Run for it!

Don’t let them catch you!

These are the words I imagine my steers might have hollered at each other as they escaped their pen yesterday.

I’ll explain. Tom, my husband, arrived home from work to find steers in our back field. While that isn’t completely unusual on our Angus farm, none should have been there yesterday—and yet there they were.

Think teenaged boys. That’s all these guys were. Bored adolescents decided to make a break for it and run about in the field that looked greener than the one that contained them. Goofballs!

You know what? I say good for them. How many times have I yearned to go some place or do something, but didn’t? The worst reason I can think of to avoid reaching a goal is one that has dogged me my entire life—fear.

Fear of what, you may ask. I’ll just have to be honest and say “dunno.” (That’s family speak for “I have absolutely no clue why I’m acting irrationally, but acknowledge I am.”)

Sometimes I feared failure. Or perhaps my motive was to avoid looking less than intelligent. But look at me now… putting my thoughts out there for you to love, hate, or be indifferent to. You know what? I love it. I wish I’d started writing earlier in my life. If I had, maybe I’d have more than one book published, with another on the way. I might have produced an entire library at this point in my life.

What changed? I allowed a new way of thinking to settle in my mind and take up permanent residence. About eight years ago, I ended up in a new state, a new church, and a new Bible study group with all new friends. We were studying a book titled Freeway: A Not So Perfect Guide to Freedom.

I was in the perfect place in my life to hear and absorb the message. The result was a different perspective and the discovery of my favorite verse in the Bible. “So Christ has truly set us free. Now make sure that you stay free, and don’t get tied up again in slavery to the law” Galatians 5:1.

Those words literally changed my mind and my life. Now, I’m a published author. Something I’ve wanted to try for my entire life but accomplished only in the last year.

So, what’s holding you back? Are you going to let it keep you from what you were born to be?

Don’t stay penned up in your one and only shot at life. Instead, be like one of our teenage steers and go for it. FREEDOM!!