Whenever there’s a coincidence in my life, I believe that it is God trying to tell me something. When I was in college, every first-year student had to take a course in composition that has a theme. Every group had a different theme. My group’s theme was freedom and responsibility. A few years later, I would have a numerology reading that would tell me that the energies that I was here to work on in my lifetime were freedom and discipline. Then, I would discover that my mom severely restricted my freedom when I was young and even into my young adulthood. In many ways, she tried her best to keep me an emotional and mental prisoner under her control without any freedom of my own. I would feel like a failure as a human being because I wasn’t able to be that model prisoner that she wanted me to be.
My entire life has revolved around the idea of freedom and control. I hear people on TV and the news talking about it all the time. Sometimes it makes me angry and other times it makes me want to laugh. Most of the time, I just want to ignore it because they really don’t understand what freedom really means. Sometimes, I think the only people who can really understand are the people who have been imprisoned, the ones who have been through war, and the ones who have suffered from mental disorders. They know what it really means to have their freedom restricted. They know how it affects a person mentally and emotionally.
I can’t imagine the horrors that some people have gone through. I know that after what I have been through, I couldn’t handle it. I’d get through it, but I would fall apart. I’d implode and while I retreated inside myself, I would give myself to God. He would have to guide me out of the darkness.
I wonder why my life has revolved around freedom. What has God been trying to tell me over and over again? I think maybe it is something simple, but hard to put into practice. Surrender. I can write all the time about giving up my life and worries to God, but I have to be able to surrender in every way to God.
During my lifetime, I was programed, taught, brainwashed, or whatever else you call it to believe that by lying, control, manipulation or any other means I could control my life and make it be what I wanted it to be. As I have gotten older, I have learned that it is a lie, an illusion, and a sin. My reality is what I shape it because of my belief in God. It can be whatever I believe through love not through lies and manipulation. When I approach situations, I sit feel paranoid and still want to protect myself. I still want to try to control things. I want to learn to be more open and to find a better way to live. I want to be able to give my life to God, to know what I can control, what I can’t, and have the wisdom to leave it up to God. I’m trying every day to work on it, but I have a long way to go. Tonight, I ask God for patience, love, and understanding. I had so many years of being taught such awful lessons and I am only now realizing that I need to unlearn those lessons. I need to find a new way to think. It is only when I release myself from the bonds of those old ways will I really find the freedom that I have been searching for my entire life.
My faith saved me. May God’s peace reside in all of our hearts.
