Year of Wholeness [Part I]
As I have done for the past few years, I prayerfully consider a word to mark my year. This year, due to the state of my mind, body, and spirit, I chose wholeness. 2019 is the year of wholeness: The year my body is restored to health, my mind is recommitted to peace, and my soul reconnects with the restored body and peaceful mind. The year I choose to listen to myself, to my gut. The year I resist the drug of striving for excellence and the high that comes from affirmations of such. The year I join a support group to help me recover from workaholism.
This may look like taking up the cross of truth-telling. For others, it may appear that I am laying down the cross of the art-of-making-others-happy. I am not going to throw church decorum out of the window, but I am asking that he stay on the porch and not in this house where I’m writing.
The New Oxford American Dictionary defines “wholeness” as “the state of forming a complete and harmonious whole; unity; the state of being unbroken and undamaged.” That’s what I am saying “yes” to! Therefore, I am saying “no” to engaging in that which damages and requires me to regularly be in the presence of toxicity.
During the summer of 2018, I began to feel stirrings that I would leave my job as an associate pastor. I had occupied this role for nearly five years, and it was feeling like there was a time for the shift. No specific incident led to this. I simply had a strong sense that it was time for me to do something new. Some will say I hit a ceiling of sorts. Others called it burnout. I sought out a spiritual director to help me work through what I had so strongly sensed and discerned as next steps. This was one of the greatest steps that I took towards wholeness—six months before I knew that I would begin a journey of this theme.
A few months later, I began having chest pains, hives, daily welts, and internal shingles. My primary care physician and nurse practitioner kept telling me that it was stress. The former told me to cut back on caffeine. The latter told me to take Benadryl daily. “I work hard, juggle multiple projects and have done so for years—I know how to rise above stress.” I was introduced to adrenal fatigue who showed me that I could not easily overcome stress by producing more, which had been my usual antidote when overwhelmed.
I am not blaming anyone. The lack of wholeness is reflective of a system that is sick—I will explain this more later in the series. The hope is that the communities we are in will call out our failure in this area and even provide support for moving towards wholeness. My community was not oblivious (several dear ones called it out). Some team members who I worked with lacked the confidence and skills to know how to support a woman in leadership. They loved and affirmed me in incredible ways, yet some seemed to hope that I would look to outsiders and other women for support. There was a colleague who would make demands that were unreasonable and beyond the boundaries of my role (which says a lot because I maintained 3-4 roles). Instead of dealing with the inappropriate behavior, (and the repercussions of my grievances), I knew my time would soon be up so I pushed past the aggressions. I am not telling this story to demonize anyone; but with the hope that sharing will help others call out the circumstances that break, damage and disrupt harmony in their lives. I am sharing for the purpose of encouraging others to push towards wholeness even when it seems beyond their grasps.
Moreover, I hope that you will help those who lead you to listen to their bodies when they are living in overdrive. Caring means that we do not wait idly for our friends and colleagues to have a revelation of self-care while we take notice of their symptoms of burnout and toxicity. There are times when we should not make it our mantra to "mind our own business" and just pray for our friends to make necessary changes. Our support and insights, when compassionately shared, may be what our friends need in order to find the stepping stones towards wholeness (that often involves practical moves, but have been overshadowed by all of the things that we think that we need to get done before taking these steps). I had an incredible support system, yet I was not always willing to tell the truth (not just to others but to myself).
The focus of your year may not be the same as mine, but it is my prayer that God uses this series of testimony and truth-telling to shine light on your path towards greater wholeness.
“THOU ART MADE FOR WHOLENESS, BODY, MIND, SPRIT: ONE CREATIVE SYNTHESIS,
MOVING IN PERFECT HARMONY WITHIN, WITHOUT,
WITH FELLOW MAN AND NATURE ALL AROUND
TO MAKE HEAVEN WHERE HELL IS FOUND.”
- HOWARD THURMAN