fear, love, freedom
“These dreams in my brain are too great to conceal
And I can’t stay here where nothing is clear
Where love is just wasted, replaced it with fear”
- John Torres (Crazy Man’s Mind)
It seems my indecision has moved me into a place of examining. I am examining (again) who God is, who He made me to be, what I want, what I believe, and why… and it’s not so easy a journey as one would think.
For years I’ve ‘prided’ myself on my lack of religiosity when really I am living under the law and I am not free. I am convinced that I am guilty, every day, of something. I am convinced that I fall short (and I do) but instead of that knowledge leading me to a place of love and thankfulness for God’s abounding forgiveness and hope and wonder… I simply allow my feelings of guilt, though washed clean by Jesus, to weigh me down and make me feel useless.
The truth is as much as I want it I know that I am not who I should be yet and I do not live the way I ought to (as Paul wrote “I do what I do not want to do and don’t do what I want to do”). This is because I have replaced love with fear. I’ve gotten so used to fear that I sometimes don’t even recognize it for what it is. And it’s making me far too short on love.
Do you find it interesting how often we speak of what we will be more than what we are? I think we, or at least I, do this because of the power of speaking. Our words–especially our spoken words–shape our lives.
So if I do not speak and then speak negatively, I am shaping my life, my self-image negatively. God says I am free. If I do not believe this, then what does this tell me about my faith? God’s freedom and calling to live abundant lives full of hope, faith, joy, and love is the greatest gift.
And yet here I am with my head in the dirt in my fenced-in garden, convinced my fence is worth more than the light and hills and people beyond. I long to step beyond it, no, LEAP and FLY beyond it. I think this is possible. I can be free, because I already am. I just don’t know it yet.
And do you know the crazy thing? The way out? It’s not something I can do on my own. It involves love. It involves people. It involves opening my mouth.
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