April 10, 2018

I have been on a journey the last few years. I had been calling it a healing journey, but Kelly Flanagan in his book, Lovable, has challenged me to call it being wholed. I resonate with that because I often pray Shalom over myself and others. The Hebrew word, Shalom, is often linked to the word peace but it is so much more than that, it is wholeness, integrity, completeness, perfection.

I am not writing from an attitude of wholeness today. I feel anything but whole, complete or perfect. But it does not really matter how I feel about it! My true self is whole, complete, full of integrity and perfect!

“In the first act of life, we begin to overcome the disunity at the center of our self, which was wrought by our shame. We embrace the confused and lost little one in us, we return to our worthy and good-enough soul, and we come back into union with the divine spark underneath our underneath. We coalesce around our true self.” KF

I started painting with my daughter during the time my husband and I were separated. We have continued this activity together and it has been wholing. I painted this the other evening. I have been intensely wrestling with God concerning my purpose and my passion. It feels like there is nothing left to squeeze out of me, nothing else to burn, waiting for the “who I am on the inside and what I do on the outside to become one”.

The separateness we feel is truly an illusion and I am easily convinced by it when I see how I behave sometimes or when I look at my circumstances. But the truth is, I am whole and complete and perfect. I have a life full of meaning that is repeatedly being pulled free from shame and into my divine purpose. That is my true self.