Free me from myself

We all live our lives, sometimes subject to perceptions, opinions and words of other people. We build our world in a box of what humanity says they think about us. Living lives of conscious and unconscious fear, we tend to lose ourselves. From this point on we take on someone else's identity and we become a modified version of someone else. 

Well I have just described myself in the above paragraph... 

In last week someone I highly esteem wanted to give me a hand hug. In this moment, I was so aware of the people around me that when I had responded to the handhug, I pulled away almost immediately. I enjoyed the handhug, my soul was in it! But because of the fear of what others might perceive in their minds, I pulled away. I was so reminded in that moment, that I still needed to be set free from myself. 

For all my life the fear of man has shaped my world. I would not say certain things because of who is in the crowd around me, sometimes I would walk a different and longer route because I want to avoid a person or group of people and on and on the list goes. I would make many decisions based on the fear of man. 

In primary school the boys used to call me gay, because I was less masculine than most of them. In high school the guys would do the same and sometimes touch inappropriately. As I find myself in my adult years, the Lord basically took the cap off to who I was. He helped me and is helping me make peace with the way I love, the way I do life and the way I express myself. But the journey continues... In the words of Steffany Gretzinger, "I am continually being set free and I am under a lot of blessing to be myself". I do know that this next part of the journey is intentionally allowing Daddy God to continually set me free. 

I always believed I was vulnerable, but vulnerability is something that many of us do not like. It is allowing another in to a place of influence to the deepest places of our soul. We were never meant to live with walls, rather with open hearts and open conversation. The one thing I was pursuing in people, I was not always giving. How does one suddenly become honest with yourself if you denied yourself for so long? 

"Stand fast therefore in the liberty by which Christ has made us free, and do not be entangled again with a yoke of bondage." -Galatians 5:1

What does freedom look like? 

It looks like no boxes. It overflows into every area of life. 

Somehow I feel like everyone has played a part in containing someone else's freedom. We see this in society, in community and even the church. We have been held back, because it was too unorthodox, it was too wild. But unorthodox and wild compared to what? Compared to another, and that is where the problem starts. Comparison. It is the enemy to discovery of self. 

The other day one of my sisters said she misses me, and in that moment I could feel her heart. I was so sad as I turned around to wave at her after receiving an affectionate hug. In that moment I almost cried, but I immediately killed the moment because crying was too vulnerable at that moment. Immediately, the Holy Spirit asked me, so why do you stop allowing yourself to embrace this moment? 

I remember growing up, that one was not supposed to be too loud or to be too emotional. You were quieted, you were told not to do so. It feels as if when we walk someone had placed barriers for us to walk like another that went before us, but the injustice done to us has made them lose out on true value and beauty that is waiting to shine within us. This caused us to apologise for who we were. If we laughed too loud, we apologised. If we cried when we felt emotion, we stopped and apologised. If we wanted to place our hand on someone's head or body, we apologised because all touching we knew were perverted. If we looked too long to appreciate beauty, we apologised. We lived our lives bound, for we have formed theories in our world that were never ours in the first place. 

Moving from me to you, I see that you are a slave too. From you to society you will see the same thing. But we are seeking for a freedom. This is why Christ has set us free, for freedom! 

What would life look like if we were free from ourselves and man's opinions? We would look like children... 

I want to be free in the simple things. I want to be free in everything. When I sit, I want to feel free to sit the way I want to sit. When I talk, I want to feel free to share what's on my heart. I want to be free in who I am and not a copy of someone else. 

I am a world within a world. There is just so much we still need to discover, but as we encounter freedom, we will discover the true us. 

Free me from myself and let me go to fly high, Jesus. 

Rowyn Coetzee

Free me from myself