Becoming Wholehearted
In Luke 10:27, Jesus was asked what the greatest commandment was, and He answered,
"Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind...and love your neighbor as yourself."
I've heard that verse for years. I've taught that verse. I've memorized that verse.
But somewhere along the way I noticed something I'd somehow never really paid attention to before.
Jesus actually mentions three relationships.
Obviously we're called to love God.
And obviously we're called to love other people.
In fact, we’ve probably heard it summed up as Jesus summed up the whole Bible with ‘love God and love others’. And yes, that is true.
But tucked right into the middle is this assumption that we're also learning how to love ourselves.
Now before anybody hears that through twenty-first century ears and thinks I'm about to tell you to put yourself first or become self-absorbed, that's not what I mean at all.
Listen to the verse again: love others as yourself…but what if you’re not loving yourself and I don’t mean have gooey feelings about yourself…I mean treating yourself the way you’d treat others.
I'm talking about stewardship—being responsible for the person God made you to be.
Because I think there's a huge difference between loving yourself because you're obsessed with yourself and caring well for yourself because you've been entrusted with a life that belongs to God.
Those are two very different things.
I think that's also why Proverbs says, "Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it." (Proverbs 4:23)
It doesn't say guard everybody else's heart. It doesn't say fix everybody else's heart. It says guard your own, because everything in your life flows out of it.
The older I get, the more convinced I become that wholehearted living isn't selfish... It's stewardship.
Think about it this way.
If I'm exhausted all the time, I'm probably not very patient with my husband. (Don’t ask him, you can just take my word for it, lol.)
If I never spend any time with Jesus, eventually I'm running on fumes spiritually.
If I'm carrying wounds that I've never addressed, those wounds eventually show up in my friendships, and in every other area of my life.
If I never rest, eventually my body reminds me that I'm not actually invincible and I’ll hit a wall.
Everything is connected.
I think sometimes we divide ourselves into little compartments.
Here's my spiritual life.
Here's my work life.
Here's my emotional life.
Here's my physical health.
Here's my friendships.
Here’s my future.
But God doesn't look at us that way.
He created all of us. He cares about all of us.
That's one of the reasons I love the little book of 3 John. John writes,
"Dear friend, I pray that you may enjoy good health and that all may go well with you, even as your soul is getting along well."
I love that picture because it reminds me that God isn't interested in one part of me flourishing while the rest of me quietly falls apart.
He wants us to become whole women. Not perfect women. Whole women.
And isn't that exactly what Jesus invites us into when He says, "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest...for My yoke is easy and My burden is light." (Matthew 11:28-30)
Jesus never glorifies exhaustion. He never applauds burnout. Instead, He invites weary people to come to Him and find rest. In fact, time and again, Jesus either steps away from the crowds, as in from ministry, from what we would assume was his calling, to rest and pray…and over and over again we read that he told his friends to come away with him.
One of my favorite ideas actually comes from Al-Anon, a recovery group for people whose lives are affected by an alcoholic.
As I’ve shared, years ago I was married to an alcoholic, and Al-Anon ended up becoming one of the greatest gifts God ever gave me. It changed the way I think about relationships, boundaries, responsibility, and honestly...life.
There's a concept they talk about called your acre.
Originally they describe it as your emotional acre, but over the years I've expanded it in my own mind because I think it applies to our whole lives.
Imagine that the day you were born, God handed you an acre.
Not a literal piece of land.
An acre that represents your entire life.
Your relationship with Him.
Your heart. Your mind. Your emotions. Your body. Your gifts. Your friendships. Your future. Your dreams. Your time.
Everything that makes you uniquely you.
When you're little, your parents are tending two acres at the same time.
They're taking care of their own lives, but they're also helping care for yours.
They're teaching you how to brush your teeth and tie your shoes and say you're sorry and tell the truth and spend money and work hard and love people. Hopefully they're also teaching you how to know and love Jesus.
Now, none of our parents do this perfectly.
Mine certainly didn't. Yours didn't.
And if someday you become a parent, you won't either.
I once heard someone say that as parents, we both help and hurt our children, and I think that's probably true.
We hand them some beautiful things they'll keep forever.
And we accidentally hand them a few things that, over time, they'll realize don't really belong in their lives.
But somewhere along the way, something begins to change.
Little by little, your parents start backing out the side gate of your acre.
They don't stop loving you. They don't stop cheering you on. Hopefully they don't stop praying for you.
