Liberate Your Story Podcast

I lived a small story for far too long. A story full of expectations of how I was to conduct myself, how I was to look, how I was to speak, and even what I could desire. I say this is a small story because stories written by others for us to live out are always small. There is no power in the universe comparable to a story that has been liberated from narratives that are meant to define us, define our roles. Narratives meant to keep us in our place.

Liberate means: To set free. Specifically to free from domination by a foreign power.

To set free! What catches my attention here is that liberation is being set free from domination. These are really heavy words, I know. Here’s what I’d like you to consider. What if our coping skills have chosen softer words and phrases because the reality is more than we want to engage?

As I dove into this word, it’s synonym is Free. In the context of liberation, FREE implies a usually permanent removal from whatever binds, confines, entangles or oppresses.

So I just can’t get away from the word liberate as a perfect descriptor for unraveling ourselves from oppressive ideology, beliefs, and practices. This definition also stirs up a different type of response within me when I see myself (or others) in need of liberation from systems/beliefs that keep women small and secondary.

Many of us have participated in a belief system that was patriarchal, misogynistic, and oppressive at one time or another. For me, it was my religious system. It formed for me a God that needed me to be second for the reason of order. It convinced me I was a weaker vessel that caused (and causes) men to sin. It formed a path for me of support and dependence rather than leadership and self-agency. All of this for the simple price of eternal safety from hell. But I kinda think that living that way IS hell. It means I’m suppressing myself for the sake of holy order.

I actually struggled with using the word “liberate” in this podcast. I value deeply the journey other humans have had in liberating from oppression like slavery and dictatorships. I was struggling with equating my experience in religion with the tragedies others have had. I wasn’t sure if linking these two experiences with the word “liberate” was the right thing to do. I had chosen, in part, to be in this community. Those who have experienced slavery have not. So I went to synonyms and other phrases to describe the experience of patriarchal leadership, misogynistic ideology, and oppressive social roles. And I also searched the antonyms to help me find new words. In the end, I came back to this word because it actually described the freedom from these experiences the best. Like I’ve been saying…our language really matters.

When I look at what we are currently debating in America in regards to women’s health, I land back at this word. If she is unable to make decisions regarding her body with the same equality as a man, then she has a foreign power (a power outside of herself) that is making decisions on her behalf. That IS a human rights issue.

When women still aren’t making equal pay for the same or more work, that is domination and inequality.

When we have belief systems that designate one gender for “hard” work and one for “nurturing” work (according to the churches I attended) then we have a patriarchal system that is deciding our value and worth on our behalf. (both genders actually lose on this one but that’s a convo I plan to have on another episode).

I can’t escape the human rights issue when we discuss patriarchy, misogyny, and oppression of women. So I can’t escape the word LIBERATE either.

When I say I want you to be able to Liberate your story, what I’m wanting for you is the opportunity to live in a way that is by your choice and decision. But here’s how that gets complicated.

In my worldview for the first 40 years of my life, I bought into this oppressive ideology. So I wasn’t just freeing myself from a system that oppressed me. I was freeing myself from my own understanding of how the world, and me in it, should be. I was freeing myself from…well…me. Because of the worldview I was born into and grew up in, I had only understood myself in relationship to its rules.

Men work outside the home. Women work inside the home.
Men can be teachers and women can be silent except to children.
Woman caused man to sin and can’t be trusted, therefore I can’t be trusted.
Men are capable of spiritual guidance and leading. Women are designed to be followers of these spiritual leaders.
My body belongs to my future husband. Therefore it is not my own…and since I can’t really be trusted at my core, I need to hide it so as not to cause one of these spiritual leaders to stumble or sin. And I needed to make sure I did not listen to or respond to any bodily desires I had since I couldn’t be trusted.

These are just a few examples of my worldview and life context from a very young age. Because I only knew this one worldview, it was the one I not only lived within but it was also the one I planned my future self within. This small box became the parameters of how I understood myself, where I fit in the world and how I viewed genders.

I happened to marry a man who was a bit less confined than I was. He didn’t grow up with all the same worldviews that I had, particularly in regards to women. But we agreed on enough to make a Christian marriage work. But he treated me differently than I was expecting. He didn’t understand why I had a problem with women teaching men. He didn’t want me to do anything out of duty. He wanted to know what I wanted in life. I wasn’t expecting this experience and it started to challenge what I believed about myself and women’s roles. He had a worldview that was just a bit broader, a bigger box, than mine. It actually didn’t feel very good at first. When we begin to expand or experience someone else’s more expansive worldview, it can feel unsafe. It can feel wrong. It can feel scary. I had a small but safe box to live within.

So although I was contending with an ideology that was oppressive, I was contending with my safety. Liberation doesn’t always feel like a thing that we want. Liberation doesn’t always feel right. Liberation doesn’t always feel like the answer to our inner conflict. It’s just too unknown for some of us.

My husband was a pastor for 10 years in 3 different congregations. So…being a pastor’s wife WAS my identity during those years. Of all the roles to play, this was it. Everything I had been hardwired for was culminating in this one role. And it nearly destroyed me. I lost any sense of who I was because the role was deciding who I should be. I lost sense of my desires because the purity of heart and body was the example I needed to be. It’s the one job in the world that a husband can interview for that also requires an evaluation of his marriage, parenting, wife, kids, money management, and what he drinks. I was always being interviewed too. My daughters and their behavior were being interviewed.
Now…I’m not here to rant about being a Pastor’s wife. Truly. I’m trying to paint a picture of how our culture, worldview, practices, and beliefs (the ones we buy into) can create such oppression that we are no longer free, not even from ourselves.

The curious person that I am had many questions in the midst of this life. My husband and I had a question we would ask together on various topics from theology to dreaming our life plans. We would ask WHAT IF… This little question was my lifeline to liberation. It allowed me to keep expanding how I thought and how I dreamed. It kept curiosity at the forefront.

So what if you could be curious about just one thing that sits outside of your current worldview? Exploring your world, your life, and yourself with a simple “what if” could change how you view yourself in macro and micro shifts. Liberation won’t feel good if you aren’t wanting it. And liberation isn’t possible without expanding our current vantage point. I expanded with each new question. Sometimes they made those monumental shifts that altered how I made a decision or who I had relationships with. But sometimes it was just about acknowledging that I desired something…like choosing a different coffee drink at Starbucks.

Remember that liberation is about freedom from domination. When we have dominating ideology or practices that keep us small or held back, then we must find that sacred space of macro and micro shifts that usher us into our liberation.

I didn’t believe I could write the story of my life in any other way than what my faith system allowed me to. So liberating my story was giving myself the opportunity to choose and to live my story the way I wanted to. And wow….it’s a beautiful story. I feel as though I’ve moved from a black and white silent movie with subtitles to an augmented reality game on my daughter's Oculus. One tells me what the story is and has me experience it as it was written by the screenplay author. The other offers a set of colors and structures that allow me to create the story as I go. I choose the experience I want to have. Guess what I learned? That I could trust the story I was writing. I took my pen back and I will never give it away again.

I am a magnificent creation of talent, thought and life forged by my own doing. I am a liberated story because I chose the story I wanted to live. I faced the powers that be and freed myself from a narrative that kept me small. What story will you live?

When you liberate your worldview, you liberate your story!