What Exactly IS Free?

So I've been reading a lot of what people have been saying today on Facebook in regards to Independence Day. Some have some good things to say, some people are being just plain asinine - like one kid who commented "Happy white people's Independence Day." As if the wars that have been fought for this country's freedom over the years, starting with the Revolutionary War couldn't possibly in any way affect a black kid in the DC area. I guess that's a big F-you to the Tuskegee Airmen too. Way to go, genius.

I'm really tempted to go into a rant about how much a lot of black people piss me off with that kind of attitude, and how disgusted I am that now history books are being rewritten to apologize for slavery and to equate it to the Jewish Holocaust, but I'll just leave my opinion with that sentence for now and maybe I'll go off about it at a later date. Suffice to say, racism goes in ALL directions, and if you want everyone to be equal, you have to actually treat EVERYONE as, oh, I don't know, EQUAL??? You are me and I am you, and that's the only way we can thrive in this world.

What I really want to focus on today is the fact that we all have to remember that freedom isn't really free, and we've all had a hand in fighting to keep it over the decades - black, white, red, yellow, green with purple polka-dots..... If not for the wars that have been waged, we wouldn't have freedom, we wouldn't have a chance for it at all. So, as much as war sucks while it's going on, I'm grateful for it. This is hardly a platform for or against the war we are currently in, I'm not going there. But Revolutionary War, Civil War, World Wars I & II, etc... they all had a REASON for being fought. There was something to be gained or protected and most of the time, it came back to why Thomas Jefferson wrote his Declaration in the first place. We must remember that, no matter what. If you lose sight of what's at the core of our freedoms, you lose sight of being able to even come close to understanding what it means to be an American.

Reader, I want to challenge you to something today... it's something that impacted me profoundly at the beginning of 2008 and started my journey to where I am today... a better wife, someone who can be a good mother, a better friend, daughter, listener, and leader and follower when the situation calls for either. Declare your independence. I can't tell you what it's from, only you can say what it is. For me, it was declaring independence from myself. And it was the hardest thing I've ever done. I still fight it every day.

But in order to REALLY grasp what this means, you need to completely get what those men did back in 1776. They were wealthy, intelligent, popular, powerful men. And they signed it all away. They found a problem that was worthy of their entire lives, families, fortunes, comforts (I think that's the most important one for us to grasp today), and material possessions. They knew, COMPLETELY, that signing that document was the beginning of the end for them. But it didn't matter because they knew in their hearts what was coming after. Because freedom, TRUE freedom, is worth any cost. It's worth death. It's worth losing everything. And I believe that mentality comes directly from Matthew 16:26 "For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul?"

What are you enslaved by today that you need to declare freedom from? For me it was my constant criticism of myself, holding myself back, doubting my abilities and capabilities. Declare your independence today and step forward into a future of your own creation. Remember: "All truth comes in three stages. First, it is mocked, then it is violently opposed, and finally it is self-evident."