FREEDOM

Reflections On: Grace

For me, the theme of Sovereignty became increasingly about how I choose to participate in life, rather than organising myself around everyone else's needs, difficulties and expectations.

And I realised something really powerful.

I had become over-responsible because being useful had earned me love and a sense of belonging.

Somewhere along the way, I had come to believe that joy, wisdom and freedom were things I had to earn. I began to recognise the heaviness of obligation in contrast to the feeling of being fully alive.

I had confused responding to life with carrying the weight of it all.

But why?

Because I couldn't really see myself.

Accepting my own gifts, recognising my own wisdom and following my own joy felt like a betrayal of something. As though allowing myself to be happy, without needing to justify or explain it, meant I was somehow abandoning my responsibilities to others.

With Sovereignty, we asked:

Can I remain myself in relationship with life?

And I began to see where I couldn't.

Now, as we enter our next theme of Freedom, we ask:

Can I allow myself to meet who I am?

This is honest, and sometimes difficult, territory.

We can yearn for freedom without recognising that some of the things keeping us trapped are within us. Old beliefs, familiar patterns and ways of relating that once helped us feel safe and loved.

For me, it feels deeply connected to the inability to receive. To receive my own gifts, my own joy, my own wisdom, and even the possibility that I don't have to earn my place in life through what I do for others.

And receiving requires vulnerability.

Perhaps freedom isn't simply about releasing ourselves from what binds us. Perhaps it’s also about allowing ourselves to receive what has been there all along.

So, as we enter this reflection, I invite us to hold compassion close and allow a sense of grace to accompany us on the journey.

Not another obligation to become something. But an invitation to meet ourselves, just as we are.