Free to Be Me by Stasi Eldredge

Author:Stasi Eldredge
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Self-image, Self-worth, Women, Spiritual Growth, True Self, Transformation, Faith
Publisher: David C. Cook
Published: 2014-09-03T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Seven

stumbling into freedom

Resisting is worth doing.

Veronica Roth, Four: The Transfer

John and I went to the zoo recently. I loved seeing live-and-in-person lions, snow leopards, giraffes, elephants, gorillas, piranhas, and glow-in-the-dark tree frogs. There was an amazing section of oriental birds decorated more intricately than geishas. I’ve never seen anything like them before. There were flamingos, California condors, and two bald eagles enclosed in a habitat with high nets. There was a turtle that lives at the bottom of lakes that was the ugliest thing I have ever seen. Crazy. Wonderful.

Later that same day, we went for a hike in the hills. It was a glorious, sunny day with a strong breeze blowing. Coming back down, we stopped at the cry of a hawk and looked up to see three of them: soaring, diving so fast, then up, up, up. Chasing each other, then hovering and still—they flew with the aerial gymnastics of angels.

They were awesome. They were free.

I felt bad for the wild birds I had just seen in captivity. I understand zoos and I am not anti-zoo, but living in cages is not what those birds were created for. They are not living their best life now! At the zoo it had been wonderful to see bald eagles up so close. How huge they are! But I’ve seen bald eagles eating fish on the banks of the Snake River. I’ve seen them looking out over their domain from the protected heights of a stately pine, and I’ve seen them battling golden eagles over their nests.

Freedom is better than captivity.

So why in heaven’s name would anyone choose captivity? Why do we live so long in the bondage we find ourselves in? There’s a passage in Isaiah that I’d like every girl to hear:

Shake off your dust;

rise up, sit enthroned, Jerusalem.

Free yourself from the chains on your neck,

Daughter Zion, now a captive. (Isa. 52:2)

Free yourself? Isn’t it Jesus who sets us free? Indeed he does; he already has in ways that will take your breath away. But we have a part to play. God calls us to rise up, shake the dust off, sit enthroned. We have a part to play in our freedom.

Why does anyone choose captivity? Well, captives do get fed. On a regular basis. They’re safe in their cages, their cells, their prisons. In the movie The Shawshank Redemption, longtime prisoner and now ringleader Red has been incarcerated for decades. He confesses, “These walls are funny. First you hate ’em, then you get used to ’em. Enough time passes, you get so you depend on them.”1

Prisons can be safe and comfortable. They can become a known life, a familiar way. Resignation is safe; dreaming is dangerous. Letting someone else control your life is easier than rising up to deny them that control; the relationship will never be the same. Living under shame can feel far easier than fighting for your own dignity. The known is always more comfortable and less risky than the unknown. After a while, those animals in the zoo forget they were even made for the open skies, the wild savannas.

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