I is for INDEPENDENCE

I remember the first time I was allowed to ride my bicycle to school on my own. Many times previously I had ridden off from the back door out through the gates and up to the top of out hill, even down the other way along the lane towards the church, but this was different. For this time, when I left the safety of home, I didn't stop at the top of the hill, but kept on going down onto the main road and beyond, in the direction of school just about a mile and a half away. Such a new sense of freedom to be using the same highway as all the other traffic users, passing the row of cottages, the pub at the corner, the sprinkling of neighbouring houses and up the steep hill they call McDowell's, a road I had viewed hundreds of times before from the passenger seat of dad's car. Then it was down the shallow incline, past the broken wire fence that marked one boundary of the local football pitch, past the police station that was home to two officers and their families, before commencing the much steeper hill that finished at the church and then downhill all the way to the school gates. There wasn't much traffic in the mornings or even on the afternoon return journey but I'm pretty sure, despite my new found independence, mum watched long at the kitchen window until I was safely up the big hill and into the village. Now, when some of my own pupils, travel the same route, mum or dad follows about ten yards behind in the family car just to ensure safe arrival, so I guess you could call that a form of semi-independence and it's understandable with the great increase in traffic even on formerly quiet country roads.Anyway, it was my first shot at being independent and deep down, I suppose the folks at home knew that it wouldn't be the last step that I would take away from the nest, until one day, I wouldn't return.

How you view independence depends on which side of the fence you sit. As a teenager , it was an opportunity to be with my own friends, choose my own clothes, go to be when I decided, get up in the afternoon if I wanted, earn my own money, make decisions about how I spent it, watch what I liked on television, choose my future wife and decide where to go on holiday. Later on, independence would mean deciding on a career, choosing where to live, organise buying or building a home, having children, purchasing a car and even saving for the future when I was maybe less independent. I'm sure mum and dad viewed some of my actions as not exactly the way they would have done things but it was my life and though they offered advice, sometimes more strongly than others, I guess they knew that the ultimate decision would probably be mine. But you know, even with all that freedom, you never really have full independence, for there is a certain degree in all of us of wanting to keep the fifth commandment that tells us to honour our fathers and mothers.

Now that I sit on the other side of the line, I realise how important it was that mum and dad allowed me to have that degree of independence, to learn from the errors I made along the way and the very fact that they were supportive to me has been a good example in helping me, hopefully, to be of a similar support to the lads as they grow up. And while we both have watched them through all the stages of increasingly not being dependent on their mum and dad, including the solo bike thing, going out with their friends, driving their own cars, learning how to handle their own finances, we both know that while we are around they still hold on to a certain amount of dependency on home, even if it is only to get clothes washed, a Sunday dinner or a place of quietness and solitude away from the hectic lives that they both seem to lead. And that greater degree of maturity and independence now gives them the confidence to make important decisions on which they can reflect, right down to deciding where they will worship and in what they exactly believe.

However the one area of life that I can't be independent about is my spiritual existence because I depend on God for my salvation and for providing me with the strength and the weapons for the spiritual battle. As the Psalmist writes 'My salvation and my honor depend on God ; he is my mighty rock, my refuge.' And while God allows us to be independent creations with our own free will, HE knows that the only real satisfaction to be found is when we become dependent on Him for all our needs. On this Good Friday I am even more aware of the price He has paid so that I might be reunited with Him. Independently, I can't make heaven without Him and though I often wander away from Him, He is always there when I realise my mistake and return to the closeness and guidance that only He can bring.

Many people think independence brings liberation. But it's dependence on God where we find true freedom.