Freedom.
We live for it.
We die for it.
We fight for it.
We marry for it.
Then divorce for it.
We abort children for it.
We march in parades and wave flags for it.
We sign petitions, email representatives, and call for it.
Sometimes we catch freedom in the eye of a stranger. We shape our lives after theirs… maybe then we’ll have the equation for freedom.
Can you buy freedom?
Can it be wooed or persuaded or pinned down?
Does it come at the end of a gun or the planting of a flag?
In some ways, under some definitions, yes.
But there have been a few jailed men who knew more freedom than most “free” men. There has been freedom among the oppressed, the enslaved, the humiliated, and the beggar.
There is a power… a Love, that is way bigger than this world and what it offers. And that Love extends freedom from His throne to our hearts. It’s free… and it’s not.
It costs everything you think freedom is.
The idea that freedom is synonymous with your happiness. That freedom means you have a right to say and do whatever you please. That freedom is for the unchained, un-imprisoned.
That is the freedom of toddlers (okay, and of teens) when it’s lived out.
We have an opportunity to grasp freedom at a greater depth… the freedom that calls to restraint, thoughtfulness, selflessness, joy in suffering, and eternal rewards that this world can’t touch.
This is what it means to be free… to know that our chains (self-imposed or otherwise), our marriages, our children, our disease or illness, our social status, our bank account are not the defining narrative around our freedom.
1 Corinthians 6:12 “Everything is permissible for me”–but not everything is beneficial. “Everything is permissible for me”–but I will not be mastered by anything.
I choose to be free.
Marcy Pusey 
I really like your post. “Freedom” is most certainly complicated and you have captured that well. Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this. – Sarah (stopping by from Five Minute Friday)
Thank you 🙂
As always – I love how you write and I love your words. I choose to free as well. Amen – let it be. Thank you for your powerful words. Visiting from FMF.
Aw, thanks Kelli 🙂
liked your post.
“We have an opportunity to grasp freedom at a greater depth… the freedom that calls to restraint, thoughtfulness, selflessness, joy in suffering, and eternal rewards that this world can’t touch..” So. Very. Powerful. Truth rings out loud in your words. Thank you.