This week’s Thankful Thursday is brought to you from somewhere amidst the rubble of burnt out sparklers and spent Roman candles, from the last echoes of the thunder claps of exploding fireworks, and from the shadows of the painted reds, whites, and blues showering the sky. Today I am thankful for freedom!

I spent the week preceding Independence Day strolling the streets of one of the nation’s oldest, most historical cities. I toured forts where both Revolutionary and Civil War battles had been fought. I admired authentic flags, relics, and bits of history that were hundreds of years old. It was beautiful.

It was informative. It was encouraging, humbling, and inspirational. Walking the cobblestone streets, touching the fortified walls, and hearing the historical struggles and facts caused me to reflect on war and peace, life and death, freedom and slavery. It made me thankful for battles fought, wars won, lives offered, and freedoms obtained.

We also experienced a more personal “Independence Day” at our home this week. My daughter officially moved out into her own apartment. How did twenty years go by so fast? She has found independence…a taste of well-earned, nobly obtained freedom. I’m not rejoicing in my half-empty nest or my newly found freedom…but hers. I am thankful for the reward that years of sowing and building and praying and teaching have brought.  I am thankful that we have been gifted and chosen to watch her stand, then walk, then fly on her own…into a new stage of life, freedom, and independence.

Freedom presents itself in many forms. Last night I sat high on the bleachers in a stuffy old gym, watching a group of teenagers swim. Specifically..my teenager. Two thoughts were evident in my mind:  “Wow, he sure has gotten good” and “wow, he looks so graceful and free.”  Like so many other teenagers, he has had his struggles with peer pressure, bullying, and fitting in, but in the pool… He is free. Smoothly and purposefully, he seems to defy physics and gravity and the weight of the world seems to roll off him like the drops of water he emerges from.

His form is fluent, artistic, poetic… and absolutely free. I especially like to watch his backstroke and his butterfly. He has found his path to shut out the voices and pressures and walk, or swim, his own trail. It has brought me such joy and thankfulness to watch his transformation, his battles being fought and won, and him raising his personal flag of freedom against the embittered war that rages around him daily. He is free.

So many freedoms, opportunities, and blessings. Free country: I have freedom to speak and eat and read and go and do most anything I feel led to. Free will: I have the capacity and the gift to choose whom to be with, to love, and to serve. Free to _______ and free from _________. You fill in the blanks. I am thankful for the freedom to be, the freedom to do, the freedom to want and work and gain. I am also thankful to be free from condemnation, guilt, shame, and sin. No longer a prisoner. Be thankful for another Independence Day.