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struggling to breathe

I am in Stonewall Colorado. Elevation 8000 ft. There is a lot less air up here and it takes me a day for the throbbing headache to go away. My son is in worse shape and spends the entire first night coughing. As in every minute from 2:00 am to atleast 5:00 am. We do the usual which is to pump him full of asthma meds and hope it gets better.
Breathing is an issue in our family. Mainly O. 4 trips to the ER in about the last year have made us pretty aware. He has 2 types of inhalers ( an emergency one and a preventative daily steroid) and a crazy one-way valve to help the medicine get to the right place. (Most of which we forgot to pack....but that is a different blog entirely).
Breathing is funny. It is involuntary, like our heartbeat or nerves. We don't have to think about it or will it...........like most of your muscles. Your lungs just go in and out on there own. 10-18 times a minute while resting. Unlike your heart, you can control it. Temporarily at least. You can think about breathing and decide when not to take a breathe. I can't tell my heart to not beat or my stomach to pick up the pace. But your lungs do what you tell them too.......well to some degree.
Stop reading for a sec and think about breathing. It almost becomes difficult. This thing that we do so naturally can get all screwed up when we think about it. Breathing becomes hard work when you try to contol it.
Most relaxation and pain tolerance techniques teach you to take deep controlled breathes. The whole point of it is that it takes so much effort to take slow and controlled breathes that you have little room to stress or write your shopping list in your head.
Did you ever try to hold your breath when you were a kid? Thinking that if you turned blue in the face eventually your mom would cave and give in. Turns out your brain is smarter than you. You can hold your breath until you pass out if you want, but eventually you will pass out. Your body quickly takes over and does what it is supposed to without you. Your lungs empty and fill. Like I said, we only have a small degree of control over this.
Our life is like that. Trying to contol it is exhausting and consuming. The amount of control we think we have over our lives is deceptive at best. Eventually God will demonstrate his control whether we let him and breath easy or make our selves turn blue.

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