I Am Free

                         

Katie told me something once that I have yet to forget and I don't know if I ever will. After my first summer JCing Katie and I sat outside the Ankeny Starbucks for four hours as I told every detail about my summer. She made me call Ellen and be encouraging. We discussed prayer. We laughed at funny camper stories. It was a wonderful time. But part way through, I remember asking a question that I probably wouldn't ask anyone else. "Katie, can you see a change in me?"

I felt that my summer had changed me, had spoken truth into me. I felt truly revived, truly free. But was I just fooling myself, or was this change evident? Katie would be honest. 

And she was. "Yes," she said, "I can see it in your eyes." 

She went into further detail about the way I spoke, the joy that was evident. But that comment was the part that has stuck with me. "I see it in your eyes."

The picture on the left was taken my sophomore year at a speech competition, the day before my first big meeting with Katie. The day before the day I got saved. In this picture I am one big ball of mess. I was struggling through life, terrified and unhappy. I was covered in scars, had suicide notes written. I was at rock-bottom. I felt dead.

The picture on the right was taken this summer at camp, only a few months ago. It was a good day. I was at peace with my girls, I was building my leadership abilities. I adored my campers (particularily Becca, the one pictured). Life was not perfect, but it was abundant. I felt loved. I was joyful.

Can you see a difference?

I can. And maybe that's just me, knowing the context and being able to remember and feel the difference. But I can also see a difference, in my smile, and in my eyes.  

This is a silly thing to be thinking about perhaps, but in the last few days I've told my testimony two seperate times, and I realized something. My testimony felt….joyful. I feel so very far away from that person I once was. For a long, long time I would tell my story and still feel like part of me belonged to cutting, belonged to that depression. But in the times I've told it recently I've felt….

free.

I am not "moving past" that sin anymore. My life is not and never will be perfect. There is not a goal to Christianity, it is a journey that only ends at heaven's gates. However, I also know that I have dropped the chains I once held so tightly to. I am far, far more than the scars. 

Whom the son sets free is free indeed. (John 8:36)

What truth there is to that. We are free, so free. 

I was once weighed down with so much sin, so much guilt, so much shame. That is not something that simply disappears. As much as I hated my chains, I also loved them. I held onto them so tightly for so long, convinced that somehow I would need them, or that living without them would be more difficult. But over the last almost three years God has been ever faithful in prying my fingers off the chains and into His hand. Little by little, one by one. Until I stood hand in hand with Him…..free.

I am still a sinner. Oh, believe me. 

But more than that I am a free child of the King.

Maybe you can't see a difference in those photos. But I can. I know that there are a million miles between left and right, miles of worship and God's word and loving sisters and mountains I moved and cliffs I jumped off. Miles of setbacks and leaps forward and tears and laughter and joy and sorrow. 

Miles and miles and miles in those three years.

I am free.

And I can only imagine what God has planned next.