Blog for July 6th, 2026
FREEDOM
As I begin this week’s blog, today is July 4th and the 250th birthday of my great country, the US of A! I am proud and grateful to be a citizen here. Two hundred and fifty years of freedom, growth and prosperity. Freedom is something that I am very much attracted to. Freedom to be me, to choose my path, my faith, my politics, my friends, my husband, my residence, and best of all, to choose recovery.
Because recovery has given me true freedom. I may have been living in a free country when I was using, but I was indeed in bondage. It wasn’t until I gave my will and my life to my Lord and Saviour that I knew true freedom and then I got clean and found NA and I was then able to exercise my freedom in real and meaningful ways, and I was set really free.
I really started to experience the whole American freedom thing, that we find… “these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,
that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of happiness.” Yes indeed! Thank you, Lord, USA and NA! It was a process, the foundation was laid by my God, who sent His only Son to die for me and my salvation so that I can have everlasting life and then my forefathers laid foundations for a free country, and in 1953 Jimmy K was given a vision and an ambition to lay the foundation of a program for recovering addicts. Wow, that’s all so amazing to me!
And all I had to do was surrender and accept! Surrender my self-willed, strung out, crazy, miserable self to my Lord and to recovery. Whooo hooo. I’m not gonna tell you that from that moment on, all was perfect and no bad things ever happened to me or my family ever again, because that’s ridiculous. That’s not real. What is real, is that I then had a way to deal with all of life’s ups and downs without the use of drugs and without giving up hope completely.
Freedom: the power or right to act, speak, and make choices without external hindrance, coercion, or restraint. Freedom respects the rights and boundaries of others.
I don’t know about ya’ll, but drugs were indeed an external hindrance to my freedoms, and they coerced me and restrained me every day. My life was not my own, I was being held captive by an invisible force called addiction. As are so many people: past, present and future. It’s a horrible and destructive thing. Let freedom ring is my creed. I can’t even begin to tell you in all the ways I am free and why it’s so important to me. Well, let me try…
I am free to choose my own way, my own likes and dislikes, to voice my opinions and to fail when I try something new and do not succeed. And I have the freedom to learn from my mistakes and try again, start over. Which is what I did on April 1st, 1985. I was born free to be sure, but I traded that freedom in for drugs by the age of twelve and thirteen until thirty-one years old. For eighteen years I put myself in the bondage. However, when the time came, when God called me unto Himself to change the trajectory of my life, thank God!
I do not believe I would be alive today if I had not answered that call back then. I didn’t have much more left in me and the saddest part was dragging my innocent children through the hell with me. Something I will regret until my dying day. However, because I was free to choose when “the call” from God came, I beaten down enough to surrender. Thank you, Lord.
As they say, “freedom isn’t free”. Many have given their blood, sweat and tears, their very lives, so that I can be free, sitting here writing about how grateful I am for their sacrifices, just like my Higher Power did first. I have taken this freedom seriously and have tried to treat it as the gift it truly is. Meaning, praying about the important decisions and desires I have to be aligned with God’s will. If they’re not, then I don’t want to have any part in something that is not the will of God. For me, that’s where my true freedom begins and ends.
One of my hearts desires has been to travel, I always pray about it and ask my God to go before me and pave the way. I leave the trips, as I do with my whole life, in His hands, whatever the outcome, so be it. I know He has my best intentions and my life in His hands, which is amazing.
Question of the Week: Are you enjoying your freedom?