But they slowly begin handing you the responsibility for your own life.
And I think that's one of the biggest transitions that happens during your twenties.
You wake up one day and realize...
Nobody can spend time with Jesus for me.
Nobody can choose my friends for me.
Nobody can decide how I spend my free time.
Nobody can apply for a job for me.
Nobody can make me ask for help when I'm struggling.
Nobody can decide whether I keep dating someone who's unhealthy.
Nobody can decide what I feed my mind, how I use my body, what I do with my gifts, or what kind of woman I'm becoming.
This acre...It's mine now.
And honestly, I don't find that discouraging. I find it incredibly hopeful.
Because it means that every small, ordinary decision we each make matters.
When I first learned this idea in Al-Anon, I remember reading Galatians 6 and thinking, "Paul is talking about acres."
He writes, "Each one should test their own actions...without comparing themselves to someone else, for each one should carry their own load." (Galatians 6:4-5)
We are to carry our own load, girls.
In other words, pay attention to your own life. Be responsible for what God has entrusted to you. Don't spend your life looking over the fence.
Every time I choose forgiveness over bitterness, I'm tending my acre.
Every time I choose honesty over pretending, I'm tending my acre.
Every time I spend time with Jesus, go for a walk, call a friend, ask for help, or get a good night's sleep, I'm tending the life God has entrusted to me.
The other thing I love about this picture is that it reminds me what is not my responsibility.
We'll talk more about relationships next week, but one of the greatest temptations in life is to spend all of our time looking over the fence.
We compare our acre to someone else's.
Or we judge someone else's acre.
Or we spend all our energy trying to fix someone else's acre.
Meanwhile, our own life quietly needs our attention.
If we're walking closely with Jesus and faithfully tending the life He's entrusted to us, we'll have plenty to do without trying to manage everybody else's.
So the question becomes... What does it actually look like to tend your acre?
Because I don't want tonight to stay theoretical.
I don't want you to leave thinking, Okay...I should take better care of myself, without having any idea what that actually looks like.
I want to answer that by telling you what it looks like in my own life, but before I do, I want to say something really important.
Please don't compare your rhythms to mine.
I'm fifty-five years old. I'm an empty nester. I work mostly from home. My life is much quieter than yours. Honestly, the last time my life looked this quiet, I was about your age, right before I had children.
Then I spent more about twenty-five years in a completely different season. I was raising two kids, working at church, leading women's ministry, speaking, writing, traveling, trying to survive a difficult marriage, walking through divorce, becoming a single mom, remarrying...there wasn't nearly as much margin as there is now.
Life has seasons.
So if you leave here tonight thinking, "Beth spends thirty minutes with Jesus every morning and walks every day and gets away by herself every year and I can barely get my laundry done," you've missed the point.
This isn't about copying somebody else's rhythms.
It's about asking, "Lord, what would help me tend my acre well in this season?"
Maybe you'll hear one thing tonight and think, "I could do that."
That's enough.
One of the things I try to do twice a year is get away by myself for a couple of days. I usually end up somewhere along Lake Michigan with my Bible, my journal, a stack of books, and my walking shoes.
People always ask me what I do on those retreats, and honestly...I mostly think. I pray. I walk. I journal. I’ll reread my journals from the past several months because you can see patterns that you can’t always see in the day to day. Sometimes I cry. Sometimes I laugh because I realize how ridiculous I've been. I take stock of my life.
I ask myself questions like, How is my life actually working right now? What's bringing me life? What's draining me? Where have I seen God this year? What keeps surfacing that maybe I need to pay attention to?
I've been doing that for close to twenty years now, and I honestly don't know who I would be without those little retreats. They remind me that my life is worth paying attention to.
Then there are the quieter rhythms that happen throughout the month and throughout the week.
I have a couple of girlfriends I've been doing life with for years. Sometimes we meet in person. Sometimes we jump on Zoom. We don't always solve each other's problems, but we remind each other that we're not alone.
I've also been in and out of therapy since I was twenty years old and I’m currently in a therapy season.
Can I just say something? If you ever find yourself wondering whether you should go to counseling, my answer would be yes. I see zero downsides to therapy.
Not because you're falling apart.
Because it's incredibly healthy to have a wise, objective person helping you understand yourself a little better.
I've never once left a counseling session thinking, "Well, that was a waste of time."
I've usually left thinking, "I wish I'd understood this ten years ago."
