living harmoniously
I have a section in the front of my journal that I write quotes or sayings that I hear or read along the way and this week, as I was looking for something else, I came across this one…‘Wholeness is all the parts of you working in harmony.’I’m pretty sure I got this from Dr D, my gentle, patient counselor who has walked this long, healing path with me. It caught me afresh today though because I have been thinking a lot about wholeness recently, as it relates to freedom. Earlier this year I experienced the ‘coming together’ of parts of me that had lived fragmented for a very long time. As I look back to that day, it’s kinda crazy because those 50 minutes in the same blue chair didn’t look much different than any of my other appointments. In fact, Dr D didn’t even know at the time just how important our time together had been, until I contacted him later and filled him in on it. But something in me shifted, or came together in a way that I knew I was changed.I believe this is when the parts of me began a new rhythm. A rhythm of wholeness. Working together in harmony, rather than working fragmented or independently.
S
M
XL
L
I’m a summer girl all the way through. I love the sunshine with all my heart! haha I love the smell of summer, I love waking up to the sun shining everyday, I love to lay out in the sun, I love summer food… To me, everything is better when the sun is out. But, I live in the Northwest because my hubby loves it here. And as my fellow “northwesterners" know, we don’t get very many months of sunshine…cue many tears!! So, when the sun disappears and the grey cloud coverage moves in, I like to do puzzles. I love when you pour the puzzle out on the table and it looks like a complete mess and then you begin the process of sorting. Everyone has their own system, but I like to start with identifying the edge pieces. I give myself a structure and then I can begin to fill in the middle.This messy pile of pieces is picture that comes to mind when I think of the opposite of wholeness. Fragmented parts that were intended to be a part of the whole, operating independently of each other. That’s not to say that you can’t look at a piece by itself and see the uniqueness of it and enjoy the beauty of it, but it makes much more sense and its beauty becomes more expansive when it is fitting in as a part of the whole.The word integrated means—combining or coordinating separate elements so as to provide a harmonious, interrelated whole.There it is!! This is what wholeness means…to be integrated, parts working in harmony with one another. In the past, whenever I thought of the word whole, I knew it wasn’t a word that described me, in fact, I felt like the complete opposite of whole. But rather than seeing it as the parts of me living in disharmony, I perceived myself as broken. The opposite of wholeness, to me, had to be brokenness. And because I viewed myself as such, it added to my sadness and along with it, came shame. And until I was able to see myself without shame, I was unable to have the grace I needed for myself that would make room for hope.Brene Brown said, “If we can share our story with someone who responds with empathy and understanding, shame can't survive.”Oh Brene, how true I have found this to be!!! I have found myself in the company of others who have bathed me with empathy and understanding. Others who were willing to sit with me in my fractured state and show me the opposite of what I felt. And their very presence, was vital to the demise of the shame that had moved into my heart.Let’s go back to the day that everything shifted for me, I’ve been referring to this as my “freedom day”. And what I mean is, freedom in the sense that I’ve been freed to function more closely to my Creator’s intended design for me. Free to live in a place where the parts of me are working together more often than not, rather than functioning with their own agendas of protection or defense. They no longer need to defend against anything because there is more of me now. And when those old fragmented parts of me begin to move in their old ways of defending or protecting, I am able to see it more clearly and remind myself that there is no longer danger. The role that they played for so long, which at one time helped me, is no longer necessary. This is the freedom that I’m talking about!Ecclesiastes 3:7 says there is a time to tear apart and a time to sew together.When I first walked in the door to counseling, my focused time of tearing and sewing, I had one request…kill the part of me that felt like it was holding me captive and keeping me from abundant life. That felt like a reasonable request. Just get rid of it! From the very beginning Dr D’s plan for me was not to destroy any part of me, but to bring together all the parts of me. Even those that I felt hostile towards. When he responded to my request with the idea that there might be another option of loving those parts of me, I knew I was in for a ton of work. I was either going to have to adopt his theory or convince him that mine was best. It was worth every last minute of work for him to assure me that his method was the most life giving option. In my small thinking, I believed that killing this part of me off would be better than breathing life into her. I’m so grateful to have had other voices to tell me otherwise and love me through it.Shame fragments, it separates us and makes us feel broken. And when it gets ushered out the door, our hearts are freed up to hear the song of the One who created us. Our Bridegroom is beckoning us into the rhythm of harmonious living and invites us to reconnect to the dance we were made for. Let’s grab hold of his hand and let Him lead us to the dance floor and get swept up into the music of the spheres with the One who knit our very beings together to begin with.