Walking pneumonia is a strange name. The last thing you want to do when you have this particular illness is walk or anything else that requires energy. With a push, you can go about your normal life until you reach one of the cliffs: coughing fits, lethargy, lack of enthusiasm, … You think that old age isn’t creeping up on you, it’s running full tilt at you with the sole purpose of knocking you down.

Finally I was given a diagnosis for the last few months of twilight living—walking pneumonia. It was good to be able to give it a name, to know what it was I was fighting. And, did I ever enjoy the excuse to sleep, enabled by the medications that made that possible. I was told to practice taking deep breaths for a half hour after using my inhaler, and I thought I was breathing deeply, until one night I felt something pop open in my chest. All of a sudden, I could take a breath deep enough to expand my rib cage.

It was in this delight-in-being-able-to-take-a-deep-breath stage that I went to church on Sunday. A question was asked from the pulpit, “What dams do you have inside that divert the flow of the Holy Spirit river from moving throughout your whole being?”

I thought of the infection that had stopped the air from flowing through one small section of my lungs and how that had affected how I lived my life. What sinful infections do I ignore or encase in a brick wall, essentially forming a dam that prevents the Holy Spirit from flowing through that part of my being? Does that show up in my life?

I need to pray for a diagnosis, a naming of the dams I have built.

Lord, name them, give me the strength and boldness to tear them down. Let your river of life flow through all of me. Let the spray of its healing and love splash those around me. Amen.