Order & Obedience
When I was younger, I believed freedom meant the absence of boundaries. I equated liberty with spontaneity, the ability to wake up and do whatever I pleased without schedules or obligations. Structure, I thought, was for the unimaginative: the meticulous, the boring, the predictable. Yet as I grew, through my legal studies and spiritual formation, I began to understand a truth that our culture fiercely resists: freedom without order is not freedom at all. It is chaos disguised as choice.
We live in an age that worships autonomy. The modern gospel is “follow your truth”, “live without limits”, “break the rules”. Yet anyone who has lived long enough knows that unrestrained autonomy quickly becomes a prison. The person who spends impulsively in the name of “living fully” becomes enslaved to debt. The one who avoids structure in relationships ends up lonely, scattered, and unsure. Even the artist who rejects discipline often finds that creativity diluted, not enhanced. What the modern mind fails to grasp is that the truest freedom, whether moral, intellectual, or creative, is born from discipline, not its absence.
As a law student, I see this principle everywhere. Society itself relies on structure to survive. Laws do not exist to restrict us; they exist to protect us. Without them, justice cannot take form and liberty cannot endure. In the same way, divine law, the order woven into creation itself, is not an arbitrary set of restrictions but a framework for flourishing. It is what allows human freedom to move with purpose instead of chaos. The irony, of course, is that those who rage most against order are often the ones most enslaved to disorder.
One of my professors once remarked that law is simply reason free from passion. I remember bristling at that; it sounded so sterile, so mechanical, so unlike the living world I wanted to inhabit. But over time, I came to understand what he meant. Passion without reason is fire without a hearth; it burns indiscriminately. Emotion, desire, creativity, all need containment to become meaningful. In our personal lives, discipline serves that same role. It gives shape to our desires, direction to our energy, and stability to our spirit. The human mind, like an untended garden, will not grow beauty without boundaries. It will grow weeds, distraction, confusion, anxiety.
I learned this truth in the smallest, most human way: through my mornings. I used to pride myself on being spontaneous. I would wake up when I felt like it, pray when I felt like it, study when I felt inspired. I believed that kind of freedom would make me feel alive. It did not. It made me restless. My mind was scattered, my emotions inconsistent, and my peace nonexistent. Eventually, I began to build order, waking early, beginning with prayer, reading a Psalm before breakfast. No matter how mundane or unglamorous it seemed, I found a quiet strength in that rhythm. It was a small obedience to time itself, and it gave me back something precious: peace of mind. I realised then that discipline is the architecture of peace.
We fear obedience today because we misunderstand it. To many, obedience sounds like subservience, a surrender of individuality. But obedience, properly understood, is the highest expression of strength. In my faith, obedience is not servitude; it is surrender to wisdom greater than one’s own. Christ Himself, perfect, free, divine, chose obedience, even unto death. Why? Because love, in its truest form, always orders itself to the good. To obey truth is not to lose power, but to direct it rightly.
My legal training has helped me grasp this paradox more deeply. To obey the law is not to be constrained by it, but to participate in a greater structure that protects freedom. Law creates predictability, and predictability breeds peace. Likewise, obedience to divine law anchors the soul. It spares us from being at the mercy of our moods and impulses. When I live in obedience to conscience, to faith, to reason, I find that my energy flows more freely because it is no longer wasted on inner conflict. Discipline does not silence the self; it integrates it. It takes all the chaos of one’s inner world and orders it towards purpose.
There is immense beauty in restraint. The world glorifies indulgence and self-expression, but rarely self-control. Yet it is self-control that gives expression meaning. A pianist can only create music because she first submitted to scales. A lawyer can only persuade because he first submitted to logic and form. The freedom of the master comes from the obedience of the apprentice. Freedom, in its purest form, is ordered love: the ability to choose the good, the true, and the beautiful without being enslaved to the impulsive. Without order, creativity scatters itself. With order, it channels itself.
I have seen this vividly in my own creative work. The days when I set aside structured time to write, when I pray first, sit with silence, and treat the task as vocation rather than whim, are the days the words actually flow. And not just words; peace flows too. When your life has rhythm, your soul rests. Peace does not come from endless options; it comes from clarity. It is not the absence of struggle, but the presence of alignment.
In studying law, I have also come to see how structure is a moral good. Jurisprudence distinguishes between positive law, the rules written by men, and natural law, the moral order written by God into human nature. The latter is not something we invent; it is something we discover. When a society drifts from that order, justice loses its anchor. Rights without responsibility devolve into entitlement. Freedom without truth collapses into relativism. The same happens in the soul. When we stop acknowledging higher order, we fall into self-made chaos.
There was a time I struggled with this tension, the conflict between ambition and surrender. As a driven woman, I used to fear that obedience might dull my independence, that structure might make me smaller. But I have since learned that obedience does not erase ambition; it refines it. It purifies desire from ego and reorients it towards service. I have met women who embody this truth: grounded, serene, powerful without aggression. Their strength comes not from rebellion but from reverence. They move through life with rhythm, not noise.
We, however, live in a time allergic to rhythm. The culture prizes flexibility to the point of moral drift. Commitment is treated as constraint, discipline as oppression. The “soft life” ideal, all ease and no sacrifice, promises freedom but delivers fragility. The irony is painful: we are exhausted not because we have too much structure, but because we have none. Every day becomes a negotiation with ourselves, every decision a mental burden. Disorder steals joy because it multiplies choices.
Order, on the other hand, liberates the mind. It frees us from trivial decisions so we can focus on what actually matters, the good, the beautiful, the eternal. It is no accident that the most peaceful people in the world are the most disciplined. Monks, for example, live within rigid structures of silence, prayer, and routine, yet radiate joy and serenity. To the outside world, they appear constrained, but within those boundaries, they are entirely free. They have mastered the art of freedom through obedience.
The same principle holds in ordinary life. A woman who manages her time well, prays consistently, guards her emotions, and sets high standards is not rigid; she is free. Free from chaos, free from manipulation, free from wasting energy on what does not align with her purpose. Her order protects her dignity. It makes her both graceful and formidable.
Discipline, then, is not only an individual virtue; it is a social one. When personal order erodes, societal order follows. A people who cannot govern their passions will eventually invite tyranny, for chaos always demands control. Freedom requires virtue, and virtue requires discipline. The rule of law, the rule of conscience, the rule of reason, all exist to guard us against our own disarray.
When I reflect on my own life, I see clearly that the moments of deepest peace have never come from spontaneity but from structure, from the steady rhythms of study, prayer, and purposeful work. In those moments of order, I am not less alive; I am more myself. I am not controlled; I am free.
To live an ordered life today is an act of rebellion. It is to choose the long game over the easy win, reverence over impulse, vocation over vanity. Order does not kill passion; it preserves it. Obedience does not stifle individuality; it refines it. The women I admire most, whether saints or scholars, share this quiet discipline. They do not chase every feeling. They move with intention. They are modern, but not restless; ambitious, but not frantic; strong, but still. They are anchored.
And that, I think, is the essence of true freedom. Not the power to do whatever we wish, but the peace of knowing where we stand and Who we serve. Structure does not imprison the spirit; it steadies it. It is the quiet law beneath the music, the order beneath the art, the rhythm beneath the prayer.
Freedom without structure is fragility. Obedience without love is slavery. But order, rooted in love, that is where peace lives. And perhaps that is the paradox our modern world has forgotten: that freedom is not found in breaking away, but in bowing rightly. It begins, always, with surrender.
