Becoming
The journey of wholeheartedness
Note: If you would prefer to listen to this article, you can click on the audio above.
I love words. They have a way of both capturing my imagination and orienting me in reality. For the last few months, one word has been lingering, stalking the borders of my mind, whispering in the quiet of my soul—becoming.
I first became conscious of its presence after sending a text message to a group of friends, which included an excerpt from my prayer journal from that morning. These women have known me for years. They’ve known my sins and failings. My struggles and pain. My tragedies and my triumphs. And they’ve shown me God’s love when I’ve struggled to believe in its possibility. At the end of the text message, I wrote, “I am growing in my ability to believe that I am loved, not just pitied, by the Father. Becoming the beloved has been a quiet, slow shift. It’s not an overwhelming feeling or some sudden transformation. Just a slow settling. Something beautiful is in the infant stages of blooming. And I am thankful.”
And there it was. Becoming.
Something about this word supplants striving and invites me to rest. As I’ve held the word close, trying it on, and allowing its message to unfold in me, I’ve begun to ponder the interplay between wholeheartedness and becoming. And I’ve come to understand that becoming is integral to wholeheartedness.
The Wholehearted Project is about the believer's journey to hope, healing, and freedom, which is ultimately wholeheartedness. It is the process of becoming whole. To be whole is to be free from wound or injury, which I am not. It is to be free of defect or impairment, which I am not. It is to be physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually sound, which I am not. Sin—the sins committed against me, the sins I have committed, and the brokenness of the world—have fractured me. The curse of sin has infiltrated every aspect of life, and as a result, I am not whole. None of us are.
To make whole in the legal realm is to pay or award damages sufficient to put the damaged party back into the position she would have been in without the fault of another. The good news of the Gospel is that Christ paid the damages we owed, which has made us positionally (or legally) whole and right with God. But we are not yet whole experientially. We still experience and contribute to the brokenness of this world. But the promise of the Gospel is that we are becoming whole—this is the work of sanctification, redemption, healing, and restoration. God, through Christ, is loving us back to health, to wholeheartedness.
Two of my favorite stories illustrate the journey of wholeheartedness. The first, from the children’s storybook The Velveteen Rabbit by Marjory Williams, is about a velveteen rabbit given to a little boy for Christmas. He is a splendid toy, but all the other toys in the nursery make fun of him and boast of their superiority.
One day, the velveteen rabbit asks an old, worn skin horse, the only toy who is kind to him, “What is real?”
The wise old skin horse responds, “Real isn’t how you are made . . . It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.”
“Does it hurt?” asked the Rabbit.
“Sometimes,” said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. “When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt.”
“Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,” he asked, “or bit by bit?”
“It doesn’t happen all at once,” said the Skin Horse. “You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”
The second story is from The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C.S. Lewis, which tells the tale of a young boy named Eustace. He is petulant, arrogant, self-centered, and annoying. One day, he finds a dragon’s lair full of gold treasures and is overtaken by his own greed. He places a gold bracelet on his arm and falls asleep. When he wakes, he finds that he has become a dragon. No matter how hard he tries to scratch off the scales, he is unable to become a boy again—that is, until he comes face to face with Aslan, a fierce lion who represents Christ in Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia series.
“I looked up and saw the very last thing I expected: a huge lion coming slowly toward me. And one queer thing was that there was no moon last night, but there was moonlight where the lion was. So it came nearer and nearer. I was terribly afraid of it. You may think that, being a dragon, I could have knocked any lion out easily enough. But it wasn’t that kind of fear. I wasn’t afraid of it eating me, I was just afraid of it—if you can understand. Well, it came close up to me and looked straight into my eyes. And I shut my eyes tight. But that wasn’t any good because it told me to follow it.”
“You mean it spoke?”
“I don’t know. Now that you mention it, I don’t think it did. But it told me all the same. And I knew I’d have to do what it told me, so I got up and followed it. And it led me a long way into the mountains . . . there was a garden—trees and fruit and everything. In the middle of it there was a well . . . The water was as clear as anything and I thought if I could get in there and bathe it would ease the pain in my leg. But the lion told me I must undress first . . . So I started scratching myself and my scales began coming off all over the place . . . But just as I was going to put my feet into the water I looked down and saw that they were all hard and rough and wrinkled and scaly just as they had been before . . . Then the lion said—but I don’t know if it spoke—‘You will have to let me undress you.’ I was afraid of his claws, I can tell you, but I was pretty nearly desperate now. So I just lay flat down on my back to let him do it. The very first tear he made was so deep that I thought it had gone right into my heart. And when he began pulling the skin off, it hurt worse than anything I’ve ever felt. The only thing that made me able to bear it was just the pleasure of feeling the stuff peel off. You know—if you’ve ever picked the scab off a sore place. It hurts like billy-oh but it is such fun to see it coming away.”
