How to Find Sanctuary When Your Exhale is Overdue

Sometimes you’ve got to step back in time and turn on one of the oldest songs that formed your walk with Jesus. For me, it’s Jason Upton’s “In the Silence.” He’s an unconventional musician, a worship leader with a heavy prophetic anointing. The raw and ache in his voice give me permission to pray honest, even when it’s not pretty. Pray wordless when “there is no language / no language but a groan.”

I remember when I bought the cd. When I burned it onto a cassette so I could play it in my car. How many hours I spent on my floor with this song on repeat. 

The song’s chorus is written in my journals and Bible margins:

In the silence, You are speaking.

In the quiet, I can feel the fire.

And it’s burning, burning deeply.

Burning all it is that You desire to be silent in me.

Jason Upton

It’s risky, this invitation for God to move in and consume all that I’ve put first. Timelines and rightness, self-wrought perfection and corralled peace, even preferences I insist I don’t have. But there’s serenity in surrender, in palms-to-the-sky and bent knees and stillness.

Although Jennifer Dukes Lee may not be familiar with this song, I see it as a sort of anthem for Stuff I’d Only Tell God. It’s openness and expectation. Truth and trust. Relentless realness. Both carve a sacred space for you to share secrets with God and know it’s endearing to Him.

“In the Silence” loops back to the beginning and I walk faster because a light rain is settling through the trees. The sky is steel gray dark and it stings behind my eyes from holding back tears. Out here I’m untethered to all but the ground beneath my feet and the God beside me. I breathe in slow and let my shoulders fall as I exhale.

An Overdue Exhale

Maybe you’re overdue an exhale also. 

I see it in your face with its tired lines and clenched jaw. Your crammed calendar and the gas light on your dashboard.

It’s been you trying to figure it out for long enough. You worrying about it late into the night, blaming yourself for being behind, criticizing your honest hard effort.

Pause right here for a moment. Tilt your head back and close your eyes. Open your hands wide. And breathe. Long and slow. Let oxygen course through and awaken you.

Linger here if you can. Turn on “In the Silence” and let the words become your prayer. 

Then pick up a pen or open the Notes app on your phone and write down what it felt like to exhale. Next, sit with these questions:

What’s weighing you down?

What needs to be silenced?

What else is God saying right now?

Circling back to Stuff I’d Only Tell God, if you haven’t tried Jennifer’s guided journal yet, here’s a nudge to take a prompt a day and this posture of honesty. It will change the way you hear God and what you let Him heal.

Want to know what a few of my favorite prompts are? Find out HERE.

If writing it down isn’t your thing, let’s head back to the woods and wind and God-whispers. Find a sanctuary outdoors where you can pray out loud. Shout-pray or ugly cry if you need to. Tell Him how you really feel. He’s not looking for parsed down words or eloquent petitions. Pray unhinged, like David the Psalmist, who recorded this prayer: 

Evening, morning, and noon I will plead;

I will grumble and moan before Him until He hears my voice.

Psalm 54:17, The Voice

Finding Sanctuary

As you practice vulnerable honesty with God, here’s a promise to tuck into your tender heart:

Your overflowing goodness, You have kept for those who live in awe of You,

And You share Your goodness with those who make You their sanctuary.

Psalm 31:19, The Voice

Sanctuary. I read earlier in Jodi Grubbs’ book Live Slowly that “the word sanctuary came to us through French from Latin, and blends the meanings of a safe place and a holy place” (pg. 92). Jodi encourages us to seek an “island in the city,” a place where we can rest and re-connect with God, nature, our breath and beating heart. Identity this place—physical or through imagination or remembrance—and go there whenever you “need calm your anxiety and feel more tethered to God” (pg. 92).

Place has a way of positioning our hearts. If your walk becomes your prayer time, you’ll associate conversation with the trail and anticipate meeting God there. Same with a velvet loveseat or a worn spot on the floor. Repetition creates neural pathways. Experience grows expectancy.

But what’s also true is that sanctuary is available everywhere because God is always with us. No matter what question is sitting in the pit of your stomach or what diagnosis you just received or how hope feels sliced up and tossed to the breeze, God is our oasis in the midst of the storm. His goodness saturates parched ground and soul fissures and everything unfair.

Honesty helps us find our way into the wide-open arms of Jesus. It erases distance, dispels our pretenses, enfolds us in a warm welcome that feels like home. 

I want that for you. Want it for you and for those you’ll share it with in conversations that slip beyond weather and kids schedules and summer plans.

Because maybe if you need an exhale, someone else near you does too. 

Let’s pray.

Jesus, thank you for Your goodness blanketing the pockets of hard and glimpses holy. Thank you for listening to our unfettered prayers. Thank you for leaning in to catch every word, because whether we’re silent or shouting, You care. You hear. You know. And You become our sanctuary.

Just a friend over here in your corner,

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