Then there are the ordinary, everyday things.
Every morning I spend time with Jesus.
That has looked different in different seasons. There were years when my kids were little and my quiet time was interrupted every three minutes. There were years when I was simply surviving.
But here's what I've learned.
My quiet time isn't another thing to check off my list.
It's the place where I remember who I am, and whose I am.
I also walk for an hour pretty much every morning. I walk because I've learned something about myself. When I move my body, I think more clearly. When I think more clearly, I'm calmer.
When I'm calmer... I'm nicer to people. And though I’m not trying to live to be a hundred, I want to take care of the body God has given me, and so I can feel as good as I can each day.
I also try to protect my sleep, put my phone away at night, I read every day, I spend time with people who bring me life and joy, and pay attention to when I'm starting to run on empty.
None of those things earn me one ounce more of God's love. Not one.
They're simply ways I've learned to tend my specific acre.
Also, the thing about all of these, what some would call disciplines: they are all part of my routine. I don’t decide every morning: hmm, do I feel like taking a walk? (when it’s 90 and gross, the answer would be no, so I’ve already decided I’m going to). Or, should I spend time with Jesus this morning? Well, if I have an appointment, I might rather skip that to get going with my morning. So, it’s just decided. It’s just encoded into my morning. As in, I get up early enough that I can do all of these things that are important to me.
You know, this actually reminds me of a story from when I was little.
I must have been about four years old, and we were standing in a drugstore. I wanted some toy—I have absolutely no idea what it was—but I remember my mom telling me we didn't have enough money for it.
And in all the wisdom of a four-year-old, I looked at her and said, "Well...why don't you just write a check?"
It made perfect sense to me. As far as I knew, checks were magic. You just wrote one whenever you wanted something.
Now obviously, that's not how checks work.
You can't keep writing checks if there's nothing in the account to back them up.
And somewhere along the way, I've realized that as women, we do this all the time. And you will see this as your responsibilities start to add up over the next decade or so.
We write emotional checks. Spiritual checks. Physical checks.
We keep saying yes. We keep giving. We keep showing up. We keep pouring ourselves out.
We keep telling ourselves we'll rest later, we'll deal with that hurt later, we'll spend time with Jesus later, we'll ask for help later.
And then one day we wonder why we feel so exhausted, anxious, discouraged, or disconnected.
It's because we've been writing checks that our hearts no longer have the resources to cash.
And I don't think that's what God wants for us. I think He invites us into something much gentler.
Much healthier. Much more wholehearted.
Because when we're faithfully tending the life He's entrusted to us, we're not just healthier for our own sake.
We're healthier for everyone we love.
And that's where I want to go next...
One of the reasons I love this picture of our acre so much is because it also reminds me of what isn't my responsibility.
When I first heard this concept years ago in Al-Anon, I realized I had spent an awful lot of my life looking over the fence.
Sometimes I was comparing my acre to somebody else's.
"She's farther along than I am."
"She seems happier."
"Her marriage looks easier."
"She already has the career I want."
"Why does she get that and I don't?"
Comparison has always been around, but I honestly think it's harder now than it's ever been. You can pick up your phone at any moment and within about thirty seconds convince yourself that everybody else's life is moving along just fine while yours feels stuck.
One friend gets engaged.
Another gets the promotion.
Someone else buys a house.
Someone is traveling through Europe.
Someone seems to have the perfect Bible study, the perfect friendships, the perfect apartment, the perfect wardrobe.
And if we're not careful, we'll spend so much time looking at everybody else's acre that ours quietly becomes overgrown.
The writer of Hebrews says we're to "run with perseverance the race marked out for us." (Hebrews 12:1-2) I love that because it reminds me that God hasn't asked me to run her race. He's asked me to faithfully run mine. Every time I spend more energy looking at someone else's lane than staying in my own, I lose sight of where He's actually leading me.
The other thing we do is we don't just compare—we try to manage other people's acres.
We think, If my parents would just...
If my boyfriend would just...
If my roommate would just...
If my boss would just...
And before we know it, we've spent so much emotional energy trying to change everyone around us that we've neglected the one life God actually asked us to steward.
One of the greatest gifts Al-Anon ever gave me was helping me understand the difference between responsibility and control.
I'm responsible for me. You're responsible for you.
That's actually incredibly freeing.
Because I can't make another person choose wisdom.
I can't make someone heal.
