Spiritual Freedom: What to Do When Something Gets in the Way
Practical tools for creating room within the Garden Within
For the past several weeks, we have been paying attention to movement. We began by noticing the patterns of grace within our lives. We listened for the familiar echoes of relationship with God. Then we began noticing what can interfere with our ability to receive and respond to that grace: Fear, Shame, Guilt, Comparison, Perfectionism, Self-doubt, Pressure, and the need for approval- just a handful.
Last week, I invited us to consider whether a difficult movement becomes a mirror that keeps turning us back toward ourselves or a window that opens us toward God, relationship, reconciliation, and freedom. But recognizing what is happening is only part of discernment. What do we do when we recognize that something within us is becoming constricted?
I want to offer five tools that have helped me. They are not five steps, or some failsafe formula. And they certainly are not the only ways to respond. They are simply practices I have learned through my own education, reinforced by my experience of trying to remain in relationship with God when something within me begins narrowing the room.
Spiritual Freedom Does Not Mean Everything Feels Good
Before we pick up any tools, I want to return to something important. Spiritual freedom is not the absence of difficulty. God most definitely challenges me. He often invites me toward something I would rather avoid: Reconciliation can be uncomfortable; vulnerability can be frightening; Saying no can disappoint someone (a real struggle for me), and telling the truth can create tension.
Even recognizing something about myself that God lovingly reveals can sting a little. So I cannot discern God’s movement simply by asking: Does this feel good or bad? The spiritual life is far more mysterious than that. Instead, I have learned to become curious about what a movement is doing within me:
Is there room?
Can I remain in conversation with God?
Am I becoming increasingly free to participate, even if what I am being invited toward is difficult?
Or is the room getting smaller?
That difference between spiritual freedom and spiritual constriction has become increasingly helpful to me, and when I notice the room beginning to narrow, I have learned there are things I can do.
Spiritual Freedom Can Begin by Naming It
Sometimes the first thing I need to do is simply name what is happening:
I am afraid.
I am comparing myself.
I want their approval.
I feel ashamed.
I am feeling pressure to decide.
Naming something does not make it disappear. It creates a little space between me and the movement happening within me. There is a difference between I am anxious and I notice anxiety moving within me. One consumes my identity, while the other gives me somewhere to stand while I become curious. Naming allows me to ask: What is actually happening here? And sometimes that little bit of space is enough to keep the movement from making the decision for me.
The loudest movement within me does not automatically get to make the decision.
Spiritual Freedom Brings Things Into the Light
Some interior movements grow remarkably powerful when they remain hidden. Shame especially likes privacy. Embarrassment can convince us that whatever is happening within us is something we should already have figured out. So we don’t speak about it; then it keeps working on us.
Bringing something into the light might mean sharing it with a spiritual director. When appropriate, it may mean sharing it with a spouse or someone we deeply trust. I cannot tell you how many times something enormous within me has changed shape simply because I finally said it aloud. Not because the other person fixed it. Rather, hearing my own words outside my head is enough for me to realize: Well, that’s interesting.
What felt like an immovable truth inside me becomes something I can look at with God. Spiritual freedom does not always require an answer; sometimes it simply needs light.
Spiritual Freedom Remembers the God I Know
This may be the tool that gathers this entire month together. Compare it with grace.
We have spent weeks noticing how God draws near. We have been paying attention to our patterns of grace and the echoes of a relationship that has history. So when something begins working on me, I can ask: Does this resemble the God I am coming to know?
That does not mean asking whether the movement is comfortable. The God I know challenges me, but I have also come to recognize something about the quality of that challenge. There is room within it; there is kindness, a freedom to wrestle, and an invitation to participate rather than pressure to perform. That history matters.
Discernment happens within relationship. I am not comparing an interior movement against a textbook definition of God. I am holding it within the relationship God and I have actually been living. Does this sound familiar? Does this movement resemble the grace I have learned to recognize? Where does it seem to be taking me?
Spiritual Freedom Notices Urgency
This one is harder for me. Urgency lives in my body.
