I want to feel free and confident – not the kind of confident that comes with lots of people telling you how awesome you are, or that you’re really funny, or that you should write a book or become a counselor. Rather, the confidence that comes with a steadfast faith in the Giver of your identity. And this confidence is hard to come by for me because I look for my identity in all the wrong things. Like other people. Because, at the end of the day, one of my greatest desires is for people to know me. Really know me. Know me and love me in such an impossible way that, after they’ve failed me a few/lot of times, I remember again that I really just want them to be Jesus.
I want Jesus in all the people from whom I seek attention and affirmation. I want perfect pursuit. Perfect, servant-hearted love. The kind that makes me feel safe, like I’m not an annoying toddler who keeps spilling her milk or making a mess of the pretty table arrangement or being too loud when important things are happening. I want Jesus in someone to look at me in my mess, pick me up, and wrap me up in their arms, laughing at how cute I am just because I’m alive. And I want Jesus in someone to hold me close against their chest and hum soothing melodies and sing songs over me. And I want, well, Him to speak life over my life and hold me in His arms and stroke my hair until I fall asleep. Secure, blissful, peaceful rest.
I recently started working in a psychiatric hospital/residential treatment center. I work in one of the children’s units, where kids enter in a state of crisis. Most of them have some kind of abusive background, and many are self-harming and suicidal. In order to protect the kids and/or ourselves from various forms of danger, we sometimes have to put them in therapeutic holds. One of my coworkers calls it “wrapping them up,” this action of restraining their arms behind their backs and seating them on the ground until they can calm down, process, and remember that there are coping skills that don’t involve stabbing their peers with pencils or punching door handles. And once we feel certain that the child’s response to the situation will look different and better than before, we communicate that it’s time to slowly get up, verbally process through what happened, and return to the normal day’s activities.
When I think about the concept of freedom, all of these pictures feel vaguely familiar, like I’ve been in each of them at one point or another. And it all makes me wonder if freedom comes in different forms. It’s a woman dancing in a field without limits or a baby sleeping in a secure embrace or a kid who took freedom too far and needs to be redirected to a better expression of it – for her good. And I wonder if freedom is sometimes accessing the liberty of saying yes but also embracing the maturity in saying no.
Rob Bell said something like that in Velvet Elvis, writing that “Freedom is not having everything we crave, it’s being able to go without the things we crave and being OK with it.”
That makes sense to me, because it tells me that when I’m free, I’m not a slave to anything.
I stumbled upon a verse awhile back that paints the perfect Scripture picture of my fantasy. Psalm 119:45 in the ESV says, “and I shall walk in a wide place, for I have sought your precepts.” In the NIV, it states, “I will walk about in freedom.”
I feel like I’ve been drifting around pretty aimlessly these past couple of months. It makes me tired. Tired of paving my own road to freedom and sucking at it.
It’s kind of ironic to me that pursuing holy boundaries – following the steps of the Maker – would lead to the real thing, the freedom that is pure and good and confident and safe. Something about denying yourself and taking up your cross, right? And even though I still mostly get it, the rebellious child in me wants to buck against authority and do what I want.
Or get picked up and rocked to sleep.
When I awake, I will see you face to face and be satisfied. Psalm 17:15