I can't make someone love me.
I can't make someone become emotionally healthy.
But I can choose whether I'm becoming emotionally healthy.
I can choose whether I'm spending time with Jesus.
I can choose whether I'm telling the truth.
I can choose whether I'm asking for help.
I can choose whether I'm forgiving.
I can choose whether I'm growing.
I can choose what I eat, whether I exercise, who I’m going to stay in a relationship with, who gets access to my heart.
Those things belong inside my acre.
And honestly, if I'm faithfully tending the life God has entrusted to me, I don't have a whole lot of extra energy left to spend judging, rescuing, fixing, or comparing myself to everyone else.
I also think this matters so much in your twenties because this is the first decade where almost everything suddenly becomes your responsibility, like we talked about last week with your decisions. Your decisions are yours. And so is almost everything else.
Up until now, someone else has probably been steering a lot of your life.
Parents. Teachers. Coaches. College schedules.
Someone was always handing you the next thing.
Now you're deciding.
You're deciding what kind of woman you're going to become.
You're deciding what kind of friendships you'll cultivate.
You're deciding whether you'll walk with Jesus because your parents did, or because you actually want to know Him yourself.
You're deciding how you'll spend your money, your weekends, your attention, your energy.
That's a lot.
And honestly, it can feel overwhelming.
But here's the good news.
You don't have to figure out your whole life this week.
You don't have to become the woman you hope to be by next Tuesday.
You simply get to ask yourself one question over and over again:
"What's one small way I can tend my acre today?"
Maybe tomorrow it's going for a walk instead of scrolling for another hour.
Maybe it's texting a friend you've been meaning to encourage.
Maybe it's finally making the counseling appointment you've been thinking about for months.
Maybe it's turning your phone off thirty minutes earlier.
Maybe it's opening your Bible even when you don't particularly feel like it and reading a Psalm.
Maybe it's apologizing.
Maybe it's resting.
Maybe it’s saying yes to that opportunity.
Or maybe it's saying no.
Small things matter because small things become rhythms, and rhythms become the people we're becoming.
One of the things I've learned over the years is that life is rarely changed by one giant decision.
It's usually changed by hundreds of ordinary ones.
It's Tuesday mornings. It's Thursday afternoons.
It's the little choices nobody else sees.
Those are the choices that quietly shape a life.
And isn't that encouraging?
Because it means you don't have to overhaul your whole life tonight.
You don't have to leave here with seventeen new habits.
You don't need a color-coded planner and a perfectly curated morning routine.
You just need to pay attention.
Pay attention to your heart.
Pay attention to your relationship with Jesus.
Pay attention to what you're feeding your mind. Paul tells us in Philippians 4:8 to think about whatever is true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent, and praiseworthy. What we consistently allow into our minds eventually shapes our hearts, and our hearts shape our lives.
Pay attention to what gives life and what slowly drains it away.
Pay attention to the places where God might be gently inviting you to become a little healthier, a little freer, a little more whole.
Because remember where we started.
Week one wasn't about trying harder. It was about living loved.
Everything we've talked about these past three weeks grows out of that one truth.
You are already completely loved by God.
You don't tend your acre so that God will love you more. He couldn't.
You tend your acre because He already does.
You don't spend time with Jesus to earn His approval.
You spend time with Him because He's the One who reminds you who you are.
You don't take care of your body because you're trying to become perfect.
You take care of it because it's the one body He's entrusted to you.
You don't ask for help because you've failed.
You ask for help because healthy people know they were never meant to do life alone.
And someday, years from now, I hope you look back on your twenties and realize they weren't primarily the years when you figured everything out. Because you won’t and you can’t and I haven’t yet.
I hope they're the years when you began faithfully tending the life God entrusted to you. These are the years where you start to lay the foundation for the rest of your life. And trust me when I say that starting a habit in your 20s is about a gazillion times easier than starting a good habit in your 30s or 40s or 50s.
I really believe that is what wholehearted living looks like.
It’s not perfection. It’s not performance.
It’s absolutely not having it all together.
Just faithfully tending your own acre...walking with the Lord…asking him what he wants you to do… one ordinary day at a time.
Before You Go...
Thank you for spending a few minutes with me.
If this article met you where you are today, I hope you'll continue exploring.
Whether through books, conversations, courses, or the podcast, my prayer is that you'll discover more hope, more healing, and the freedom that comes from becoming wholehearted.
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