By Stephanie Ellison

As we celebrate freedom, I can’t help but think that some of the greatest battles for freedom have nothing to do with what is happening around us. They happen quietly deep within us.

When we hear the word freedom, we often think of the absence of external oppression. Freedom from abuse. Freedom from addiction. Freedom from poverty. Freedom from injustice. Freedom from someone else’s control over our lives. Those are beautiful freedoms worth protecting and pursuing.

But there is another kind of freedom that isn’t nearly as visible.

It’s the freedom that takes place inside our own being.  It’s tangled in knots and rooted within our hearts and minds.

Sometimes no one else is holding the chains anymore, yet we continue carrying them. The people who hurt us may be far away. The circumstances surrounding our lives may have changed. We may have escaped environments that once held us captive. Yet somehow, the beliefs we formed while surviving remain. 

The chains often become internal.

They whisper things like, You’re hard to love. You’ll never be enough. If people really knew you, they would leave. You’re too emotional. You’re just like the ones who hurt you. You always mess things up.

I’ve realized that some of the strongest chains in my own life aren’t wrapped around my wrists, they’re wrapped around my thoughts.  That is not easy to admit. 

There are days when I don’t handle my emotions well. I can overthink. I can cry easily. I can become overwhelmed trying to process everything happening inside me. Afterward, I often find myself believing that because I struggle with my emotions, I must also be difficult to love. Lately I find myself wondering if those are actually two different things.

Maybe I’m not hard to love. Maybe I’ve simply lived through experiences that have made receiving love complicated. There is a difference. When you’ve spent years protecting yourself, questioning your worth, or believing that love is something you have to earn, your heart naturally becomes cautious. You may second guess people’s intentions. You may fear rejection before it ever happens. You may interpret silence as abandonment or conflict as confirmation that you’re too much.  I know it’s hard for me so I must not be alone.  

Those are wounds. Wounds influence how we receive love, but they do not determine whether we are worthy of it. For so many years, I’ve confused the presence of my wounds with the value of my life. I assumed that because healing wasn’t complete, I somehow wasn’t easy to love.

I think about healing and often become frustrated with the parts of my inner workings that still hold the heaviness of heartache.  I want to believe this for me like I believe it about others but it’s hard.  The truth is healing doesn’t make someone lovable.

Love was never supposed to be earned by perfect emotional regulation or flawless behavior. Love is most beautiful when it has room for honesty, growth, repentance, grace, and healing.  I want to believe real freedom isn’t pretending the chains never existed.  It’s recognizing that they no longer have the authority to define the human I am staring at in the mirror.

Freedom is catching ourselves when old lies begin introducing themselves as truth (every time).

It’s replacing shame with compassion and allowing ourselves to believe that our struggles are chapters of our story, not our full identity.

Perhaps the greatest prison isn’t the one someone else built around us but the one we unknowingly continue building inside ourselves with every lie we choose to believe. Maybe freedom begins the moment we courageously question those lies.  Maybe it’s learning that I can still be growing and still be worthy of love.

I would love to believe freedom is understanding that I don’t have to become a different person before I’m lovable and realizing that I was never hard to love.

I was simply carrying wounds that made it difficult to believe I already was.

If you struggle too.  I just want you to know you are not alone.  Stay.  Press into the pain.  Freedom can be found within you.  The question is, do you have the courage to believe it and do you want it bad enough to FIGHT for it? 

-Steph