Wholeheartedness: Working out a Definition

My leaders asked me if I could be wholehearted in the rest of the internship. They doubted my ability to be so under the circumstances. They wanted to know how I was going to make it happen. If I couldn’t be wholehearted then I should leave.

In my history with them I had questioned leadership. I had watched painful dynamics and harbored offense. But I took care of my offense. I let Y’shua cleanse my soul of its anger and pride and control. I released and I went back. I wanted to learn to bless and make things work. So although there had been moments in the past when I was shut down and not fully present, on that day I can say I was wholehearted. I had broken trust. I had remaining questions. But I wanted to find reconciliation. I was there with my honesty trying to work things out. But they interpreted my position as a lack of wholeheartedness.

I was reading again today in Ann Voskamp’s One Thousand Gifts. I found these words: “When I fully enter time’s swift current, enter into the current moment with the weight of all my attention, I slow the torrent with the weight of me all here. I can slow the torrent by being all here. I only live the full life when I live fully in the moment. And when I’m always looking for the next glimpse of glory, I slow and enter…Giving thanks for one thousand things is ultimately an invitation to slow time down with weight of full attention.” Next to these words in the margin I wrote, being wholehearted. And something in my spirit broke and wept.

I’m not on the farm anymore. It’s been nearly two weeks since I left. The Lord released and moved me on, along with several of the girls in my house. We have pitched a refugee camp at my parent’s for the time being. And I find that Y’shua has rescued and safeguarded my heart for the second time this year. He has brought me to a good place. And yet today I felt a sting at the thought of my leaders’ words and insinuations. You have been not been wholehearted.

But I believe they carried a misperception about the definition of wholeheartedness. Their version of being wholehearted equaled utter compliance, and a cheery countenance as I did so. My questions were unacceptable. They could be infectious, spreading doubt. They made me rebellious. But I wasn’t being rebellious. I wasn’t even demanding answers anymore. I was honestly sharing where I was at, refusing to lie, to put on a fake mask and pretend like everything was okay when it wasn’t. And they thought that wasn’t wholehearted.

But it was. It has to be. There’s this unspoken assumption in Christian culture that being whole means you have all your wounds and messy, broken spots healed, completely resolved, tidily assembled. Then you can be whole. But if that’s true then none of us are whole. Not a human being in the entirety of history—with the exception of the one that was also God. And if none of us are whole then why all this talk and striving towards being whole?

Because being whole is something completely different. A friend shared this perspective with me a few months ago and my mind keeps going back to ponder it over:

Being whole doesn’t mean you’re not broken. It means getting to a point where your brokenness doesn’t hinder your ability to be fully present.

That’s what Voskamp was getting at—slowing down time to be fully present. Being grateful for the present moment so you can actually be in it and enjoy it rather than obsessing over what it is not and missing out completely. She writes, “I have lived the runner, panting ahead in worry, pounding back in regrets, terrified to live in the present, because here-time asks me to do the hardest of all: just open wide and receive.”

Being wholehearted means bringing every piece of yourself to bear on the present moment. Every part. The perfect and the imperfect. So my issues are still over here on the side, those things I keep mulling over and asking the Lord to finish healing—my pride, my wounding, my grasping for control—but I can still bring myself to this moment and be present with you and not completely absorbed in myself. I can still function and thrive and be alive and contribute to the kingdom while the Lord is still renewing what is not yet fully right within me. And that is good news. For all of us.

Being wholehearted includes questions. It has to. If I have them, then I am not being wholehearted to keep those tucked away in preservation of an atmosphere that is neat and tidy and religiously politically correct. So in that moment with my leaders the most wholehearted thing I could do was sit there with my questions, open-handed, and be honest about who I was. Wholeheartedness means we stop pretending and we be real. It means people are more important than appearances or programs. It means performance has to go out the window—sayonara, you’ve been a bad friend to us. When those things aren’t true the setting is ripe for spiritual abuse, legalism, and religion that’s just that—a religion.

There are people that aren’t going to agree with me. They might make assumptions about my heart and my motivations. They may decide I was lacking in willingness, immature, or simply being rebellious. But that’s between them and God. My job is to let their judgments go. Y’shua, you know my heart. You be my judge. I stand before you unashamed, clothed in my Beloved and His righteousness. Before Him I am always wholehearted.