“No rules for me!  I’m Free,” sings the snow queen, Elsa, in Disney’s movie, Frozen.   She darts out of the castle where she had to control her gifts to protect others and breaks out to enjoy her special talents all alone.  Is that free?

My child’s specialist instructed, “nothing without limits.”  No food or drink without a limit.  I learned that we can overeat too much of anything, even water.  The greater application made me wonder.  Is that true for everything?  Should everything have limits?

I love freedom.  It is one of my core values. The last time I heard the national anthem I was in tears.  I think, if anything, my love of freedom deepens as I grow older.  I love to be free and I would never intentionally limit myself.  I love to break limits.  I look for “glass ceilings”, fears or beliefs that hold me back, or practices that slow me down just so I can punch through them.  But a consistent reaction of breaking all the rules does not make a free person!  I’ve known that all along, thank goodness.  Still, my understanding of freedom continues to grow.

Why isn’t freedom free?

If I don’t clean up after myself, so I can be free of that chore, who am I leaving it for?

At 3 meals a day, I consumed 19, 710 meals just to reach adulthood.  Who fed me?

The American revolutionary war cost our forefathers, 25,000 lives.  That number is so round, it makes me question its validity.  Most likely there were many others not counted or reported.  An amazing cost just so we could be a nation, so we could be free of oppressive government with no representation. The Civil War cost us 750,000 deaths, the price of unity for both sides.

Clearly, those who paved the way for us, leaving us a legacy of freedom, did not do so accidentally. They personally sacrificed what they might have wanted right then, their own freedom, and in many cases, their own lives so that we could have this opportunity.

Mothers regularly suffer “baby blues” as they realize the enormity of the challenges, sacrifice and limits to their personal freedom such a little bundle of love requires.  Before the baby, she might have had some time for herself.  Afterwards, things are so different, when the new beauty of it wears off, why don’t all mothers run free?  Those 19, 710 meals per person is a daunting, unnoticed and expected task.

Bonds That Make Us Free

In a book by the same name, C. Terry Warner explains, “Who we are is who we are with others. How they seem to us is a revelation of ourselves.”

― Bonds That Make Us Free: Healing Our Relationships, Coming to Ourselves

I love the book title because to me it encompasses the paradox of freedom.  A mother limits her own freedom to grow the opportunities and potential of her child.  Her bonds of love limit her choices when acting in the best interests of the child or children.  But, in doing so, she is free to experience a depth of purpose and love in her life that only come from personal sacrifice.  The smallest things she does, not matter how menial, are acts of supreme sacrifice and love.  Truly, giving up a few minutes or years, perhaps even a lifetime of an opportunity pales in comparison to watching another human flourish with your care.  As a mother who carries the grief of infertility, I know this maybe more intimately than some.  You can not put a price on the value of a macaroni necklace made just for you for Mother’s Day.

In sacrifice, we challenges ourselves far more than we might have without such a worthy cause.  This same motherly quality of personal sacrifice is the gift of those who died for our freedom.  They gave their lives and their families lived without them, for all of us, even those who were not born yet. Perhaps surprisingly, it is within our connectedness, that we can find this purpose and freedom.

My husband and I noticed this.  With two incomes and no children, we were free to do about anything we wanted.  We bought a home.  We were comfortable.  We could have continued that way, circled the globe just for the fun of it, had a very easy lifestyle.  I have known this kind of free.  But that was not the kind of free for me.

It was too easy.  There was no reason to go galavanting across the globe.  We couldn’t appreciate it like we would now that we have too much responsibility to run wild.  Now, if we take a break from our self-imposed responsibilities to others, to our families, to our work and world, and to church, that break will be wonderful and appreciated because it is in the context of that meaning and compared to our normal, limiting responsibilities.

To be free, it simply can’t be all about me.  My freedom was not created without the walls of protective sacrifice and responsibility from others and to others.  So, I can’t maintain it without those same ingredients.  Like a bridge footing, I am free to carry myself.  I could pretend to be a solitary pillar.  But the bridge will not be a bridge unless, as a pillar, I am also reaching out, undergirding the opportunity, freedom, and expression of others.  Carrying more than my own weight sets me free.

To be free, I must embrace responsibility

What child looks for freedom behind the door of work and responsibility?  Isn’t that the last place we’d look?  We think if we run away from it, that is free.

But running wild is not free.  Is it?  Running wild is more like being a child’s remote control bumper car that is forever bouncing off the walls and crashing into the limits, laws and natural consequences that are really there.  Pretending they aren’t there does not make them disappear.  Even if you truly believe the wall is not there, crashing into it still hurts because some limits actually do exist.  A positive attitude can move some mountains but not all of them.

My grandmother taught me to make homemade bread when I was around twelve years old.  That ability has blessed me and my family for years.  Because she worked to teach me and because I listened, learned, and do the work of making bread, I am free to have homemade bread whenever I want.  I am free to share it with my family, friends and neighbors.  Our work set me free.

“Free at last.  Free at last.  Thank God Almighty.  We are free at last!”  –Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr

While it is true that some talents must be practiced alone for safety or concentration, we can’t pretend we live alone or without rules and limits that apply to us, too.  It is within limits that we become free.  Like the Wright brothers, we must understand what will and will not work within natural laws to become free enough to fly.

Self Improvement- To read more of DarEll’s articles, click here.

May you run free

toward your most significant,

meaningful,

and important

responsibilities.

Namaste,

DarEll S. Hoskisson

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