What do I want in this life?

That’s a question I ask myself often. Sometimes to actually figure it out, and sometimes to just to weigh everything against my purpose to see if I am on the right track.

I’ve thought for years about a mission statement. A personal one for my life. I’ve even started to write one out a few different times, but it always seemed a bit too contrived, like I was trying to say all the right things to myself. To give myself a bit of self-fulfilling prophecy to nod my head at.

It never really worked.

Then during this past year, everything has been turned upside down a bit in my world. It’s made me look at everything and everyone a bit differently. Life has forced me to look at everything through a new lens of self-preservation, which has been both good for me and painful all at the same time.

But I realized these feelings of self-preservation have really been self-care, which I’ve neglected for entirely too long, and that’s not a good thing. So where am I to begin?

My faith in Jesus is the center of my life, so I want to follow what He says. He boiled everything we need to know down to a couple of things to focus on, which we refer to as the greatest commandment.  I am learning that to carry out the greatest commandment, to love God and to love others as I love myself, I have to actually love myself.

I’ve been thinking about what that means. What does it actually look like to love God, love myself, and love others as myself?

I could almost feel the light bulb warm up and begin to buzz.

It looks like freedom.

Evaluating every area of my life: physical, spiritual, emotional, relational…the way I want those parts of my life to play out are rooted in freedom.

Freedom is the yardstick with which I want to measure my life. The degree to which I experience joy is determined by the level of freedom I have in each of the areas of my life. The degree to which I have a right view of God, myself, and others is in direct correlation with the amount of freedom I have in my world. Experiencing too little freedom or distorting what freedom means in my life causes heartache in my relationships, in my work, my communion with God, and the way I view myself.

For me, everything comes back to freedom.

What do I want in life? I want to be more free.

I’ve been a writer all my life in some capacity. No one is paying me to write books or articles. I write because I must. It’s how I think and process. It’s how I share my thoughts in hopes that they help someone else feeling the same way. I’ve written for six years at praythenlearn.com and by sharing there I’ve already become just a little bit more free.

But it’s time to center everything, even my writing, around my goal of being more free. It’s a reality that in this life, we can never be completely free. As long as we live in these bodies we will be subject to pain, injury, illness, and death. While we walk this earth, we will live among evil, lies, and deception. There is no freedom from all those things right now. When we leave this world and go on to our eternal life, we can be completely free, as we were meant to be.

That is why to be more free is my goal. To be more free in each area of life. To be more free than I was a year ago or even yesterday. It is for freedom that Christ has set us free, so I want to be about the business of having more freedom in my daily life.

Jesus said:

I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.-John 10:10

This is what I want out of life. To have it to the full. Free, abundant life.

Will you join me on this journey toward more freedom in our everyday lives? To live as Jesus wanted us to live? As free individuals, making the most of every area of our lives and every moment while we are here on earth? To know what it means to love our God, ourselves, and others in freedom?

Welcome to ToBeMoreFree.com. I hope to see you again soon.