When something feels as though it must be handled right now, I can feel my fight-or-flight response activate. My own woundedness and my desire to please begin trying to bring everything back into equilibrium: Fix it, answer, make sure everyone is okay - Decide!
Let me be very clear - there is nothing evil about my body’s response. My body has learned ways of trying to keep me safe. But I also know myself well enough now to recognize that urgency can constrict my freedom. So I have learned, imperfectly, to interrupt it.
I breathe.
I pray.
I step away when I can. I might say, “Can I have a couple of days to pray with this?” Sometimes I only need to say, “Can I sleep on it?”
There are certainly moments when life requires an immediate response. Someone becomes sick, or the unexpected happens, and a decision genuinely must be made. But many things aren’t as urgent as they feel in the moment. Sometimes before I sleep, I will simply ask God: Come to me in my rest, when my defenses are down. Help me rise with some notion of what You desire. And then I sleep.
I give the movement time to breathe. I notice what remains when the pressure settles. And if the urgency does not settle? Sometimes I ask for even more time. Because I know this particular part of my Garden Within. I know urgency can be especially constricting for me. That knowledge has become part of my discernment.
Spiritual Freedom Can Say No or Not Yet
This is one place where I have experienced tremendous growth. I used to find it much harder to leave a request unanswered. Now, when someone asks something of me, and I have the freedom to take time, I try to take it. Not every good thing is mine to do, not every invitation is mine to accept, nor is every need mine to meet.
Often the most spiritually free response available to me is: No. Or: Not yet. There is freedom in realizing I don’t have to accept every invitation simply because I am capable of responding to it.
And there is something else I have learned:
My no may makes room for someone else's yes.
That has changed the way I understand discernment. A no does not necessarily close something down. Sometimes it creates space that empowers another to step into it. Could this be the wisdom in Jesus choosing more than one to be His disciple? I think it most definitely resides within that wisdom; I am one of many. This is both humbling and empowering all in the same breath, and I am abundantly grateful for His breath - both the breath I can inhale and the one I can exhale.
Discovering Your Own Tools for Spiritual Freedom
These five practices have helped me because they have emerged from my own lived experience.
They may not be the five practices that help you most. Perhaps naming what is happening comes easily to you, while bringing it into the light feels terrifying. Or saying no is not particularly difficult for you, but comparison quietly steals your freedom before you even recognize it. Or could you share my struggle with urgency?
This is where curiosity becomes such an important companion in discernment. As you become more familiar with your own Garden Within, begin noticing not only what constricts you but also what helps create room again:
What helps your body settle enough to listen?
What helps your mind become less crowded?
What helps you remain in conversation with God rather than disappearing into yourself?
What helps you recognize that you still have choices?
Those answers matter. The practices that restore freedom may become just as recognizable as the patterns of grace themselves. That is part of becoming a discerning person. Not someone who never experiences fear, urgency, shame, confusion, or constriction. Rather, someone who increasingly recognizes what is happening and knows they do not have to surrender their freedom to the loudest movement in the room. For it is often received through that still small voice (1 Kings 19: 11-13).
An Embodied Pause for Spiritual Freedom
Sit comfortably and allow your feet to meet the ground. Notice your breath without trying to change it. Bring to mind something that has been working on you recently. Before deciding what it means, notice what happens within your body:
Where is there space?
Where is there constriction?
Take a slow breath. Ask: What do I need in order to become a little more free here?
Do you need to name something?
Does it need light?
Do you need to remember the God you know?
Do you need time or permission to say no or not yet?
Or does something entirely different rise within you? Stay curious. This is your Garden Within. Learn what helps you tend it.
Journaling Toward Spiritual Freedom
When I experience spiritual constriction, where do I notice it first in my body or mind?
Which practices help create enough room for me to remain in relationship with God rather than react to the loudest movement within me?
What have I learned about myself that might become a tool for greater spiritual freedom?
A Closing Prayer
God who meets me within my Garden Within, help me recognize when the room inside me begins to narrow. Give me space to breathe, time to listen, and freedom to remain with You. Teach me what helps me become more free to participate in the life we are living together. Amen.
From the garden within me to the garden within you, where God awaits,
Kimi
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