OUR CHILDREN CANNOT BREATHE

Yesterday, CNN had an article entitled “How air pollution hurts your kids’ lungs.” It describes how many of our children suffer from asthma—a condition where your airway constricts, making it very difficult to breathe.

The article describes how substantially our kids are affected by environmental pollutants because their lungs are not yet fully developed.

In today’s environment, we’re surrounded by pollutants that make it difficult for us to breathe. Not all of them are physical; indeed, the most dangerous ones are not.

We’re surrounded by pollutants to our mind and our emotions as much as to our health. Each of these makes it difficult for us to breathe the sweet fresh air of life. They cloud our judgment, fog our vision, and threaten our well-being.

Not surprisingly, if you go to Google and search for “Air Purifier,” you get 3.6 MILLION results. We’ve gone to great lengths to create mechanisms to clear the physical impurities of the air around us. You can buy them for your house, your car, and even your work area.

Yet how much effort do we invest in purifying our environment of the host of other pollutants that threaten us?

Are there such “purification” systems in place within our homes?

Our children are more affected by environmental pollutants due to their underdeveloped lungs. So, too, are they extra prone to being adversely affected by the mental and emotional pollutants that so mercilessly bombard them outside the walls of our homes.

Therein lies the urgency of creating environments of “fresh air” for our youth (and ourselves).  These reliable safe havens—such as our own homes—where they can be free of those pollutants, are vital to their well-being. Creating these safe havens is indisputably part of our stewardship as parents.

Let’s purify our homes, our conversations, our relationships, our minds, and our actions, that we and those we love might more regularly partake of the fresh air of life.

-Rusty