FREEDOM!!!

I cannot think of freedom without the infamous battlecry from BraveHeart of "FREEEEEEEDOMMMMMM" ... can you see it?  hear it?  I can't get it out of my head.  I've been thinking and talking a lot about freedom this week.  It just keeps coming up ...

One of the places I was talking about freedom this week was in the context of FINALLY learning to let go of my need to "control" life.  Now, I wish I could say I have that figured out all the time cause I don't ... and if you could just be privy to the thoughts running through my head of how I'm going to do what I'm going to do today you'd see that very clearly.  But I have learned MOST of the time to be free from that control when it comes to missions.  I can admit it.  Hello.  My name is Karen and I like to be in control ... of my emotions, my circumstances, my reactions, my experiences.  I'm kind of type A ... a bit of a perfectionist (I know, I know, I'm being pretty gracious to myself here) ... and it's only been recently that I have learned IN MISSIONS that I can prepare myself and prepare my team and have things that I think we might need ... but ultimately I am NOT God and I do NOT live on the field fulltime and I just need to know what's next.  I tried to explain that to some of my girls last week when it seemed that they were not content with the schedule ... and wanted to suggest other ways of doing things.  There were times that if it were solely up to me we'd probably have done things differently.  But this is not my culture or my ministry and I will not be there this week to follow up on what happened last week and I have finally found sooooo much freedom in just living for the next step.  I might have a rough idea of what was planned in the future ... but each day the only thing I really needed to know and tell my team was how to get to the next step.  After clinic, I didn't talk about our group time or the next day, I just simply knew that dinner was at 6 pm.  And it felt great to have the freedom from distractions and schedules and demands to just walk from one thing to the next ... and only the next. 

Yesterday I was sharing that new found freedom with one of my students who desperately wants to know what's ahead for his life.  He graduates in December and even in talking about his summer plans was trying to put himself in a position to maybe figure out what he might want to do next.  We talked about being open to ideas and passions, but holding those loosely enough that it doesn't destroy us if God chooses to get us to the next place in a different way.  And we talked about the incredible freedom in knowing that all we have to do is walk in faithfulness to the NEXT step!  That's usually all God shows us with certainty anyway!

Now, I'd LOVE to walk in that same freedom day by day by day here in "normal life" for me ... not just in missions life.  I'm working on it.  Not trying to control those things for which I have no control.  Harder here.

In Braveheart, Malcolm Wallace says, "Your heart is free. Have the courage to follow it."  Pretty sure Paul said that same thing many, many years before.

It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.  Gal. 5:1

In And We Are Changed, Priscilla Shirer was talking about the response of slaves to the Emancipation Proclamation.  The slaves working the fields almost immediately left for something better once they had their freedom.  However, those who worked as houseslaves had a better life and were a little more hesitant to leave the comforts of certain food and shelter.  Some of them, in fact, let themselves remain in slavery for those "comforts" ... and in Texas, it was actually two years after the Emmancipation Proclamation that word of their freedom reached slaves there.  They even celebrate a different freedom day (Juneteenth - there's your history lesson for the day!) because of the delay.  They had been free for two years and never knew it.  Aren't we so much the same.  Some, coming to know their new freedom in Christ take it and run ... so glad to be out from under addictions or pressures or relationships that were destroying their lives.  Others of us CHOOSE to stay chained to something Christ doesn't intend us to be shackled with ... but we've grown comfortable there and are afraid to turn it loose.  Still others have yet to discover that freedom is theirs for the taking. 

I still have a ways to go to live in the freedom Christ intends.  But I am choosing to join William Wallace in proclaiming FRRREEEEEEEEEDOMMMMMMMMMMMM!!  What about you??