Running Away

artwork by Odilon Redon


Lately I'm having difficulty understanding time and space and how I can feel captive yet free at the same time. Making decisions.
I know what it is to run away. How safe and comfortable it can feel. I actually ran away from home once as a very young girl. I didn't make it far, just to the edge of the woods, where I sat at the foot of a tree, and cried. I didn't feel very safe, or comfortable...Or brave. We're good at finding ways to run away, and we hide it so well, from the outside everything appears status quo. But we find our ways to run, to hide. We shut down, or out, we ignore, we deny. When all we want is freedom. Freedom from all those thoughts in our heads. The dichotomy of who we are now, and who we want to be, or think we should be.
True freedom comes from the promise of who I will be in eternal life, and from the gift of justification. And what holds me captive are, quite simply, thoughts. It's not even who I am now, though more every day I realize how truly weak I am, and I long for more strength. Not merely inner strength, or fortitude, but active strength. Strength that says goodbye, strength that doesn't turn around, strength that keeps its feet in the ring when its opponent has solidly landed every blow. Strength that turns its back on the words "you can't" because great things begin with impossiblities.