Freedom

Each year I have taken up a practice of choosing a word to be my guide… to focus my heart and soul and mind in the direction I feel God calling me. In 2020, my word was Ignite, and it didn’t disappoint.
2020—amisdt the challenges of a global pandemic and this country’s reckoning with race in America, I leaned into the invitation to stretch myself personally and professionally. With the guidance and support of a phenomenal mentor and spiritual director, and a great deal of courage and energy, I stretched myself into spaces of teaching and leadership that I had never been invited to claim—and I re-discovered passions and leadership within myself that I had forgotten were there.

Last year my word was Sagus from ancient Greek, meaning to perceive keenly, discern acutely, prophetic curiosity, divining.

Fuck—sometimes there are no “nice” words for the experience of life.

To say 2022 was a heavy year is an understatement… prophetic curiosity, divinging, and acute discernment is not for the weak of heart… The sagacity of it all truly started in September of 2021 when I ended up in the hospital for a week with shingles in my brain. Viral meningitis caused by shingles that spread up through my spinal cord into the meninges of my brain, instead of covering my body was quite the metaphor for the way I was living… As the doctor’s stressed that both viral meningitis and shingles are stress-induced in someone of my young age (lol), I spent the week having some pretty serious “come to Jesus” talks with my Creator.

The hardest part of all of the decisions and transitions that needed to be made, was wrestling with the reality that I would be the source of my children’s first heart breaks. It is truly an impossible place to be, to know that the next right thing is also going to be heartbreaking and hard, not only for yourself, but for the children that have been entrusted to your care—to raise, to nurture, to protect, to teach, to empower, to guide, to love.

I took a few weeks to heal and to spend time with my daughters, in preparation for the year of transitions that was to come. So in October I began the hard work of preparing myself, the girls and our beloved church community for us to leave just after Epiphany. This was the only church my girls have ever known. The church they literally grew up in. They went to school there and church there. They spent so much time at church those 5 years that one time when we were headed home for an extended break, with no plans, I was celebrating getting to just be home together for a few days and Sophia was appalled. I said, “Baby, your mama’s a home body” to which she replied “well, I’m a church body.” But the commute, and the emotional, mental, and spiritual energy it required was no longer sustainable for this season in our lives. That transition was hard on all three of us AND it was the right thing for our family.

In March, Cedric and I made the impossible decision to sell our home—the home we brought our babies home to and called home for 9 years. We also made the decision to go our separate ways and begin to move forward as co-parents, sharing custody of our two beautiful daughters. It continues to be a place of pain and heartache and growth and beauty as we all navigate what it means, how it feels, and how to move forward towards health, happiness, and wholeness AND it was the right thing for our family.

Needles to say, as I have prayed about my word for 2023, I have considered going easy on myself….

How about “joy” or “play” or “rest” and the word that my heart keeps coming to is freedom…

But I’ve fought it for over a month, because it feels cliché and petty… like I’m celebrating divorce.
But divorce is painful and heartbreaking and I don’t recommend it to anyone—there is nothing to celebrate in the heartache we have endured. So I keep looking for something else… ANYTHING ELSE… and then yesterday I was scrolling through IG and someone posted words of the year according to your enneagram number. Enneagram wisdom has been one of the tools that has been so helpful in navigating this hell of a year, so I was like, “ok…. yes… this could be so helpful…”

I’m an enneagram 6.

Shit! Again—my filter is gone—and I make no apologies.

So, I finally sat sat down to do research the word… and this is what I found…

Freedom

Synonyms—release, emancipation, liberation, autonomy, liberty, sovereignty, self-determination

The Word free comes from the German words frei—to love; and friaz—beloved; not in bondage

Everything I could find about it in every language, the roots are not simply about freedom from something, but freedom to return to your people… to your roots… to your family… to your tribe… to the people and places where you have been loved and safe to love…

The Sumerian “ama-ar-gi,” found on tablets in the ruins of the city-state of Lagash, which flourished four millenniums ago, derived from the verb “ama-gi,” which literally meant “going home to mother.” It described the condition of emancipated servants who returned to their own free families.” 

https://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/07/opinion/freedoms-not-just-another-word.html

The suffix -dom simply means a state of being, quality, or condition…

This word freedom literally means the state of loving and being beloved—of belonging to love, and returning to the places and people where your roots were planted, and I cannot think of a better word on which to focus my healing heart, soul, and mind.

What does it mean to belong to love… to be in a state of loving and being beloved?

What does it look like to live a life that is rooted in this state of being?

This whole year, for me, has been about sagaciously uprooting myself… completely and totally uprooting, combing through the roots, dangling with dirt to reacquaint myself with where I came from and where I’ve been.

Which roots are deepest and what do the have to tell me?

Which roots are struggling and what do they have to tell me?

Are there roots that don’t belong to me, that have become so intertwined with my own that I couldn’t tell them apart—are they helping me to thrive or choking mine off?

What roots do I need to prune to give life to healthy roots that produce the fruit I have been called to bear?

And then, replanting myself in fertile soil… where my roots can find nutrients and safety… where they can begin to strengthen and dig deeper. How do I re-ground myself in this next season of life to flourish?

So I am grounding myself in love, in belonging, in the truth of my own belovedness and the beloved community.

I am grounding myself in protecting my peace and the peace of those I am called to love.

I am grounding myself in rich deep relationships where my belonging requires that each of us, individually, belong first to our own self.

I am grounding myself in wisdom beyond myself that reminds me that I am not in control, nor do I desire to be, so not everything gets my energy.

I am grounding myself in a state of love, belonging, and beloved community.

I am grounding myself in freedom.