How to be... Wild and Free
Does your life ever feel ordinary? Mundane? Repetitive perhaps?
It is Sunday night. I packed a lunch, put wet clothes into the dryer, washed out a bottle, and picked toys off the floor… like I have done many times before. Or maybe your story entails, meeting after meeting, fighting traffic, and meeting deadlines. .There is a certain art to living and functioning in the normal. It gives ourselves and our family the gift of stability. Sometimes though, it can do quite the opposite for us. It can pull the oxygen and enthusiasm for life right out of our souls. It can create thoughts about our value and purpose being limited by our tasks. It can be downright depressing.
Do you remember what it felt like when you were young, to run as fast as you could? You would tear through the grass, heart pumping, laughing, wind in your face… You were free. Did you ever have a moment when you knew what was expected of you, and you went the opposite direction… you wild one you! Or maybe you were the "good kid" who stuck to the rules and still do. You never experienced the wild. Friends, I have exciting news. In the middle of our mundane, we can live wild and free. We can walk through our day with wreckless abandon.
Step one: Become a student
We take pictures of our kiddos, we stare at them, we think about their choices. We celebrate their accomplishments. We know their personalities. We have studied them, sometimes intentionally and other times out of pure love… Just delighting in them. Have you ever turned this attention onto yourself? What are some of your latest accomplishments? What dreams has your Creator woven into your heart? What do your choices reflect is valuable to you? You are so very important, and God cannot fully utilize you until you plug into what He has created inside of you. Take the time to study you. And if you are feeling really crazy, take a selfie or two.
Step two: Become a fighter
There are threats to your "wild and free". Mine come in the form of insecurity, fear, and pity parties. I sometimes choose to listen to the voices in my head that tell me that I am not enough, and that I have little to offer. That I am ordinary. Fear of rejection can silence what I feel His call on my life is. I can feel bad for myself and get stuck there, losing my sense of gratitude. What is your threat to fight? When you find it, take a big deep breath and speak back to it. Use the Truth to dispel those lies. I know those lies can be strong. Their roots can run deep into our past hurts, but He fights with us. He wants so much for us to hear His voice the loudest… and He pleads to us to just keep fighting to hear.
Step three: Become 'there'
You don't always have to be responsible and productive. You can have moments when you are just… there. Don't write one more email, don't teach your children anything, and goodness do not clean something. Just be. Be silly. Be serious. Be gentle. Be available. Be aware. Be in your own body. This creates balance in our minds and hearts. It gives us space to hear and see what is going on inside us. Our culture has somehow slowly whittled this simple concept away from our normal. Just be.
When we create the space to know ourselves, we can see His fingerprint on us. When we fight the threats to the Truth about ourselves, we can hear His voice. And when we are fully present in a moment, we can be moved to the action He intends for us. The mundane will not become us, because we are living aware of the magnificence of the One who made us. And He whispers, "Be her/him. Be my little one, who is lost in a moment, running wild towards me."
