Freedom

Freedom is the second of my life themes. Why? Well, much like is the case with courage, I'm not entirely sure. But please stick with me while I try to put it into a countable number of words.

The very country I live in was founded on principles such as freedom and equality. And though it took several hundred years for those principles to truly mean anything (slaves and women, anyone?), they are still the things that the United States is known for. That's why so many people have tried so hard to get here. That's why I'm proud to say I am affiliated with this place. But freedom isn't just a big deal to me because I dwell in a place which attempts to uphold it. There's something deeper still.

If you've been following me for a while, you know about how I am an extremely restless person. I can't stay confined to one place for too long or I start to go crazy. I'm like a bird. If I'm contained in any sort of cage for too long, I lose my song. Why this is, I'm not entirely sure. I like to think that I am fairly content with my surroundings. But just recently I've realized that nothing could be farther from the truth. Colorado has become my cage. The mountains make me feel small and insignificant and trapped. I'm only sixteen, and yet I feel as though I am losing so many years of freedom by being stuck somewhere. It's not like I have a choice. My parents still have legal custody and I'm still in high school.

And for those reasons, my insatiable wanderlust must, for a while longer, remain unquenched.

You also probably know about my fascination with running away. I've come so very close to escaping, so close that I could taste it. So close that I thought my heart was going to pound out of my chest and all my senses began to tingle. For some reason, I feel like running away, even just for a few hours, would somehow fill that need to be free. But for some other reason, I've never done it. And I don't know why. I think a lot of it has to do with my responsibilities. I can't miss school. I can't inspire that kind of negative influence on my siblings. I can't quit life to fill a void that doesn't even make any sense. I put it off and promise myself that someday, some glorious day, I'm going to do it. Just strictly because I can.

I've always been one for pushing boundaries. Even gravity frustrates me. As a child, I had myself thoroughly convinced that I could fly, I just didn't know how yet. I think, somewhere inside, that I still believe that. I never stopped believing it. I just forgot that it's what I believed. I have no greater dream in life than to fly. I want to see the world from a whole new perspective and seize hold of my own destiny and chart my own course in a dimension where nothing and no one can catch me or tell me to stop. If I was a bird, I would escape and never look back.

But I am not a bird, Friends.

I am a mortal, and hence, condemned to walk wherever I go and watch the birds with an intense longing that I could join them.

But see, I am still free. Though I cannot fly. Though I am trapped in the shadow of the Rockies. Though I have never worked up the courage to run away. I have been given a Gift. And I think Sunday was an appropriate day to reflect on that Gift. It is the gift of freedom, hand-wrapped by Papa and presented to me in the form of a helpless infant. The Designer of the universe, the Painter of the sunsets, the Hanger of the stars, the One Who could crush me like a grape if He ever got tired of my whining confined Himself to human form just so I could have my freedom. And there is no love song or waltz or hand-painted flower that could even come close to rivaling that Gift in beauty. He loves me enough to die for my freedom.

And so I love Him enough to obey, even when He tells me to stay home.