The price of freedom; eternal vigilance and strife

All my life I’ve searched for freedom. As a child it was freedom to do things on my own. It was freedom from school and mundane routines. It was freedom to see who I was and could become without persecution from parents or so called friends. As a teen, it didn’t change much, only became harder to navigate and more pressures saying I couldn’t be what I was to become. I was taught the only way to overcome obstacles that got in your way was to go through them, over them, or around them… My father tried to teach me the best he could. He died when I was about 22 and before I could seek his counsel on the hardest down spiral in my life… I’ve hit bottom several times. I’m barely keeping my head above water. When I finally see a chance to climb out of this ocean of despair, someone or something always comes along to kick me back into the deepest parts.
My life is still filled with despair and distraught times… though through it all, God’s hand is always apparent and obvious in my life. He’s never let me drown and taught me many lessons. The largest and I think most important of his lessons is to always stand vigilant if I want freedom. I’ll admit I, like most, get lost in worldly things and lose track of my watch and then end up kicked back into the ocean. But for most of the time, I keep watchful. God always throws me a rope and begins dragging me back out every time. I feel broken and ashamed most days, but most people who know me would never see that or know it. I’m always a failure that lets God down.
The freedom I seek now is much different than it was in my youth. Financial freedom would be a nice one to find… most can relate to that one. Freedom from pain is another I would love to find but accepted that it is something to endure and must have purpose. I suffer from a form of arthritis that I’ve had since early childhood that is throughout my body. Unfortunately, pain and discomfort is not enough for a doctor to mark you as even partially disabled so even though I am very limited in what I can do in the way of employment, if I ask for assistance I can’t prove it and get turned down due to “I could work at a more physically demanding job” and make a larger income.
God doesn’t want to see me struggle as much as I do and it breaks my heart that he has to see it and watch me fail each time. When I do remember to keep my watch, I’m very good now at avoiding trouble and those who would seek to bring it against me. I’ve failed and been beaten down so many times though it’s hard for me to get back up anymore. I still do. I’m standing again, for a little while at least before I have to stand back up again. He taught me never to give up… always to try and keep hope in his promise.
What breaks my heart most when I fail… isn’t that God watches me fall onto my face, it’s that he always sends some blessing to help me stand back up and try again. He’s always smiling on me and it hurts that I can’t once succeed for him. I failed in my last marriage. For years I despaired and struggled with the grief and guilt of that failure. My heart healed from most of it but there were still parts that kept me from standing up completely. God has reached out with his never ending love and grace to give me the blessing of a woman that loves me greater than anything I’ve ever known and a child that I hope will someday see me if not as a dad, as a best friend. I’m now standing again and moving forward, knowing I can love again and feel loved in ways I’ve never experienced before.
I keep financially failing, mostly from the lack of making it… but also from often making a slight mistake in expectations. Like this one of expecting routine clients and monthly incomes only to suddenly find myself 3 days from rent due and $340 short of paying it because a client unexpectedly had to go to Europe and won’t be back for the routine work until 2 weeks from now…
My heart tells me to call my small group but it breaks with the thought because I know they would help even if it hurt them and I want to be the one to help not be helped for a change. For once I would like to succeed so God can smile not because he sees me trying and helps me again, but because my success was the blessing and his smile the reward.
The freedom I want and seek most desperately now, is the freedom from failure… why does freedom have to be such an eternal struggle of strife and keeping always vigilant or lose the freedom we seek and fought so hard to finally obtain…

Somewhere, in an ocean of failure…
holding tightly to the rope of hope God has thrown again.