The past few days I've been
contemplating freedom, which seems appropriate, as yesterday was
Easter. Growing up in a very Christ focused home and later carrying
that into my own home the word “freedom” seems to lose its power.
I feel like there are a lot of words in the Christian society that
have been dumbed down or overused until they lose their entire
meaning. I'm sure we can all relate to the experience of hearing a
song on the radio that at first packs such a punch all you want
to do is hear it over and over again and we wait for it to come on with great anticipation. But what happens after we've heard
that song so many times? It starts to lose its power and its meaning
and sometimes reaches the point of being annoying and instead of
turning the dial up full blast we change the channel. That's pretty
much how I feel about certain words like “freedom”. All I can
conjur up in my mind when I think about that word is a dead one of different church services I've attended because it didn't MEAN
anything to me. I was already free.
Freedom is intoxicating to me. It calls
to me. I have discovered that you can't truly know the meaning of
freedom until you've been allowed to be held captive. I've been in a
place in my life recently that has drawn me away from everything that
I used to know. Friends, family, the whole Christian environment.
It's been beyond painful. The kind of separation that binds you up.
What I mean by that is that I felt captive to my circumstances, stuck
in a time and a mental state that I didn't think I could pull myself
out of. There comes a time when you get so tired of fighting that you
fall. And it hurts. It's that kind of consuming pain that you can't
know unless you have experienced it. I thought I knew what pain was.
I thought I knew what it felt like to be hopeless. I thought I knew
what it was like to be hurt and betrayed, or to hurt and betray others, until recently, when
everything I thought I knew came tumbling down around me and I was
alone. I was in my own solitary confinement. In the darkness, by
yourself, you can begin to lose your identity. It's almost like you
blend into your surroundings and there's nothing but black. I know
that this sounds dramatic, and maybe it is, but I feel that even typing
those words out seem to be ineffective for what I've been feeling. I
know that everyone has experienced heart ache in their life. I know
that my struggles are nothing compared to what those around me and
around the world have gone through but it has been very real to me.
I would like to say that I am super
woman, and faced with even the greatest of troubles, I rose to the
occasion and fought my way back to the top, but I take absolutely no
pride in being strong. It has been all that I could manage to stand
up. Humility is another word that I am slowly beginning to
understand. Not the false humility that I have been familiar with in
my life but true brokenness that has no agenda. I'm beginning to feel
the power in the simplest of verses in the Bible like 2 Corinthians
12:10 “For
the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults,
hardships, persecutions, and calamities. FOR WHEN I AM WEAK, THEN I
AM STRONG.” This
is important to me because I have placed so much value on being
strong and taking care of things on my own. So much so I have pushed
people away because I needed to prove to myself that I could do it on
my own and I didn't need anyone to take care of me.
In
the darkness of captivity, you strike out at everything that comes
near you, in ignorance and fear. In my life, I've noticed, that even
if a hand were to reach out to help I would push it away because I
couldn't see the source. I've hurt so many people that have only
wanted to help and for that I can't explain how incredibly sorry I
am. Repentance is another word I am slowly beginning to understand.
Now,
thinking about Jesus, thinking about what it truly means to be free,
I can't help but be overwhelmed by this season of His resurrection.
Everything that used to mean something to me means something
completely different. Something real. And I am thankful. I am so
unbelievably, exceptionally, completely thankful. It's an overflowing
thankfulness that there is hope. There are no words. They all fail
me. They betray what I'm truly feeling. I never thought I would reach
a point in my life where I am silenced by thankfulness. I am
baffled. It's like being blinded by the sun after being in the black for
so long, it's almost painful. But beautiful. There's nothing else
that really matters. I'm not interested in being important, I'm not
interested in having a title, I'm not interested in even greatness.
All that I'm interested in is walking forward in the light of
freedom.
And
to lighten this post, a picture of someone who has taught me more
about joy and strength than any human. My son Ezra Justice.
