Freedom comes and goes.
Sometimes we believe we have finally found it.
‘At Last!’ we cry, for it has been a journey; so much lost, loved and learned along the way. But finally we have found wonderful!
The tension of life is eased, and we sit at peace with all things, moments of huge grace… until clouds form and the ratchet of discomfort cranks things up again and un-peace returns by degrees.
Things we imagined we’d dealt with return in different clothes, so we don’t recognise them at first.
We still speak of health, and present as outwardly wise, but we do not feel it anymore. We are the wounded surgeon, the dying nurse, the ruined millionaire.
Life is difficult because primal brokenness, never mended, creates ever new cracks in our armoury; and we have to look afresh for the light the cracks allow.
‘Life breaks us all,’ wrote Hemingway, ‘but some of us are strong in the broken places.’
So we allow the light each crack brings, for there is light there, if we wait. And the bigger the crack, the more the light that can stream in, to warm the cold paving stones of our psyche.
In the end, we are inward fools only to the extent that we insist on a fiction about ourselves; strive to keep the broken things secret or look away from the cracks in denial.
Brokeness is normal, cracks are normal…and so is the light they allow in.
Freedom comes and goes…
… but leaves only when we are ready for new things.
