Freedom

As I sit in the pale midmorning light and sip my coffee swirled with sugar, I read and ponder. A Severe Mercy by Sheldon Vanauken is a tale of love, beauty and wholeness; a tale of lives well lived. As I take theses moments to breathe and consider those all important abstract nouns I compare them to the intangible concepts that drive my own life—success, progress, acceptance. I have worried and rushed through this year, failing to enjoy the fullness of my last year living at home. There's a certain freedom that accompanies being nearly an adult but still living in the care of others. I've taken that freedom for granted.

But that's not the only freedom I've taken for granted. I've continually forgotten or abused the wholesome freedom that I am blessed with. Becoming aware of the enslavement around me has drawn my own freedom into sharper contrast. I am free. I am free from physical enslavement. I am free from the captivity of mental illness. I have been set free in the fullest sense of the word by Jesus. Yet I continually enslave myself to these terrestrial ideals that are here one minute and gone the next. As the author of Ecclesiastes writes it is all a "chasing after the wind." With steel nets and open jars I run right past Life in pursuit of the winds of this world.

This morning I'm shifting my abstract noun focus. As gusts of passing storms arouse the trees and birds outside my window—I quietly—without procession or parade, celebrate my freedom. I wonder why we save the celebration of something as monumental as freedom for one hot day in July. Personally, I aim to constantly become more conscious and consequently more grateful, for the freedom I am blessed with

I am free.