So, after a two-week stint off recovering from the fatigue that I told you about, (you remember, the fatigue I had convinced myself I wasn’t going to have? Yes, that fatigue); and a lovely visit from our oldest 3 grandchildren, (no, they did not stay here for 2 weeks,) I am ready to rejoin the world. I missed you and hope you are ready to journey on with me.
By the way, if you want to be notified when I post a blog, I have learned that you need to ‘follow’ me. Obviously, I’m not the tech-savvy type or I would have mentioned this sooner. 😉
About two and a half weeks ago my husband and I watched a movie called Room. It has been on my ‘to read’ list for quite a while, but that list just keeps getting longer and I had never gotten to it, so when we saw it on Netflix we decided to watch. If you haven’t heard of it or seen it, the story is about a young woman who was kidnapped when she was 17 years old and held captive in a renovated storage shed for 7 years. While in captivity, she has a child who is 5 years old at the time the movie takes place. Some of the story is narrated through the child’s eyes, who, of course, has spent the first five years of his life knowing only this small place as ‘the world’ and a skylight above as the sky. While his mother has taught him as diligently as she could with what she has, (including a television), she also seeks to protect him (and herself) from disappointment by encouraging him to believe that what they have is all that is real and the rest is pretend. In order to protect her son from the captor, she is submissive to him when he comes to bring food, etc. and whenever he wants sex. She has her son’s bed in a wardrobe so that he does not have to see the man when he comes at night, and she has an agreement with the man that he can not interact with the boy.
This movie stayed with me for probably a week; it was disturbing on many different levels. Even after their daring escape, the young woman’s adjustment to life was much more difficult than her son’s. Her parents had divorced and her dad lived in another city. A male friend of the family had moved in with Mom. The friends of the young woman had moved on with their lives. The press would not leave her alone. Painful changes hit her all at once…
As I pondered it more, I began to find correlations in the life of a believer. How many of us are locked in rooms of some type of captivity? It could be bitterness or unbelief or lying; it could be ungratefulness or negativity, a lack of love or anger. If we aren’t personally affected by them, we like to think of things like addictions or sexual sin, but the truth is, most anyone we know in the Christian community can find themselves locked in a metaphorical room of bondage and can’t seem to break out. As Paul so eloquently and passionately stated in Romans 7, we don’t always do what we want to do and then hate what we are doing, (v.14-24).
Like the main character in Room, who became so afraid of the man’s potential violence and for her son’s safety that she became numb and hopeless to her situation, (that is until she realized her son was old enough to ask questions), we, too, can become numb to our bondage. It can even become comfortable. Captivity becomes the new normal and the promises of God become a distant memory.
Stand fast therefore in the liberty by which Christ has made us free, and do not be entangled again with a yoke of bondage. Galatians 5 :1
What is your room? You have known since you began to read this, I imagine. Are you aware that there is a way out, that you no longer need to fear your captor? Jesus is our Way, our Truth, and our Light. He never intended for His brothers and sisters to have fear, but to have power and love and a sound mind…that’s a far cry from numb, hopeless and docile in the face of bondage, don’t you think?
One more thing, sometimes when we get out of bondage, it may be a bumpy ride at first and we might be tempted to look back, like the children of Israel when they were led out of Egypt. They began reminiscing about the good, old days, completely dismissing how they were beaten and worked from dawn to dusk with whips at their backs. There is nothing good about being a captive; God meant us to be free children of His. When we are captive to sin, we are completely unable to do His will, to feed His sheep, to love Him fully or to love His people.
Make a conscious choise for freedom today. God is with you to show you the way to get out of that room! Isn’t it stifling, yet?
