when the energy source changes

Sometimes, freedom is loud. Chains break and clank on the floor. It happens in an instant and it takes a lifetime.

Sometimes, freedom is slow and silent. It’s the showing up and paying attention in the dark, when everyone else is asleep. Freedom tiptoes close by as you let go of old ways of being. One by one.

Freedom doesn’t push you from behind. Freedom lovingly extends a hand and invites you to join it.

There’s an energy in each of our lives and it matters how we relate to it. I used to sense an energy pushing and driving me forward. The judgmental voices, the wounds, the unquestioned motives, the coping mechanisms. They worked like clockwork. On the outside, it may have looked like success or a good work ethic. On the inside, it felt miserable. When I got quiet, which wasn’t often, I felt the whisper,

“It’s not really supposed to be this way.”

Then I spent a season questioning every voice and wound and motive and mechanism. They started to unravel and breakdown. Turns out they weren’t as strong as they tried to make me believe. Oh the freedom when I started to realize they were as weak as I felt.

It got really quiet for a season on the inside. The drama of the pushing and stumbling and scrambling faded.

What was next after the old way died?

A new way of being in the world slipped in the side door.

Now, instead of being pushed from behind, there’s a hand inviting me forward.

The energy shift makes all the difference. Very little pushing and striving these days. Listening and receiving is the new normal.

I still work hard for the dreams of our community. But the energy source has changed. It comes from in front of and within, instead of behind me. And it turns out, having God in front lighting the path is more fun, more sustainable and more clarifying than feeling pushed ever could be.

It’s almost like grace is real and God is love. A love that would enter the world through an immigrant child in a foreign land to whisper to its’ beloved creation: “I wish you could see how I see you, my dear children. I want you to be free.”