Last year my word was presence.
If I’m honest I forgot this was my word for 2016 and yet it still was daily integrated in my life. It became a part of my year to really and truly be present.
freedom.
That is what I’ve wanted to focus on for 2017.
July is here and I’ve been finding this balance between wrestling and resting within this word.
To be free….to release control, to let the chains fall, to roam wide open, to question, to challenge, to find comfort.
I feel like this word kind of chose me this year.
As I walk through the months leading up into 2017 I can count time after time where the Lord began to break down all of my comfort zones to just get to a still and quiet place.
Yet I never found rest in that place until after I got married, moved, and found my days being quiet and still.
It’s so weird to say that upheaval and chaos and the unknown can bring a stillness and a freedom like I’ve never experienced; and yet it’s true.
I never thought I would be happy in any place other than Charleston, SC…and here I am having lived in Maine and now in Connecticut and enjoying the new surroundings. I truly chained myself to the idea of only knowing small hills of joy instead of experiencing huge mountains of hope. I wasn’t even aware that I had limited myself or was even locked into chains, and here I am….free.
I’m really trying to figure out the best way to put all of these thoughts and emotions into one post and how freedom has been so integral in my growth so far this year…and how it has truly transformed my life.
Freedom to me is first found in Jesus Christ.
In knowing that He is my savior and friend, my confidant and love, my healer and truth teller, that He is the touch point of my life and the lover of my soul. When I really, really rest in that knowledge everything else begins to fall into place.
I find freedom in quiet moments at home snuggling with my husband. I find freedom in getting out of my comfort zone and meeting new people and seeing new places. I find freedom in letting the fears my heart has fall away and embrace the adventure instead of the fear.
Listen y’all. Leaving my home of 28 years was one of the hardest things I’ve had to do in a long time. I left my brother, my family, my friends, my stuff, and the city that holds so many memories; I left the same city that my parents flourished in and passed away in – I was so incredibly fearful, and you want to know what happened? I became free.
I now know that I can face whatever.
I can move, I can leave, I can flourish, I can save and purge and make friends and loose them. I can choose to sit inside and be afraid of what is around me or I can embrace the day as the Lord has laid it out and just seek out the good and the exciting and the challenging.
Freedom comes with challenge.
You won’t really know true freedom until you walk through, let go of, or face some barriers that are up in your life.
I am still letting go of things and pushing against barriers; I’m still learning all about freedom and all the ways it touches my life and how many areas of my heart are still in chains. So we’re just over that half point and man, It feels good to finally tell y’all what I’ve been processing on the back end!
