Freedom. Independence. Liberty. 

 

Great words spoken by many great people. 

“Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to do”Janis Joplin sang.

All my life I struggled to be free, from my parents as a surly teenager, from bosses who didn’t understand what it was like to work my job, from my ex-husband who held me under his cruel thumb, and from society as it dared to tell me how to live my life.

   

Looking back, I let people and circumstances imprison me, and did not realize that every chain that bound me was forged on at the self imposed crisis I had placed myself in, thinking I was the victim when I had allowed myself to be victimized most of the time. Even when circumstances were terrible, I lacked gratitude or fortitude and sought self pity or sympathy or  blamed others for my plight, even God was the target of my recriminations. Never once did I seek unity, as I could never see that I may have been responsible for my situation. 

I was never free.

  

 There’s no way to be free when Fear held me in its terrible talons, carried off into the future I imagined was already set in stone, and

I had nothing to fight with.

    

Before I could be physically, emotionally, mentally free I had to find spiritual liberation first, and that was quite a journey.

     I had always depended on something or someone outside of me to make me happy, whether it was money or men, shopping or sex, property or prestige… and even if I got it, somehow even that was never enough. Trying to fill the emptiness inside me with material things, with temporal things, left me in sorrow and despair continually grasping for mire, continually coming up empty handed.

 I could never get free of me.

 It’s always darkest before the dawn.

  

Finally the day came, when I heard a story, a story that saved me, and someone else’s debt bought back my life. Their new experience became mine, as I lifted my eyes up and began sing a new song, a song of love, and life and laughter.I learned a simple prayer and held it close to me for it gave me a moments serenity during difficult times. Step by step I grew stronger and began to move to a new freedom and a new happiness not based on external tings but on an inner strength and a fellowship of friends whose selfless love and companion ship helped me cross over a threshold of a reality I had never know before.

 My father used to say, the truth shall  set you free but first it will make you miserable.

I was miserable but didn’t know it. Yet I found I had made my own misery and could blame no one. 

     I no longer lean on things outside of me for satisfaction or happiness, but on the relationship I hold most dear, upon whose dependence I can always count on, and I have found a Great Reality that has always been there deep in my heart. 

  I finally found my spiritual wings, with which I can fly above and beyond all those seemingly disturbing things in this world that surrounds us with hostility and fear. We belong to another world, the world of the spirit, and it leaves behind the terrible horsemen and all their fiends, and bings us to a place of peace and belonging , of power and purpose, and of love. 

Is it all real? 

As real as you and me. As real as truth, justice, and love and those things that have timeless value .

How free do you want to be?