feat. The Heartfelt Digital Ensemble
The Story Behind “Real Freedom”
I've always loved true liberty and the genuine, beautiful freedom it brings when it is the lived reality. As a child and young man growing up in rural Michigan in the 1950s and 1960s, I experienced much by way of freedom here in the USA. I knew that my 19-year-old brother, who joined the military, willingly gave up his life in North Korea in 1950, as one of so many who lost their lives so millions of others and I could thrive in freedom. My ancestor came across the dangerous Atlantic Ocean with John Winthrop and others to America from Europe in 1630, to live their lives in liberty and help build a land of real freedom. Even as a kid, I met lots of people from other places in the world who had paid a great price to find a life of freedom.
Then I realized something. As I grew into adulthood, I learned unexpectedly, through several of my own personal experiences and the experiences of so many others I've known, that all of us, even in this "land of the free," are regularly and ongoingly restricted in so many instances regarding our God-given freedom, and we all are, in reality, in constant jeopardy throughout our lives of further being unjustly deprived of one or more aspects of our ongoing freedoms, even in a sudden moment of time.
I, like so many others in the world today, want nothing less than real freedom for myself, my family, and all others I can possibly assist. At 78, I'm still working on and genuinely pursuing that quest. In 2014, I wrote "Real Freedom" to express many things about liberty in one song, including the truth that "freedom isn't free" and "my only choice is liberty."
— Terry Parks
Lyrics
Why would someone roam the earth
Leave behind their place of birth
To seek a place of greater worth
In freedom, real freedom
Why do millions risk their death
Press ahead to their last breath
Leave despair to breathe the air
Of freedom, real freedom
Freedom comes from God for you and me
With a simple truth all down through history
The truth is freedom isn't free
Bless freedom, precious freedom
For freedom many will pay the price
Facing danger, hunger, heat, and snow and ice
They bleed and die, they sacrifice
For freedom, real freedom
Some say goodbye to loved ones dear
To claim their future, face their fear
The call of freedom they can hear
It's freedom, they hear freedom
Stormy oceans so many crossed
In their willingness to bear the cost
Letting go of all they lost
For freedom, real freedom
Freedom comes from God for you and me
With a simple truth all down through history
The truth is freedom isn't free
Bless freedom, precious freedom
For freedom many will pay the price
Facing danger, hunger, heat, and snow and ice
They bleed and die, they sacrifice
For freedom, real freedom
Some think that freedom's price is far too high
Then they pay a greater price as life goes by
Looking back they can only cry
For freedom, cry for freedom
The choice remains today for you and me
Walk in chains or walk in liberty
Suffocate or to breathe free
In freedom, real freedom
So am I willing freedom's price to pay
To be free no matter what others say
To find my place, live every day
In freedom
The answer is so very clear to me
I'll do all it takes so I can live free
My only choice is liberty
It's freedom, real freedom
It's freedom
Real freedom
