So, it’s Independence Day, and I have been thinking about the word “freedom” and its implications.  Of course, if there is freedom, then there must have been bondage.  Not necessarily the physical kind, where there were literal chains or incarceration.  We can experience bondage in many other forms; bondage might be in the form of carrying burdens from our past, pride, stubbornness, job, health insurance, society, anxiety, depression, spiritual misinformation . . . the list is endless, really.  So, in one of my all-too-frequent self-exploratory moments, I begin to wonder which of those are most oppressive for me, personally?

You would not have to poll very many people to come up with an overwhelming majority vote in the following categories for me:

• stubbornness
• anxiety
• pride

(after watching this video, you can see parts 2 & 3 direct from youtube)

What were those people thinking?  Were they?  Maybe this was the first evidence of pride in the Bible.  Eve thought herself above God.  Adam allowed her to act upon that prideful, destructive impulse to just check it out.  My goodness.  Was Adam fulfilling his role as a legitimate leader for his wife?  I say “no.”  Certainly, in contemporary times, not one of us has had such perfection under our dominion as had Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden; and certainly, of all the choices we have to make on a daily basis, we would probably never liken them to such stark opposites as the Garden vs. the Curse.

But isn’t that really what we are faced with every day?  Each time that we rise up in hurtful anger in response to something said or done to us . . . each time that we give in to gluttony instead of remembering and acting as if our body is the temple of God . . . each time that the words that come forth from our mouths as weapons, swords, knives instead of as a soothing balm that reflects the love of God.  I could link each one of these choices in this list to a photograph of me.  Sure, there are days when I make the better choice, the more godly choice, but there are likely many more days, if we’re counting, when I would certainly like to get the ultimate “do-over.”

What a wonderful world we could live in if we sought with all our hearts, minds, bodies and souls to live out our lives earnestly seeking to be women and men (especially in our families) that God formed us to be?  Thus begins the struggle.  My guess is that we allow it to be more of a struggle than it has to be.  I do.  How about you?