I am free.

This past year I was really struggling with being happy. We had just moved to another state before my high school graduation, I didn't know anybody, I was starting online college, and... I still didn't know anybody. I am not a person who does well underneath stress, and there was a large amount of it going around this year. But I wasn't happy because I thought the grass could be greener. There had to be something better. If only this changed...or if only I had {whatever}....then I would be happy.

I just became even more unhappy. Looking back, I see how prideful I was, thinking that I deserved something more because I was someone "special." I wanted to be so much more, but I was the only one holding myself back from doing any of it. I felt that my situation/surroundings were my cage, and that my freedom was limited. It wasn't until recently that I realized it was in my own heart that I was restricted.

As the great St. Augustine once said, "You {freedom} were within me, and I was outside myself, and sought you outside myself!" This was me. I had all the freedom I could ever want inside of me, but I was looking for it elsewhere, because I misunderstood that freedom doesn't come in physical form, but inside your heart. As long as our sense of having greater or less freedom depends on outward circumstances, it means that we are not yet truly free.

I felt that my freedom was being restricted by my circumstances, by society, and by people and that the only way to be free was to get rid of those restrictions. Sure, there are some cases when it is necessary to rid yourself of some things in your life, but I didn't want any of it. I wasn't content with anything...including myself. I hated life because it wasn't going the way I wanted it to, and I was missing out on experiencing the freedom inside myself that I longed for! Being free means consenting to what we did not choose because one cannot become truly free unless one accepts not always being free.

Right now I am reading a fantastic book by Jacques Philippe called "Interior Freedom." Get it. Read it. It will change your life.


Here is a paragraph from the book on freedom:


"To achieve true interior freedom we must train ourselves to accept, peacefully and willingly, plenty of things that seem to contradict our freedom. This means consenting to our personal limitations, our weaknesses, our powerlessness, this or that situation that life imposes on us, and so on. We find it difficult to do this, because we feel a natural revulsion for situations we cannot control. But the fact is that the situations that really makes us grow are precisely those we do not control." 


If we keep looking for something better in life, we will never be satisfied with anything we have. We will never be truly happy. We will never be ready to take that first step toward change. We will never be able to love.

God is doing amazing things in my life. I am the happiest I have ever been. My situation is still the same, but am learning day-by-day that my happiness and freedom are not determined by the circumstances, but by how I deal with them.

No matter what happens, no matter what comes my way, no matter what people think.
No.matter.what.
I can have freedom.
It's simply up to me to open the cage.