“Come
to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my
yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you
will find rest for your souls. For my
yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”
Matthew 11:28-30
I have gone from
seasons of freedom to seasons of control in my life. As I look back on those times I can see I was
never truly free and never rightly controlled; both of those conditions left me
a mess; I grew weary and worn out from both.
My seasons of
freedom were in the 60’s and 80’s. The
first was to follow the hippy generation and throw off all the standards and
rules I had been raised by. The second
was to follow the advice of mental health therapists who were telling me how to
release the “real and authentic me”. In
between those two seasons I put myself under the control of “men of God” who
were telling me, according to them, how God wanted me to live my life. The freedom seasons left me empty and weary;
the control season left me heavily burdened.
None of it left me happy, finding my “authentic self”, or well taken
care of; I was miserable, not knowing who I was, and abused by myself and by
others.
Thirty years
later, in the 90’s, I took a long vacation from the life I had made for myself
that had gone so badly. I quit my job,
packed my car with all my possessions and went to Stockbridge, Ma. I had visited there before several times and
always seemed to meet up with the real Pat there. I wanted to find her again and make sure I
kept her. I did a lot of reading in my
Bible and a lot of writing from my heart.
Eventually I found where I had a disconnected wire deep within. That wire was my true connection to Jesus;
not what others told me but what I had heard from him the first time I
experienced him face to face.
For the next
several months it was just me and him and the Bible. I yoked myself with him during this season of
healing, found the real me, and have never regretted it. Being yoked with One who truly loves me and
wants the best for me, enough to be yoked with me, gave me the true meaning of
being controlled as a servant of a loving Lord, and the greatest freedom I have
ever known.
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