Free And Easy

Free and Easy

As the seconds turned into minutes, I could feel my anxiety rising. Why would a giant truck drive down a barely passable residential street overhung by branches, with no room to spare on either side? And why did this one, now hopelessly jammed between branches and pavement, have to attempt such an ill-advised maneuver in front of me? I was sandwiched in, blocked ahead and behind, and not happy about it.

If I didn’t know it before, I certainly knew it then: I don’t like being constrained or stuck. I’m the person who drives her own car so she can leave the party when she’s ready to go. Who has (thanks be to God!) the sort of job that allows her to work on Saturday instead of Tuesday if that’s what seems best. I rarely have nightmares, but if I do, they almost always involve being trapped somewhere and unable to flee.

Sometimes I get confused about freedom, though. I think it’s about control. But it’s not. It’s about surrender. About self-forgetfulness. About maintaining keen focus on a task, on others, on God. I am never more trapped than when I am bobbing and flailing in a sea of me. It’s dark there. And deep. And I am never freer than when I lose myself in creating or listening or teaching or loving—when all my energy is aimed elsewhere.

Full of worry, focused on my own pain, anxious to have my own needs met, I live in an ever-tightening vise. But focused on others, I can give myself as an offering of love on one or a hundred small altars, anywhere, anytime.

Lilies bloom without coercion. Sparrows fly without Zoloft. The sunrise arrives on time—not a minute too late or too soon—whether I watch for it fitfully or go to sleep. Consider these, Jesus said, and find comfort.

The free and unencumbered life I long for I cannot get by striving, holding, manipulating, or micromanaging. Only by surrendering my own interests, ego, and anxiety again and again and again will I ever be unstuck. Whomever the Son sets free is free indeed.

If you grasp and cling to life on your terms, you’ll lose it, but if you let that life go, you’ll get life on God’s terms.

Luke 17:33, MSG