EXCERPT

Everything is permissible if God does not
exist, and as a result, man is forlorn,
because neither within him nor without
does he find anything to cling to.
—Jean Paul Sartre

AUTHORS’ NOTE:
Twentieth-century French philosopher Sartre believed that individuals, possessing free will and therefore personal responsibility, mold themselves by making a choice or taking a side. He said people are free because they can do this, and they are in anguish because they must do this.

We believe people are free when they’ve been set free in Christ . . . and in anguish because they’ve either never found Him or they’re bound by legalism. We hope, in this book, to give you encouragement, motivation, and help in finding and enjoying the freedom God wants you to have, both inside and out.

Marilyn Asks, “What Does Freedom Mean To You, Luci?”

MARILYN: What do you tell the woman who wakes up with sixteen things to do but wants to be free?

LUCI: Well, I can give her a list. Academically, I can say, “Count your blessings. Learn to tell the difference between inconveniences and catastrophes. Savor the moment. Look for the funny side of life.” All these ideas are good things to remember.

I’d also tell her that freedom is a choice. Quite often, it’s not so much behavior as it is an attitude. This is where a spiritual life of faith and trust is so important, I think. That woman may be up to her ears in an insurmountable amount of duties as a wife and mother, but within all that, there’s freedom in knowing Christ. He has given her promises that tell her she’s not alone; He is with her to help her carry her burden. When she accepts that, believes it, and applies it to those sixteen things she’s doing, they somehow don’t feel so awful.

I also think it’s important for her to remember that everything has come to pass. Those sixteen things that are driving her crazy now won’t last forever. They have a shelf life. Everything has a shelf life. So I’d say, “Enjoy what you can and give the rest to God to handle.”

MARILYN: Do you think people are free but don’t know it?

LUCI: Oh, yes. Absolutely. And that’s terribly sad, I think. When people come to know the Lord, when they accept Christ as their Savior and pray to receive Him, they have been at that moment set free—and by that act of faith alone, they’re free to experience another way of life. But unfortunately, until they are taught that truth from Scripture, they remain spiritually bound, for the rest of their life in some cases.

I’ve known people like this. I want to take them by the shoulders and say, “You don’t have to live this way. You have a million promises from God right at your fingertips that will lift you out of the shoulds and oughts and musts. But you’re living like you’re in a dark prison. You’ve got the key to open the prison door. Do it. Step out into the sunshine.” It goes back to that thing of having to want to be free before you can find freedom. Christ is the key, but walking out of the prison door is up to the individual.

MARILYN: Have you ever started out feeling free and somehow, in the mishmash of life, that sense of freedom was taken from you . . . like a thief came along and stole it?

LUCI: Yes. I’ve felt free, but freedom can be short-lived, I think. It has to be “re-won,” so to speak. There are a jillion things in daily life that can rob us of our freedom. For example, when I’ve been praying about something very sincerely, wanting something corrected in me, or when I have seen something I’ve fretted about or been concerned about, I’ve raised my head from that prayer and felt tremendous freedom, knowing, That problem’s not even mine anymore. I gave it to God. But then, the very next day I’ll drag it back up again and start being concerned for the same old reasons.

MARILYN: Why do you think that happens?

LUCI: Reality sets in. I look at my circumstances instead of the fact that God has told me He is taking care of that problem. I forget about my prayer and start working on this really elaborate way of “getting out” of my dilemma instead of leaving it with God, as I was doing yesterday. Human nature. I can think of lots of reasons it happens

Luci Asks, “What Does Freedom Mean To You, Marilyn?”

LUCI: If you had to recommend one book in the Bible to really understand freedom in Christ, what would that be?

MARILYN: I recommend the book of Galatians. It teaches the basic and liberating truth of freedom found in knowing Christ personally. In the words of Eugene Peterson’s introduction to Galatians in The Message, he says, “God is a personal Savior who sets us free to live a free life. God did not coerce us from without, but set us free from within.”

LUCI: Have you had an experience when you did not allow yourself to have inside freedom?

MARILYN: There have been many times. For example, when I close down my emotions so I don’t feel something I don’t want to feel, I have lost my inner freedom. My feelings can no longer flow. It’s almost like having a blood clot. That blood cannot flow freely if there’s a blood clot. Refusing my emotions the freedom to flow clots me up. Sorry, Luci, this is an unattractive simile; it just occurred to me as we’re talking. I’ll give you an example of a specific time I shut off my emotions. I’ll stop talking about blood.

When our baby Joani was born with spina bifida, I was not allowed to hold her or even touch her. The doctor and nurses warned me I could contaminate the open wound at the base of her spine. It killed me to just stare at her in her little Plexiglas “cage” with one set of armholes in it. I was not allowed to stroke her, touch her little head covered in luxurious black curls, or even caress her tiny toes. Except for the ghastly open wound in her spine, she was a perfectly formed, utterly beautiful baby.

Within a week, Joani developed spinal meningitis accompanied by a raging fever. She was transferred to another hospital by ambulance, and I was allowed to ride in the back next to her in her isolette. There was no nurse present. I was overwhelmed with the desire to just touch her. I gingerly placed my right hand into the armhole of the isolette. I lightly stroked her perfect little head and then her tiny little shoulders with my forefinger. She was my flesh and blood, bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh. I pulled my arm out then and sobbed, “Lord Jesus, heal her! Please heal her!” My emotions at that moment nearly drowned me. I did not think I could contain or survive the feelings that flowed. The intensity of them engulfed me.

Within a few days of that hospital transfer, we were told by one of Joani’s doctors that Joani was not expected to live. Her fever was destroying vital brain function, and other organs were being compromised as well. I went numb in my emotions. I stopped the flow of feelings; I did not go to the hospital. If God was going to take her little life, I wanted my last memory to be of the stolen moments I had of touching her hair and feeling the baby softness of her skin. Sometime after that phone call, little Joani entered the portals of heaven.

Now, here’s where I judge myself, Luci, and where I lost inner freedom. I needed to go to the hospital and see her again, even if the sight of tubes and respiratory equipment devastated me. I needed to finally hold her. I needed to get closure on that heartwrenching experience. But that did not happen because I chose to protect myself from the flow of my intense emotion. I did not want to see Joani’s final chapter. I did not want to feel it. So I shut down.

LUCI: Oh, honey! That story makes me cry. I so hate that pain for you. But I have to admit, I don’t quite understand how your responses to Joani’s death interfered with your inner freedom.

MARILYN: I stopped my emotions before they finished. I didn’t allow myself to feel the death phase of that experience. I felt the grief of her physical challenge and my pain in it, but there was more I needed to feel. I protected myself from it because I didn’t think I could bear it. The result is that even now, forty-one years later, I regret that I did not see her before she died. I regret I did not hold her at least one time, even though her little spirit was then in heaven. I missed a major part of the reality of that baby’s life. I regret I did not let my emotions finish what they needed to do, which was to flow freely.

Excerpted with permission from FREE INSIDE AND OUT © 2007 Marilyn Meberg and Luci Swindoll.  Published by W Publishing Group, a division of Thomas Nelson, Inc.  All rights reserved.  No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other—except for brief quotation in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher.