Why do I hang onto you. A relationship that just can't seem to come into focus. I've tried many times and a continual leaning in your direction. My heart always straining, never finding its rest. Only when we are together, secure, eyes in the same room to see and be seen, is my heart free to sing our song. Can I trust you when we are apart. Can I trust that you love without (me) constantly tending to it and calling it out. Where is the rest, where is the peace, where is the blessed assurance that you are mine even when you are not in my face or giving me gifts. I need a life of stability, far more calm than this.
Must I let go of you to find it? Or look within? I do not know. God illuminate my path again, even as you have so many times before. You pull me out of a sin that wants for security in something I can see, feel, touch, cajole, control, or at least hope with my yearning heart that a human will pay attention to me at all the right times.
Help. This is no way to live and not the freedom you died to give. Help. Lift me high to see from your lofty places above the noise and almost to the clouds but not quite.
We soar. We fly. Freer now. Lifting my heart from the lateral exchange of human need to the holy gift of unsung love that exists because flight with You is ultimate bliss. We swoop down and around and, yes, are touched by love--and we do love, but now freely and not with unhelpful expectation that breeds unmet need and calls for either forgiveness (or resentment) time and time again.
Unshackle me from this earthly exchange and give me wings. I will still love and be loved and look my friend in the eye. But this time I will come in already singing, with something to give.
This is what free will is, designed by Love himself, right? Masterpiece and mystery; a song for the ages. Love that goes high, and deep, rooted only in freedom, finds peace.
According to St. Paul (Romans 8:28), becoming my True Self seems to be a fully cooperative effort, affirmed in my own limited experience. God never forces himself/herself on us or coerces us toward life or love by any threats whatsoever. God seduces us, yes; coerces us, no (Jeremiah 20:7; Matthew 11:28-30). Whoever this God is, he or she is utterly free and utterly respects our own human freedom. Love cannot happen in any other way. Love flourishes inside freedom and then increases that freedom even more. "For freedom Christ has set us free!" shouts St. Paul in his critique of all legalistic religion (Galatians 5:1). -- Richard Rohr
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