But first I want to share with whomever reads this blog when I post it to Facebook a little of what I heard from other people. Keep in mind that we are from all walks of life, varying ages, no commonality other than we are all going through this day without drinking or taking a drug. Wisdom, in that environment, can come from a person who would qualify for "least likely to succeed" in the high school year book.
A gentleman I have never met showed up today and talked of freedom. He spent time in prison. He said freedom was being able to have cold orange juice in the morning. He went on to say that he had always wanted a home to call his on and he finally achieved that goal and had been living in that house in Florida believing he had found freedom. But the house became a rock around his neck because of taxes and insurance and he began to see the house as a prison. Someone, through a long set of circumstances, asked him if he would like to live in a house they have here in North Carolina and he said he did not think twice. Now he is living here with a rent he can easily afford and has his stuff in Florida but doesn't know if he wants to go and get it. He said he now knows freedom and he knows that he is free to drink or not to drink, free to live here or in Florida, free to ruin his life or to learn to live a new way and he is happy. Very, very happy.
Another man shared that when he used the information we provide in our group he was able to admit that he had compulsions he could not control and that he could not control them by himself so he hooked up with us and life has become kinder and gentler. He said he is learning to be free of self-reliance and free of doubt. I have seen this man from time to time and I remember when he was full of anger and resentments. It is clear to me that he knows a new freedom.
Another person spoke of being free of the need for justification. and being free to love God.
Each person spoke of having been in bondage to their own selves and of how they use to believe that freedom was doing exactly what they wanted to do when they wanted to do it. They said they were wrong and now they have a freedom that is real and for which they are grateful.
I shared that I spent years self-obsessed and controlled by bondage to self. I had my nose in my navel, figuratively speaking, and could not and would not see life from any other perspective. I, too, thought freedom meant doing what I darn well pleased without boundaries. I shared that now I see committed marriage as freedom and I see living as a responsible and contributing member of society as freedom and care giving of my husband as freedom. I am choosing of my own free will to live the way I live today and I am no longer controlled or bound by the burden of my self. Self-will run riot. A prison with no bars and with no jail keeper yet it held me as tightly as any prison bars with guards could have held me.
It is a puzzle how choices that now require more of me and often confine me feel like complete freedom. I guess it is because I am choosing out of a sober mind and out of a mind surrendered to God. Everything around me is open and full of hope. And, yes, like my friends, I can go and get back my old ways anytime I want to do it. I do not have the desire for those ways. I am free and I am happy in that freedom.
God brought me to this point and He will continue to pave the path of my life in Him. I will often wonder if anything is going to work out and I will find out, as long as I leave myself free to hear Him speak, that everything is going to work out and in ways that I cannot think or imagine.
I’m using this freedom language because it’s easy to picture. You can readily recall, can’t you, how at one time the more you did just what you felt like doing—not caring about others, not caring about God—the worse your life became and the less freedom you had? And how much different is it now as you live in God’s freedom, your lives healed and expansive in holiness.
Romans 6:19 (The Message Bible)
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