We are born with six freedoms:

1. I have the freedom to see what I see.
2. I have the freedom to feel what I feel.
3. I have the freedom to need what I need.
4. I have the freedom to talk about my heart’s experience.
5. I have the freedom to trust my heart with others.
6. I have the freedom to imagine myself living fully.

These freedoms are bestowed upon us by creation through our Creator. These freedoms are foundational matters as to how we are created. They need to be used to see who we are made to be and do what we are made to do, so we can live the lives we are created to have.

These gifts of birth have led us to participate in epic creative struggles with those forces that would stifle freedom, creation, and the Creator. The freedoms occur as an inborn gift, an inheritance of birth.

Our own personal struggle is being willing to continue to live and grow through the freedoms. This growth is difficult because we struggle against dynamic pressures that work to control and stifle what God gave us. We are often raised to live in denial about these freedoms—to deny what we see, what we feel, what we need, to deny the heart’s experience, trust, and imagination.

If very important people around us disapprove of these freedoms, we are groomed to find approval by denying the truths of our own birth. We give up freedom for approval. In so doing, we give up our selves, creativity, and the Creator who shaped us to be able to live in truthful, genuine, and enriching relationship.

To risk trusting the God who made us over the people who can disapprove of us is often frightening. This fear runs deep because the need for approval has its inception in the need to loved and connected. However, we have to face and feel something painful. If approval requires that we give up who we are created to be, creativity, and the one who created us, we have not found authentic care. We have found a long process of enslavement, one in which we turn over our identities to others who care more for power than they care for us.

The only way to change the dynamic is to reclaim freedom—not as rebellion as much as a simple return to how we are created. I recommend three books to assist us in returning: 1. The Voice of the Heart: A Call to Full Living, 2. Needs of the Heart, 3. Keeping Heart.  These three books are about returning to how we are created, being who we are made to be, doing what we are made to do, and having what we are made to have. Freedom is ours, given by God.