Let Me Out!

This summer I have been locked in a constant state of inner turmoil.

I vacillate between believing that I am the most evil person on the planet and thinking that maybe I'm fairly groovy for a fat, middle-aged mother of five. This thinking seems to mirror my opposing beliefs that God is imminently pleased with me on the one hand, and that He desires to chop me off at the knees on the other.

All of this inner angst is further pricked by the fact that I feel both constrained and tortured by the choices I have made throughout my life.

I feel constrained by my decision to marry and to create a family. I am bound by the demands these relationships present me; yet all the while I am tortured by the many missed opportunities to make a difference in the lives of others.

I am constrained by the city, the neighborhood and the home I have chosen to abide: and yet, I am hopelessly tortured by my own indifference and unwillingness to choose differently.

Deep inside myself I hear this persistant voice demanding, "Let Me Out!"

No, I don't want out of my marriage; nor do I want out of my role as mother. I don't even necessarily want out of the neighborhood where I currently reside.

What I want is for the real me be free. I want the strong and loving woman I know that I am to assert herself and to be the caring (both self-care and other-care) empowered person she truly is.

What I want is for the fear, the self-doubt and the self-loathing to remove themselves, or at the very least to loosen their grips on my soul, so that I might break free of them.

What I really and truly want is to fully grasp the enormity of God's love for His children and for me. Above all things I desire to claim and to live His love out loud!

I hate this process of discerning what it is I truly want from life. It always forces me to give a brutal and honest assessment of myself. I frequently don't like what I see. To expose all of my spiritual warts, my physical blemishes and my emotional scarring is enough to strike the sighted man blind.

One day I hope to answer that persistent voice within, and then instead of hearing "Let Me Out!", with my own lips I shall joyfully cry, "Free at Last!"



Jerri