Confine the Lion...and the Lamb steps forth

It's so easy to confine You
To the limits of my thinking
To make You fit into me
And not me fit into You.
But You don't change
And there are places in my life
That need to be changed
To fit into You.
I fit You around my schedule
And call it flexible
Although its rigidity is frightening.
I go my own way
And call it order
But not allowing You
To order my steps with Your
Gentle whisper
Guiding touch.
The reality looms beneath
The surface
A scary sight to confront,
So easy to cover over with
Comforting words of positivity
But the reality is different,
Telling another story to the one
I portray.
I have tried to tame the Lion
Tried to muzzle it
Muffle its roar
Feed it vegetables not meat.
I've tried to hide the Lion
And present the Lamb.
But the Lamb is full of surprises
And opens its mouth with a
Deafening roar.
And the Lion remains silent.
How do I give over to the One
Who is constant, unchanging
And yet so unpredictable?
Take me there, Holy Spirit.
Take me there...

It's for freedom....

I've been thinking a lot about freedom recently, wondering how much I really get it, how much I really live in it.
What is freedom? Like really, what is freedom? For ages I've read and savoured verses from the Bible like "it's for freedom that Christ set us free" (Galatians 5:1), "if the son has set you free you are free indeed" (John 8:36), "where the Spirit of the Lord is there is freedom" (2 Corinthians 3:17). And when I think of freedom, well I suppose I don't really think about freedom at all - I focus on the prisons that the freedom releases us from and the chains that come off, but somehow never get to really thinking about or understanding what FREEDOM involves. It's something that's so easy to talk about, but seems to be so hard to live. There are no easy confines, and it's no longer about right and wrong, making mistakes or not. These confines are an easy place to stay, full of black and white delineations that keep us allegedly secure, and yet keep us from remaining in God. The confines keep us in control, wanting to appear perfect, sinless, self-sufficient...by remaining in the confines we also remain proud, and miss out on the fullness of life that has been promised to us. But that's not freedom. This is going to sound really obvious, but freedom is meant to be free. We're made to be free.
Freedom, from the perspective of the confined environment that many of us choose to live in (myself included, by the way), is terrifying - it's jumping out of an aeroplane without a parachute, diving off a cliff blindfolded....it's an unknown place that feels like it could be the death of us. And I think that maybe freedom is the death of us. But that's not necessarily a bad thing. You see I wonder if, in order to be truly free, we do have to die. I wonder if, in order to be really free, we have to embrace some things that mean we will have to let go of other things.
I occasionally glimpse freedom - I see its beauty, I see its colour, its vibrancy, the excitement & anticipation that reside within, the wildness that pulses through it, the wholeheartedness of freedom. It's incredible. But living in it, abandoning certain things in my life in order to live in that beautiful state is another thing altogether. It's somehow so hard to say goodbye to my self-sufficiency, to the perfectionistic need for right & wrong to be defined, so that I know I'm right and can correct myself when I'm wrong, my pride that has dictated and directed for so long. It's so hard to part with control. You see, to jump out of the aeroplane I don't have control anymore. The control I have is only the decision I make to jump or not to jump. The consequences of that decision are beyond my grasp.
But freedom demands that I let go of these things and simply walk the path of trust. Trust. Trust. Trust. And that requires me knowing God and believing, like REALLY believing that He is who He says He is.
Even as I write this I feel the struggle in my own soul. It's so easy to focus on what I'm "losing" and not on what I'll gain. Freedom is a glorious place of intimacy with God, a place of adventure, a place of wholeheartedness and abandon. The loss is NOTHING compared to what is there. And yet still I hold on. HOW LONG??? How long will it take? I long to be the woman in the photo at the start of this post - to jump and be free, to fly when I don't see my wings.
The words of a song come to mind:
"Wild horses I want to be like you,
Throwing caution to the wind I'll run free too
Wish I could wrecklessly love like I'm longing to
I want to run with the wild horses".
I so want to run with the wild horses, to live in the reality of the freedom that Christ died for me to have, to love freely, unashamedly, unafraid, unconditionally, lavishly, wholeheartedly.