That's how it was for me as a child. It was all about the explosive, sparkly, loud things that meant we were free, even though you could only legally buy them around July 4th and Christmas. I always thought that we should be able to have fireworks year round if they were a symbol of and a way to celebrate our freedom. Hey, I was a kid, and fireworks don't mean nearly as much to me today. In fact, I can take them or leave them, and usually leave them unless there are nieces and nephews involved. Perhaps one day I'll experience the joy through my grandson's eyes. But for now, I can think of several ways I would much rather spend the money that fireworks would cost me. As for simply going to a display, as many will do this evening sometime shortly after dark, its a thought. But for me, it's got to be really good and worth it, because I don't do crowds really well anymore, and I haven't since prison.
And that's what's been on my mind quite a bit since yesterday. This roundabout rabbit trail that took me through my youthful idea of freedom. Freedom for me was fireworks. Freedom was crowds and rock and roll and music festivals and parties. It was rowdy revelry full of chaos, confusion and chemicals. Places and situations full of rebellion and so crowded and loud that you couldn't hear yourself think but where the sheer number of people in the space made sure you were almost alone and anonymous.
That may sound strange, but I think it was more common than we might think. It's a regular theme in teen comedies. The parents are gone or summer is here. We're free. Let's party! Well, what if I don't want to party? What it crowds make me nervous and extreme noise sends me into panic? I think I want to stay home and read. No, you can't do that! You're free! You have to to come party!! But if I'm free shouldn't I be able to choose to not party? But...
There was so much bondage in even my ideas of freedom. It wasn't freedom. Freedom meant rebellion, not the freedom to choose. I couldn't choose right, because that would mean doing what God, parents, authority wanted me to do, and if I was doing what authority wanted, I wasn't free, right? But if I was doing only the opposite, what they wanted still controlled my actions, and that was before taking into consideration the pressure to conform to the rebellion of my friends who were caught up in the bondage of the same lie.
So before long the very things that were supposed to mean, represent, and show that I was free, drinking, drugging, sex and such, were ironically the greatest areas of slavery and bondage in my life. I wasn't free. I was a miserable hostage, and everything people claimed showed me to be free just made it worse and enhanced my chains. So what do you do when you're representation of freedom is enslaving and killing you? First we need to change our definition. Freedom isn't getting to do anything you want, whenever you want. That actually leads to slavery to self, narcissistic selfishness and self centeredness. Freedom is having the ability, the choice, to say no. Today I can say no to the things that the carnal mind says would be free and fun but my spirit knows only bring destruction and death to my life. There was a time when I wasn't free because I didn't really have a choice. Sooner or later the response would always be yes to sin, yes to self, yes to escapism, yes to pressure, yes to that which would try to kill me.
Freedom is having a choice, but staying free involves making the right choice. No, I'm not talking about resisting temptation and saying no to sin. I'm not talking about being good and doing right instead of doing wrong. Those are byproducts, results that come later. If you try to do them first and yourself, you'll only enter into a different kind of slavery. To stay free, you have to surrender self, die to live. The right choice, the only one that makes us free and keeps us free, that gives us a choice, regardless of geographic location and political position, regardless of which side of prison bars we may reside on, regardless of what the rest of the world does and says, is responding to the call to enter into relationship with our Creator. Then and only then do we have true freedom, the ability to choose to do right or wrong, good or evil, to choose love for God and others or selfishness. Before we had knowledge of these things without the power to choose love and right.
We're still not totally free all the time. There will always be sin and selfishness as and long as and as far as the curse is found. But one day all memory of the curse will be gone, and with it all our chains, our misery, sorrow and sickness will be gone with it. Until then, we must continue to struggle with and for freedom by choosing relationship over selfishness as often as we can, and we must rely on the grace of God, the power He gives us to do what we can't do on our own, in order to do that. Jesus paid for our freedom with His blood and death, and we stay free as we choose to say no to self and yes to love, which is only possible by God's power and Spirit.
Perhaps this seems to make sense (I hope so), but doesn't seem to go with the introduction about freedom, symbols and fireworks. I had these representations in life that were supposed to mean I was free, but in fact were chains for me. I had to find a way to be truly free. But the reason I was meditating on that in the first place was because of that question, what do you do when what is supposed to mean and show you're free just makes you miserable and fills you with fear? And that came to me because of the fireworks association with our freedom.
No, fireworks don't scare me or make me miserable. I still enjoy them. But there are soldiers all across the country that are dreading sunset today. Because they know that once the sun goes down the explosions will go up, and the very things that are supposed to represent freedom and joy are only mental and emotional time machines taking them unwillingly back to the battles and wars and sights and sounds of the price they paid for our freedom. For many a soldier, fireworks are the opposite of fun and freedom. They are trapped in fight or flight mode on the day of our freedom celebrations. It was remembering this and thinking about it that led to how my own ideas of what it meant to be free were actually the opposite. So, as a practice in denying self and loving others, I would encourage you, Dear Reader, to join me in praying for soldiers with PTSD today and this evening. We can, if we are free in Him, choose not to get totally and completely lost in self and our own feelings and activities, and consider others and what they are going through and intercede in prayer on their behalf.
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