Peace. Finally. Freedom.

Ok, here I sit, on a Monday night, in my living room after work. Is today a special day? No. Do I have special plans? No. So what’s different about this Monday from any other Monday? The answer: PEACE. I have peace in my spirit on this Monday night. I don’t have the desire to jump up and make something happen. I don’t have the need to be entertained or to entertain. I don’t have the need to call everyone I know to vent. I don’t have the need to save someone today. I don’t have the need to eat everything in the refrigerator and then head to the closest fast-food establishment and order the worst thing on the menu. I don’t need to cry, or scream, or laugh, or sing, or anything. I am still. “Be still and know that I am God.” (Psalm 46:10) Yes, as I sit here, this Monday night, on my sofa, I can just be still. The old anxiety, the nervous energy that once caused me to pinball from activity to activity so that I didn’t drown in the all-consuming thoughts in my head is now at rest. Do I still have moments when the anxiety returns? ABSOLUTELY! It never completely goes away. The last two weeks, for example, were like a return to my not-so-distant past wherein every moment must be filed with some important activity. I had things that required my attention. Talk about self-imposed pressure!

To truly appreciate the profundity of this peace, you would have to know that I lived my entire life B.C. like I lived the last two weeks. And yes, in this instance, B.C. stands for “Before Christ.” My life was an avalanche of needs; the needs of others. I spent so much time caring about the needs of others; that I never stopped to examine my own needs. Gee, I sound like Mother Theresa here. No, I was NOT Mother Theresa; far from it, actually. You see, my identity was so wrapped up in meeting what I perceived the needs of others to be, and how meeting those needs reflected on who I was; that I never really cared for myself, for my true needs, or knew who I was outside of meeting the needs of others. I thought that by helping others I was a better person. Hardly. I just lamented the fact that I had to care for everyone, and that no one cared for me. By using phrases like, “I’m the only adult around here.” And, “everyone who was ever supposed to love me left me” I encased my heart in a stone prison. It’s a case of self-actualization. I thought it was this way, so it was this way. Over time, I took on the adult role in my relationships; with family and friends. I pushed people away who might have otherwise cared for me. I isolated myself and played the martyr. Was all of this some intentional plea for attention? No, I truly had no idea I was doing it. I had no idea that I was distracting myself with the needs of others so I wouldn’t focus on my own hurt.

No idea, until I had a “come to Jesus” moment, literally. I began attending church with a former co-worker in an attempt to get her off of my back, so to speak, after much persistence on her part. I attended several services, and knew there was something different about this church. One Wednesday evening, I was sitting with a friend of hers whom I didn’t know all that well, and we had a guest speaker, who spoke on the Father’s Love. That was a foreign concept to me. I knew God loved me, but I had never thought of God as my Father before. I knew He was Jesus’ Father, and the Father of Creation, but not my personal Father. You see, my grandparents raised me and my grandfather was as close to a dad as I had ever really known and he had just passed away two months before. I was lost. He began to speak of how God adopts us into His home, and how we become joint heirs with Jesus of the kingdom. The altar call came, and though I felt that I was already saved, I knew I needed to go up and re-dedicate myself, as it were, to my Creator; whom I now KNEW was my Father. My new friend and I sat and talked afterward and she began to pour her heart out to me about her relationship with her father and I was so profoundly touched. I so connected with this person whom I barely knew, on a level that was not of flesh or bone, but of the Spirit. I knew that though our experiences were not identical, they had the same foundation. We felt alone. We felt abandoned. We felt that those who were supposed to care for us had not lived up to their obligation. But there was hope there. The hope that comes from knowing that there is One who will never leave us nor forsake us.(Hebrews 13:05) There is One who is all things to us. That was the beginning of my peace.

From that day on, I knew I would never be the same. I knew that things MUST change; it was a breaking in my spirit; in my heart. The stone prison began to crumble, and in that connection with this relative stranger, I knew my life had truly begun. I knew that all things would be made new; that I was reborn. I had a deep desire to change behaviors and situations in my life that were not working. Over the course of the next two years, I would become who I am today; still flawed and imperfect; but peaceful. The needs are almost all but gone now. When they resurface, the turnaround time between when I slip back into that old comfortable prison and when I again break out into freedom gets shorter and shorter. The newest record is two weeks.

That’s right; it was two weeks ago on Friday that I began to search for ways to throw my freedom away. You see, I now know that the freedom is mine to lose. I no longer have to search for freedom with all my might, or hold on to it by the skin of my teeth. In order to shake that freedom, I have to try to get rid of it. Why would one do that? Because in the bondage, I felt some level of control. When I feel that I am out of control, I tend to grasp at those straws, and focus on the things I can fix, the needs to be met. I threw myself into the volunteer project I was working on; coming to the rescue as always while ignoring spiritual obligations. I ministered to the spiritual needs on my new beau; all the while sacrificing a few of my own morals along the way. I ran to the aid of a family member in financial and emotional crisis; and served only to get myself further in debt both monetarily and emotionally. I felt like I was drowning again. Why was all of this happening to me? Why was I being punished? Why can’t I have a normal life? Don’t I deserve that? Haven’t I earned that with my sacrifices of the past two years? A voice said, “ENOUGH.” Enough self-pity and self-loathing. Enough martyrdom. Come to Jesus! No, really! Where was my peace in all of this? Nowhere to be found. Why? Because Jesus wasn’t in it.

Friday night we had a prayer and worship service at church. I wanted to be anywhere but there; so I knew I must go. That’s how it works for me. About an hour and a half in, the pastor read Jude 1:16 which spoke of grumblers and complainers who do so because they are focused on their own will and not that of God. The message to me was that I had been grumbling because I was following my own path, and to no surprise, nothing was working out the way I had planned. I was yet again in a prison of my own design. I took on these tasks instead of giving them to the Lord, and look what a mess I had made! Where was my peace? Dashed. I was left cold and alone. And then the light of this scripture shone on me, and I felt this wave of peace, joy, hope, and comfort wash over me. I knew it would now be okay. I could again accept my freedom; freely given by my Savior who had paid a price on the cross I can never fathom. All of this because my Father in Heaven loves me, and all of us, enough to allow His only Son to die on the cross as a blood offering for each one of my sins (Romans 5:1-11); for each time that I said “mine”; for each time that I tried to meet the needs of others; for each time that I cried out in loneliness. He was there to set me free and grant me the peace that surpasses all understanding (Philippians 4:7). How could I have even thought of my sacrifices in light of this? I have sacrificed nothing and gained everything! I only had to let go. Strange how all the time I thought I was free following my path I was imprisoned, and all the time the world would say I was imprisoned by faith I was free.

So, here I sit; still and at peace. Peace. Finally. Freedom.