i know why the caged bird sings

I've a few decades under my belt.  I've the gray hair and and sun-aged skin.  I've had a broken heart.  Life has given me lessons not learned any other way but with time.

I don't want to ever feel regret for things I've chosen, thinking if I had done it differently maybe things would be...better?  No.  There isn't really room in a lifetime for regret.  Rather, acknowledge what was, what happened and appreciate whatever came of it, what growth was realized only through the journey.

For a long time I lived with the desire to please others, to gain acceptance.  I had been trained and conditioned with the idea that if I dressed their way and spoke their way, I'd be welcomed into the fold.  Being welcomed in meant belonging.  It meant I was doing things right.

In some circles there is heavy importance placed on image.  Upholding an image is a 24 hour a day task.  It gets to be that the line between what is real and what is not becomes so blurred that a person can forget altogether where they began.  But so long as they continue to appear just so, they'll continue to be accepted.

I guess where this can get really annoying is when people will convince you that the very behavior it takes to win their approval is the same behavior it takes to win God's approval.  For so long, I thought I had to wear a skirt to be loved by God.  I thought I needed to have my hair fixed, my face fixed up.  I thought I had to say the right words.  Looking back I know I wasted so much time and energy.  Just wasted.  But no regret, remember?  Only a lesson.

It is a cage that a person builds around themselves.  The bars of the cage offer security.  You live by the rules of the cage and the cage keeps you safe.  It is a simple life.  The view never changes.  No storms come to meet you in the cage.  And the other birds in the cage look just like you, same feathers, same wings.  Everybody sings the same song.  Nobody notices that it is a mournful song.  A song of longing.

Oh sure, you've seen some birds outside the cage but you are thankful that you're not one of them.  You fit in here, on the inside.  Maybe if  you are paying attention you'll notice that the cage door is always left open but you know you'd never leave, you've been told about the birds that leave, how they are met with certain death.  Silly birds, thinking they can leave and fly off somewhere.  It's not safe out there.

But you guys, birds are not meant to live in cages and neither are we!  We were meant to soar on warm waves of wind with these wings built for flight.  We are not meant to build walls around ourselves and our "birds of a feather" and stay safely confined.  Smash the walls, bust the cage and live FREE.  

Gosh, flying free is so much different than those years of being cooped up in a cage.  I'm still learning how to do it.  Here is where regret becomes a sticky subject.  It is easy to regret the time I spent, feeling as if I wasted so long being confined.  But I have to remember that I'm only to this point in my life and experience because of what I've lived.  I can't regret experience.  But the one thing I do regret and will regret always is that what I believe of God and how to relate to Him has been so influenced by my view through the bars of a cage, by the song the other birds were singing.  What I mean is, I spent a lot of years hearing opinions about God.  I spent a lot of time listening to the thoughts of man.  And those thoughts had come about from the opinion of somebody before.  And the whole mess of it gets shaken up with opinion and judgement and out comes some sort of product that is packaged to look like God but in fact is so far removed that it just becomes nonsense.

I'm trying to learn how to strip away years and years of indoctrination, down past opinions, down past traditions to the beginning.  To God.  And that is all.  No more.  No less.

I'm not looking for religion.  I'm not looking for old-fashioned traditions.  I'm not looking for a group to align with.  Because maybe this is only between me and God.  It's cool, He knows me, we go way back.  But looking forward, I feel like we've got some ground to cover.  And I can only take one step at a time.

So, if you wonder why I've changed, here's part of it.  This isn't new.  I've been working on this for years but freedom from the cage has given me my voice.

It's really difficult to put all this into the open, mostly because I know the rehearsed lines of my friends inside the cage.  I know what you say to people who don't go to church.  I know how you treat people who have "fallen to the wayside".  There is pity.  There is judgement.  There is opinion.  And all of those things are going to swirl about and people are going to think what they will.  But it is not the approval of people I'm seeking anymore.  I'm going to let you have your opinions and your judgement if that is what you need.  I can't live in that cage anymore.

I can't live in the cage when I know what freedom feels like under my wings.