Another question from my English teacher:  Is freedom more important than love?         

You might have chosen immediately.  You might instantly think of some guy and girl stuck somewhere together who want the other more than freedom, or you might instantly think of being totally alone on some empty road, the sun rising before you as you head off wherever you want.           

But stop and seriously consider it.          

What is freedom if you celebrate it alone?  What is love if you have no life?   When I say love, I don’t necessarily mean romantic relationships.  I mean any kind of love—family, friends, pets.  Not just the person you’re going to marry.  I mean that too, but it’s not the only thing.  In choosing this, you let fate decide what you do and are and what to be.  When I say freedom, I mean the state of existence when you can do absolutely ANYTHING.  Go wherever, be whoever, do whatever—but you are alone in doing it.  You have no one.  Those are the conditions of the question here.    I chose my answer carefully.   I used to be not such a great kid; before God saved me, I felt trapped.  I lived with so many different people over my then-fourteen years, and I always loved every one of them so much—but they inevitably left, or we left, and some died, and I would feel so hurt that eventually I tried to stop loving people.  I tried not to love anyone at all, even a little.  I didn’t want to keep getting hurt when someone died or moved away or stayed in the same place while I had to go to a different place.  I had to tell myself I hated whoever it was that we were going to live with, so that when we left I wouldn’t feel anything about it.    Honestly, I felt I had no freedom.  I was sealed in a burning cage made of my own hatred and anger and deep-down hurt.  And I hurt other people while I was doing it.  I wanted out; I wanted release; I wanted to stay in one place where no one would leave or die.  My dad (whom I was close to) committed suicide when I was four.  My two baby brothers (from a different dad, whom I’m close to now) both didn’t make it.  A miscarriage and a stillborn.  I remember putting my hand on my mom’s stomach and feeling the second one, Noah, kick at me.  I was seven.  My older sister, who I thought would NEVER leave, went to live with her dad.  My mom went through men like clothes (I didn’t understand her pain over losing my dad then); and then, one day, my mom died, too.           

The following six months were the worst I can remember.  I felt like I was suffocating.  Mom was my air, the only person I allowed myself to care about, the one I could always go to.  With anything.  But then she just died one morning.  They pulled me and my sister out of class to tell us.  The thing I remember most about this is a numbness spreading through my head, that uncomfortable green chair, the tiny snap of something breaking in me. “Diabetic ketoacidosis”, I read on the death certificate a year or two later.  It shouldn’t have taken me by surprise, but it did.      

We went to live with my awesome aunt and uncle and my amazing two cousins, my little sister and me, and I had never been more free in my life—they didn’t know me like Mom knew me, and this opened that cage door for me, a door to completely change.  And after a while I did.           

Although it took me six months. I finally sat on my bed one night and reached out to God, desperate and feeling like an idiot, but God answered me.  I heard this voice in me, God telling me everything would be okay.  I was writhing in agonizing fire, and God was a clean blue ocean in which I found total and absolute relief and peace.  God saved me.  I’m going to heaven.  Everything made so much sense in that one moment, and even though that feeling may lessen sometimes, it never completely leaves me.  Anyway, back to the question.           

So I have freedom now.  And I have love, too—I love my sisters and everyone more than I ever have—but I lost the one I love (still love) the very most, the one person I would never give up.  Would I give up my newfound freedom to have her back?  I certainly would not give up God—even when I had Mom, something was missing, like I said earlier.  But would I give up this stability of living in one house?  Would I give up the people I live with now?  Well—and I know they would understand if they read this—I think I would. I might not have shown it when she was around, but she was the warmth in me that kept my heart beating, and after she died, I felt like my heart stopped.  Only when I was saved did it start up again—but that doesn’t mean I don’t ache a little every day without her I love my aunt and uncle and cousins and our friend of the family who lives with us to death; it’s just that my mom isn’t here. So yes, except for God—the ultimate freedom, which I would never give back—I would choose love over freedom.