“I know exactly what you mean,” said Edmund.
“Well, he peeled the beastly stuff right off—just as I thought I’d done it myself the other three times, only they hadn’t hurt— and there it was lying on the grass: only ever so much thicker, and darker, and more knobbly-looking than the others had been. And there was I as smooth and soft as a peeled switch and smaller than I had been. Then he caught hold of me—I didn’t like that much for I was very tender underneath now that I’d no skin on—and threw me into the water. It smarted like anything but only for a moment. After that it became perfectly delicious and as soon as I started swimming and splashing I found that all the pain had gone from my arm. And then I saw why. I’d turned into a boy again.”
Both stories illustrate the process of becoming whole. For the velveteen rabbit, it was the journey of becoming real. For Eustace, it was the journey of becoming a boy again. This is the healing and restoration process we must go through in order to become whole. If we want to know God’s healing, we must allow him to remove all of our scales—the scales of our own sin, the scales we grew in an attempt to protect ourselves from others, and the scales we grew in response to our pain. If we want to become whole, we must allow God’s love to have his way with us.
If we want to become whole, we must allow God’s love to have his way with us.
—Chrystie Cole
Becoming wholehearted is a journey. It is the daily process of unbecoming and becoming. Becoming new. Becoming free. Becoming loved. Becoming hopeful. Becoming righteous. Becoming whole. Our becoming is God’s work. Our job is to surrender to him, to be supple and pliable and to allow him to bend, mold, and shape us. But this can be scary and make us feel vulnerable. We can only surrender our tender places to him and trust him in this process because he is the Good Shepherd who loves and cares for his sheep.
In 2 Corinthians 3:18, the apostle Paul said that it is in beholding the glory of Christ that we are being transformed into his image from one degree of glory to another. This is what is being done to us as we behold Christ. While we are called to actively work out our salvation with fear and trembling, it is Christ who works in us our becoming (Philippians 2:12-13). Becoming doesn’t negate obedience; it precedes it. The power of the becoming is in the beholding.
Becoming doesn’t negate obedience; it precedes it. The power of the becoming is in the beholding. —Chrystie Cole
In this season, I’ve not been doing anything of note. I’ve merely been beholding Jesus. Only Jesus. Not Jesus and my efforts. Not Jesus and my righteousness. Not Jesus and my service. Not Jesus and my constant self-improvement project. Just Jesus. Coming to his table every week, weak and in need, to receive him as he offers himself to me—his body broken for me and his blood shed for me—in order that I might become whole.
In beholding God’s love, we are invited to become the beloved.
In beholding God’s forgiveness, we are invited to become the forgiven.
In beholding God’s mercy, we are invited to become the redeemed.
In beholding God’s compassion, we are invited to become the comforted.
In beholding God as Father, we are invited to become like little children.
We become as we behold.
All my love,
CC
New Online Bible Study Offering:
The power of our becoming is found in Christ’s resurrection.
If you would like to join me in the journey of beholding and becoming, sign up for my new 7-week online Bible study, Becoming People of the Resurrection.
There will be a morning and evening offering every Tuesday through Easter. Morning options are from 10am-11:30am. Evening options are from 7pm-8:30pm.
We will meet via Zoom on the following dates:
Tuesday, February 28th
Tuesday, March 7th
Tuesday, March 14th
Tuesday, March 21st
Tuesday, March 28th
Tuesday, April 4th
Tuesday, April 11th
Click here to register!
If you enjoyed this newsletter, you could support future content in three ways:
You can like or comment below with your story of how God has led you through a difficult time.
You become a financial supporter through a one-time gift at Buy Me A Coffee or by becoming a recurring supporter at Liberapay.
You can also share this newsletter with others:
Subscribe here to receive regular updates:
Want to Connect?
You can find Chrystie Cole on Facebook and Instagram
Or you can find The Wholehearted Project on Facebook and Instagram and Website
This is a beautiful raw truth filled post. I am grateful for it.
Also, only because it reminded me of it, a Christian music artist and writer, Strahan Coleman just wrote a book all about Beholding. :)
I'm sure you've heard this before, but your writing is incredibly introspective and has meant a lot to me. Thank you for reminding me (even as a man) of how we need to allow this process to work. I'm taking what you've said to heart. I want to become all God has for me as well. Blessings in your writing.