My Breath Is Not My Own

There have been so many times I should not have been here. Moments where breath felt like a stranger, where darkness coiled around my throat and whispered that it could end if I just stopped fighting. I could have died by my own hand, by the world’s hands, by the unseen wars inside my head. And yet, Jehovah kept breathing life into me. Again and again, he found a way to stir my lungs when the air refused to move. Jehovah reached into the ache, into the wreckage, into the places where I thought even he had turned away and said no, not yet. I want you here.

My life has been a series of near extinctions. So many factors against me, so many chances to disappear. The odds were stacked like mountains, the world certain I would collapse beneath them. But I am still here, and not by accident. I am here because Jehovah said so. Because Jehovah looked at what was broken and called it worth keeping. Because Jehovah decided that even in the chaos of my mind, I was still his. That truth is not something others can unmake with their opinions or rejection. Their disbelief does not undo my survival.

How now does any person, man, woman, or child, decide I am less? How do they look at the scars, the battles, the years of clawing my way back to peace, and still choose to call me incomplete? They can try to make me feel inferior, criticize my ways of coping, call me unworthy of love or sight, but their judgment will never rewrite the reason I exist. I am not here by their choosing. I am here because Jehovah wanted me to breathe again.

They do not understand what it means to be born from ashes more than once. They do not understand that my survival is not luck, it is purpose. My brain, my body, my chemical storms, my silence, all of it has been reforged under Jehovah’s watch. And even when I feel depreciated, cast aside by those who find comfort in shallow waters, I am screaming without sound: I am still here.

Jehovah wove resilience into my blood. It hums beneath my skin when the world tells me to quiet down. It steadies my shaking hands when I feel forgotten. It reminds me that I have been seen, that I have been chosen, not because I am perfect, but because I am his.

To many, I may mean nothing. To them, I am a curiosity, an afterthought, a woman who feels too much and speaks too little. But Jehovah values me like the widow’s two small coins, humble, overlooked, yet priceless in his sight. I am abundantly grateful that Jehovah sees me that way.

So let them call me strange, or scarred, or too much. Let them think I am not their version of whole. I know who breathes life into me. I know whose hand steadies my pulse when the rest of the world lets go. I am living proof that Jehovah does not abandon what he builds.

And that is enough.