.Life, Love and the Pursuit of Liberty.

I crave freedom.

Whatever its form: whether it be an open road, an afternoon without plans, a blank canvas, a friend I trust completely, or that incomparable feeling of truly being who I am... I long for it.

My soul yearns for freedom. It aches for it. Some days I have the feeling of being locked in a small, windowless room and other days it can be as bad as the feeling of being underwater and not able to reach the surface. Suffocation unnerves me. The idea of being trapped or confined causes my shoulders to tense and my pulse to quicken.


There are days however when the lid is lifted off the box, when I take in deep gulps of air, when I spread my arms and feel nothing wrenching them back. Those are the days I'm alive.

It used to be that the days I felt trapped outnumbered the days I felt free... for every one day, hour, or moment of freedom there would be a seemingly eternal stretch of time where I was reaching, clawing, desperate to be released from whatever was holding me captive.

Life is different now. There are now long, timeless stretches of liberty, interrupted by moments of constriction.

I've searched for this freedom all my life... even as a child I remember feeling the ache, the need, for a life without boundaries. A child though, can explore their world in search for that freedom and still be kept safe within the care and protective fence of their parents and family. It is quite a different story when that child, now grown, opens the gate and moves out beyond the fence and still has the ache pressing in on her soul.

My insatiable drive to do more, go more, see more, know more... to experience firsts, to continually add to the list of experiences, to push at supposed boundaries until they either gave way or proved solid (most always giving way)... this drive, this desperation... this was my undoing.

As a Christian suffering from lack of grace (and those who have experienced it know the condition I was in), I tried to dutifully separate myself from this part of me. I tried to silence it, beating it out of my inner being with as much force as one can muster when the object of such brutal attacks is one's self. I tried to be what I thought I was supposed to be, do what I thought I was supposed to do. Go where I should go. Say what I should say. Suffer as I should suffer.

Ignore the ache, it will go away.
Better yourself, you're worth nothing this way.
Silence the cries, the sobs will fade.
Better yourself, you're worth nothing this way.
This is not you, because it is wrong to ache.
Better yourself, you're worth nothing this way.


Oh the smooth, silky, poisonous lies we swallow.

I beat myself until I could no longer stand the pain. I got up off my knees, turned around... and ran.

I ran until I could run no longer. And when I stopped running, hands on my knees, gasping for breath, my ravaged being heard a gentle whisper.

Dear heart.... I desire you to be free from the bondage to corruption and to obtain freedom . I know that all of creation, and even your heart, has been groaning under the weight of it (Romans 8:20-22). Where My Spirit is there is freedom (II Cor. 3:12). It is for freedom that I set you free! Don't let yourself become a slave again (Galatians 5:1). You were called to freedom, use it in the right way (Galatians 5:13). Live as one who is free (I Peter 2:16). That is the reason I came, to proclaim liberty and to set free those who are oppressed (Luke 4:18). Live as one under the perfect law - that is the Law of Liberty (James 1:25). So Stephanie, live, breathe, speak and act as one who lives under this law (James 2:12).

Called. I was called to freedom.

People, especially those fluent in Christianese, often ask and wonder about a person's calling.

I have mine.

Called to freedom. And by the very One who I turned and ran from in search of it. For almost 23 years now I have searched for freedom. For almost 23 years now I have heard of Jesus Christ. And yet it has only been in the past 2 years that I began to understand the correlation between the two.

I am now free, and yet I live in a culture where this freedom is frowned upon and slavery is fought for and struggled to attain at any cost. There is a law that our world operates under, the law of corruption, oppression, sin and death. And yet, just as there is the Law of Gravity but the Law of Lift supersedes it, the Law of Liberty, the perfect law, supersedes the Law of Death.

That desire for freedom, the ache I tried so desperately to scourge from the depths of my being, that longing is GOOD. It is right.

What freedom there is in realizing that.