This is Me and I am Free

“That’s your handwriting,” you say after two decades of no mail.
Terrible handwriting. Too jerky, too tense. I’ve hated it.
But you are glad and now I am a school girl practicing my name.
This is mine. This is me and I am free.
Loops rounding out the tails in letters spilling.
How I form them tells you who I am —
Tells me who I am.
I’d rather write than type.
I’d rather you see my hand working down the line
Caressing the page
Soothing the sounds like musical notes of ecstasy for you to play
And then return with yours.

“This is Me and I am Free . . . .”

I was twenty-eight when I wrote those lines. Twenty-eight, with years of wondering behind me. Years of wondering what I would be when I grew up. Not that many people asked. I was a middle child after all, elbowing my way out of the nest packed with three other siblings. Except for mothering, uh, bossing, my younger brother, I was the quiet one trying to live up to others expectations. What I would become seemed inconsequential, really.

In very early childhood there were isolated, yet contemptible acts inflicted on me that I was forbidden to acknowledge. The forced hiding had snuffed my heart’s honesty, teaching it to disown itself.

Well-meaning words that edged me toward denial had also been dropped:
“You shouldn’t feel that way. . . .That’s not what God would want . . . . Just lift the corners of your mouth and make-believe you’re glad . . . . Why don’t you get over it?”

An identity was not easy to come by.

“I am ____________,” was a difficult sentence to finish.

Fortunately, despite it all, I believed in the Great I AM. He knew, without asking, what I would be when I grew up. Throughout my roles of student, secretary, wife and mother, He drew me to Him, letting me get to know Him so that I could know myself.

Then, in my twenty-eighth year, my day of freedom came. I saw my heart’s truth. I walked out of denial. I obeyed Him. Because I obeyed Him, I experienced unconditional Love. It was a Love that I could trust. It was a Love that allowed me to be vulnerable.

So I wrote.

This is me, and I am               free              ! 

All thanks to the great I AM.

Have you been freed to know who you are?  Please share how Love has played a part in your freedom.

 “And you shall know the truth,and the truth shall make you free.” John 8:32