Each day we are becoming a creature of splendid glory or one of unthinkable horror. C.S. Lewis
What is freedom? A much contested question over human history, indeed. This is what I believe.
We humans have incredible, unfathomable freedom and power. We get to choose what thoughts, emotions, and actions we pay attention to or choose to create, and this fact creates the masterpiece of our lives. Each choice is a brushstroke. We get to choose the perspective we take of our own lives, of each situation and human being we encounter. We can choose to see ourselves as victims – or victors, and others as nuisances or “out to get us” – or as humans holding brokenness, needing love in their cracks and trying to cope with life in the only way they know how. Or perhaps they are standing up for what they believe, maybe their actions have nothing to do with us at all.
True freedom is being able with ease, to choose exactly what you want to do, think, and feel each moment of the day. How you respond to each situation you are in, each person you speak to, each thought or belief you encounter within yourself, each sensation you experience in your body. To be the only one having power over yourself. To take the power back from all that it might have been given over to – laziness, “I feel like”, “I have to”, sex drive, hunger and cravings, physical or emotional pain, labels and diagnoses, need for approval, irritability, anger, or any idea that suggests you are not the one completely in charge of yourself and your experience of life. THAT is freedom, lived. Easy? Heck no. Worth it? HELL YEAH!
Think about someone you admire and look up to. This is basically the definition of a hero! We are ALL born to be heros! We can channel the energy that is so often taken from us in anxiety about the state of the world or our lives and use it to become someone who can actually DO something to make the world, to make this life, a better place, here in our corner, rippling out in mysterious ways and pouring healing into the crevices, reaching further than we can envision. Imagine going to sleep at night knowing that in the thousands of choices you had today, you took the higher road. There is peace within you, knowing you have all you could today to plant love, truth, and excellence into your world and yourself. There is nothing that compares with that. Nothing.
Confidence comes when you have done this long enough that you have built who you are. When you have built yourself on Truth, on your own God given freedom and power, you are absolutely certain of everything you say and do because you chose it with all you are. Everything that comes from you, out of you, is an expression of who you are. You have nothing to prove, protect, defend, or hide. You can dance down the street (or through the grocery store), make friends with anyone you want, and tackle any project you want, knowing you will find a way to accomplish it.
This is seen to the highest degree in Jesus. As it says in the Gospel, He spoke with an authority that threw people for a loop. They were shocked, shaken, woken by it. After a few months of rewiring my brain, understood this authority. I commanded with complete authority my entire being in every nanosecond of the day. I had complete mastery over myself and when I spoke, I did so with authority. The way Jesus behaves in the Gospels began to make a whole lot of sense.
I learned something else through this particular experience. I read recently that God is always happy because His happiness comes from who He is, and ours from things and circumstances. I disagree. We are made in His image, and the only true and lasting happiness I have ever found came from being my truest, Highest, best self. When I am me, truly me, I am happy for absolutely no reason at all. No one can take you away from you, and that happiness can be yours no matter what is happening in your life.
And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your heart and your minds in Christ Jesus. Philippians 4:7
The Eye of the Needle 