Freedom For Good
By: Christina Frost
Wow! Hard to believe we’ve made it to the middle of the year. Where has the time gone? A month full of sparklers, parades, and lots of red, white, and blue await us in hot July. It’s time to break out our stars and stripes and grab those tickets to our local baseball games.
And as we know, the word of the month which pops up again and again is, freedom. Funny thing about overusing a word, sometimes it can lose a bit of its weight or it can end up carrying too much! People can get a little wild in July. When I was a kid, I had a bag full of fireworks and thoughtlessly stuck a lit punk inside the bag…let’s just say, myself and a few nearby relatives, had to run, duck, and cover!
But freedom isn’t just a decorative word, a word to be crazy, or a word alluding to historical circumstances. It is a glorious word. A word full of power. It’s a word that embodies deep breaths of air and new beginnings.
Admittedly, in the day to day, sometimes it can be difficult to feel free. We still have to wash our dishes and pay our electrical bills. We aren’t free from doing those things. We often have to give up our freedom for our dear children, pets, or family members who come to visit us on 4th of July. We don’t have control over the weather or other people or how much those watermelons cost. So how the heck do we celebrate our freedom in July anyway?
Maybe it’s hard to identify freedom because it’s so deeply intertwined in our lives and we have access to it more than we realize.
For example, we’re free to watch the summer songbirds zoom by looking for grasshoppers to eat. We’re free to bring lemon squares to our neighbors, compliment someone’s fantastic sparkly outfit, or offer to help powerwash someone’s driveway.
It’s amazing how much freedom we have to turn someone’s day around from bad to good. Or even, and especially, our own day. We get to choose our own attitudes every morning. Even if we wake up in a funk, we can decide to be gracious to ourselves and others and hold gratitude in our hearts for everything we get to enjoy.
Today we can gaze at the purple and orange glory of the setting sun, dance under a sky full of fireworks, make someone feel included, and commemorate freedom in all kinds of fun and respectful ways. What a beautiful way to celebrate our freedom!
How will you use your freedom in July? Where will you go? What will you do? Who will you make smile today?
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