It is really no different in the spiritual realm. In order to save our lives, we must lose them. Whoever loses his life will find it. A seed must go into the ground and die before it can spring to new life. These are the eloquent, yet painfully difficult-to-hear truths that Jesus spoke into existence. Though I wish there were another way, the lose-your-life-so-you-can-find-it path is the only way I’ve found to freedom.

No matter how we dress up the Christian faith or how appealing we try to make Christianity sound, and no matter how many charming books are written or slick television sermons are preached, at the core of it all is this one huge, irrevocable principle: For us to be free, we must submit ourselves to God. We cannot do this while we are still trying to be our own masters. Soul-freedom requires obedience and servanthood and, ultimately, surrender, and every other requirement that drives me crazy, until I remember that these “religious” responses are not life squelching, but are routes to liberation.

But the path to freedom can be arduous. In fact, writing this chapter has taken me to task. I found myself in a really bad mood yesterday the minute I sat down to write on this subject, and it didn’t lift until I shut down my laptop for the night. I came toe to toe with the fact that soul-freedom is not easy to achieve and that bondage tends to be my default mode. We all have things we allow to hold us captive for a litany of reasons. And it never fails … just when I think I’m getting a handle on these things, I lose my grip altogether.

For example, I just found out that I’m about to head out on a radio promotional tour that will take the greater part of the next two months to finish. Immediately after that, I leave for a twentycity tour that will be interspersed with an additional ten or so solo dates. All of this will take me right up to Thanksgiving, and today is only the Fourth of July! Within an instant, my summer and fall seem to have disappeared.

I’m keeping a cool, confident front with my manager and record company, but deep down this terrifies me. I don’t want to leave home. I’m not looking forward to being away from the closeknit community I have developed here in town. I don’t want to miss out on walks in the park or going out for Italian with my friends. And I don’t want to skip an entire season of Sundayafternoon football or get back after the leaves have already changed and fallen. My friends have become my extended family, and it’s unsettling for me to leave them again. The great big mother-fear is that I will be lonely. It is the overarching fear under which every other fear of mine falls.

Thinking about these things prompted me to leaf through my journals and read about the last thirty-five-city tour I took in the fall of 2001. Every night I would record my thoughts lying down, since the bunks on the bus were too shallow for anyone to sit up in (think coffin). The name of a different city headed each entry: White Oak, Texas; Lexington, Kentucky; Hastings, Nebraska; and on my birthday, some city in South Dakota that I forgot to note, probably because I was so sad about spending it there that I blanked it out altogether.

The prospect of traveling again feels so depressing to me. In fact, I feel a bit panicked. I’m not sure I want to go out and pound the pavement again, and then again, and then some more. I’m not looking forward to afternoons spent in bad hotels, or delayed flights when I’m desperate to get home, or cell phone calls that break up one-sentence exchanges into a thousand digital pieces. I want familiar faces and conversations with no interruptions — not, “Can you hear me now?” I want the comfort of my community. I want my own bed.

Perhaps my reactions are a little exaggerated, or perhaps this would be stressful for anyone. I’ve been living this vagabond, entrepreneurial lifestyle for too long to have an objective perspective on how “normal” my feelings are. But either way, they are still rooted in fear, and when it comes to fearing loneliness, I find it to be my Achilles heel. It has dogged me since childhood.

As a kid I was afraid to go to school. Afraid for my mom to leave me. Afraid she wouldn’t pick me up. Afraid that I wouldn’t know what to do or that I would have no one to sit with. I tried hard to cover up these fears, but I quickly discovered that I was not Broadway bound for my acting abilities. My hands trembled in kindergarten; tears from being left would uncontrollably slip out until I could pull myself together and tuck them in again. And that was before having to ride the bus to elementary school. Getting on that thing for the first time felt like a death wish. What kind of guarantee did I have that this perfect stranger would actually take me to school and back home again? For all I knew, she might drive me to the hills of West Virginia and push me out onto the side of the road, separating me from my family forever. I thought long and hard about these threatening possibilities.

Of course, as I’ve matured and grown in confidence over the years, I’m a little less phobic. But the fears haven’t gone away. I wear them with a little more class, and they’re slightly more masked, but if it were fully acceptable — and I knew in advance that no one would judge me — I would cry out in the most obnoxious, whimpering, childish voice, “Don’t make me go! Don’t make me go! Pleeeeeeease don’t make me go!”

I haven’t resorted to this yet, but it’s everything I’m thinking and feeling. I hold back the “I’m-falling-apart” drama, not so much because I’m afraid of what people might think, but because I know I have to go. Not just because I have to make a living and this is the only way I know how to do it, and not just because I have to hold up my end of the bargain with my record company and booking agency; but because I know that this is what God has put in my heart to do. I’m confident of this, and even though I’m afraid at times, I can’t curl up like a pill bug because I don’t want to leave home.

But choosing the high road doesn’t keep all my anxiety at bay. It just means that I lay down my own agenda and fears for the sake of doing what I believe God is asking of me. I have stretched in these areas a great deal, but I’m not sure that it will ever be easy for me to step on a bus or board a plane at the expense of being away from so much I hold dear. But this is where the fight for freedom comes in. In obedience and trust there is liberty. It doesn’t mean that everything is suddenly better for me, but that my fears don’t dictate my decisions. It’s not that I don’t fear, it’s just that my fears aren’t the controlling factor.

Freedom in Christ is similar, at least in my experience. Again, I think we as a Christian community do ourselves (and others) a great disservice when we promote the idea that freedom from our struggles is an instantaneous event, a one-time moment of deliverance. Paul’s statement in Galatians 5:1 — “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free” — refers to the instantaneous part: Jesus Christ hung on a cross to bear the sins of the world in order to secure our eternal freedom. But the second part of Paul’s statement cautions us that day-to-day freedom in our mortal bodies is something we must vigorously protect. We must hold our ground so we do not slip back under the heavy burdens that hold us captive.

Maintaining our soul-freedom is up to us. Based on my own experience as well as the experiences of those who are farther down the road than I am, it’s a lifelong battle. It is supposed to be hard. Acknowledging that challenge relieves me because it is far more stressful to think that being a Christian guarantees automatic victory or immediate deliverance from something that we will never have to work at again — especially considering the fact that I have never been able to accomplish this struggle-free way of life. Yet this incorrect way of thinking continues to be propagated and has led to the destruction of many Christians who are sincere followers of Christ but have had to work desperately hard for their freedom.

Walking freely is not about walking without struggle; it is about walking without our struggles controlling us. As we are transformed into the image of Christ and continue to be obedient, I think that certain things become — dare I say — easier. Our gnawing fears and addictions and our wayward tendencies aren’t so overpowering. I think we develop a greater capacity to trust God each time we step out in faith and overcome our urges to act otherwise. We may walk with a limp, but we walk nonetheless.

Does this not reflect the story of the thorn in Paul’s side that God refused to take away? Or of Mephibosheth, who was lame but sat at the king’s table? Or of Moses, who stuttered but did not allow his impediment to keep him from obeying God and confronting Pharaoh? These people were not free of weighty problems, but they did not succumb to them in the end. That is the victory I am seeking in my own life.