it happen.

To let people continue to mimic signs of love and affection, while really they’re secretly praying for our downfall.

To let people pretend to breathe new life into us when really they’re the ones holding the pillow to our face.

It’s easy to get caught up in life-support in the form of people, or in the form of things.

Because in reality, we don’t really want Life Support… we just want a Life-enhancement.

We’d like to think we don’t need anyone at all, or that if we lose people life will bounce back to normal.

We’d like to think that loneliness isn’t debilitating, but it can be.

We’d like to think that we can do it all on our own, that we need no one, but we do.

So we train ourselves to use people and love things, and not the other way around.

We train ourselves to seek people as a form of temporary fulfillment.

To use them when we need them, and leave them when we're done. We use them to enhance our lives instead of having them as a system of support, a system of mutual love.

God never designed us to be alone, he designed us to have a tribe, to have a support system, to have life-support.

But the type of Life-support I am talking about cannot be mimicked.

God will put people in your life who are truly there for you.

And then he will show you, Jesus.

Show you that he is not just to be used as a life-enhancement when things get rough.

But he is life-support every day of your life.

He will show you what love looks like.

He will show you that true friends treat you like family.

So, whatever life- support you’re clinging on to.

Whatever life-support you think you found that’s still making you cling for dear life.

Drop it. Get rid of it. Reevaluate its importance.

Because if you still can’t breathe. If you still can’t figure it out. If you still feel like life is being taken away from you.

You’re on the wrong treatment plan.

Peace & Love, D