Psalms: Undivided

Psalm 86:11-17

The New Revised Standard Version Supplication for Help against Enemies

11 Teach me your way, O LORD,

that I may walk in your truth;

give me an undivided heart to revere your name.

12 I give thanks to you, O Lord my God, with my whole heart,

and I will glorify your name forever.

13 For great is your steadfast love toward me;

you have delivered my soul from the depths of Sheol.

14 O God, the insolent rise up against me;

a band of ruffians seeks my life,

and they do not set you before them.

15 But you, O Lord, are a God merciful and gracious,

slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.

16 Turn to me and be gracious to me;

give your strength to your servant;

save the child of your serving girl.

17 Show me a sign of your favor,

so that those who hate me may see it and be put to shame,

because you, LORD, have helped me and comforted me.

Psalms and the Emotional Self

Today, we finish our series on looking at the Psalms and the emotional self. We’ve looked at many of the contours of the inner world, from the emotions of Wonder, Happiness, Gratitude, and Longing. We’ve wondered at what it means to be Satisfied; to be filled with Excitement, subdued or otherwise; and to face affliction with grace and truth.

I find that when we spend times in the Psalms, we begin to catch glimpses of our inner emotional landscape and resonate with certain ways that landscape is described. Perhaps in this face of live, you are filled with joy at the birth of a new child in your community: Psalms which thank God and praise God for life probably resonate. At other times, we cry out to God and say “how long?” or “where are you?” Psalms about the living in the depths of such emotions probably speak to us.

Today, we look at what it means to have an undivided heart. We long to be whole people, grounded in who we are, unwavering somehow as we face the storms of life. We want to be people of our word and not blown about by the emotions of the day. We want to face the insolent, the ruffian, the wicked, or simply the troublesome people we encounter and be able to stand, steadfast in who we are.

And the Psalms can help remind us who we are and who we aspire to be.

But…really, who are you? Who are we?

The Divided Self

There is a sense that as we journey through our lives, we face moments where our inner world, our self, becomes more clear, more able to be fully integrated into how we live our days. These are, as Frederick Buechner once described in relationship to calling and vocation, the times when the world’s great hunger meets our great joy — the moments when we feel like “we’re made for this.” Those times when we connect so much with what we are doing or how we are being asked to love and serve. These moments are fleeting, but if we get enough of them accumulated over time, we start to get a map for what our thriving self can be.

But more often, we face the anxiety of how much we are prone to divide our self, to compartmentalize certain emotions or attitudes. This is not criticism, it is reality.

I’ve been reflecting a lot over the last year or so about what it means to age and what the seasons of life mean in terms of transitioning through a lifetime. To be an undivided self may be a goal, but it certainly isn’t reality most of the time.

I’ve noticed that we face this reality in different ways, depending on where we are at in our life’s journey. As a younger man, I spent many years trying to figure out “who” I was. I tried on new personalities, new styles, trying to figure out what stuck. There were years of bleach blonde hair or seasons where I wore skinny jeans…we’re all grateful to grow out of such seasons. As our identities form, there are seasons of “trying things out,” exploring what feels true about ourselves, exploring the emotional and physical landscape of our bodies, inside and out. This is part of growing up.

Think for a moment: Do you have an old picture of yourself or loved ones that you can look at and say, “oh wow, that hair.” or “those clothes.” I remember seeing pictures of my parents from when they were first dating or early in the marriage. I think of my Dad’s long, bushy, early-1980s hair. I will someday show my son, Asher, pictures of myself from my first years of college, that same long mane of waves and cowlicks that is my head — letting it all hang out, as they say — Lord, have mercy upon me for such things. :)

In the younger years of our lives, we are trying to figure out who we are. This is developmental, it’s part of us discovering and settling into our person.

And over time, parts of our self become solidified. Years ago, I settled in to a comfortable mode of how I dress or how I talk or what I chose to value and prioritize. You all did too.

If we keep with this sense of the developing self, we then also witness a phase later in life, where it becomes more about how we retain that sense of self, especially as we age. As memory or physical capacities change, many of us try to retain that glimmer of who we were. But eventually, we have to let go of what once was to embrace what is now. Someday, my son is going to sit me down and tell me it’s time to give up my car keys. Or there will be moments when I forget the details of a story I used to know so well. It is my perception, from what I observe, that as we enter some of the final years of our lives, we learn what it is that truly matters to us. We begin to let go of a lot of what we’ve accumulated as a self. We pass it on, we relinquish some of our control.

It seems that the concern of younger years is discerning “who” we really are and, as we enter our elder years, it shifts to being about how we either retain who we are or let go and pass on what we have learned.

And as much as we seek wholeness of self, as much as we think we can find a true point of integration where we can say to our selves and to God, “I am me,” we also acknowledge that we really resonate with the Psalmists prayer: “Give me an undivided heart…so that I may revere your name.”

The undivided heart is aspirational. It points to a fulfilment of who we are made to be, but are not yet.

Internal Family Systems Model

One of the most helpful pieces of my recent Doctoral program was its emphasis on mapping the contours of our inner self — getting to know ourselves more deeply as leaders and disciples of Jesus. We studied a variety of useful frameworks that helped give language to the inner life.

How many people here have some familiarity or recognition of something called Internal Family Systems Model?

Internal Family Systems or IFS was developed by psychologist Ricard Schwartz in the 1980s to give a framework for what we intuitively understand as the many states of self that live inside us. Why do we contain multitudes? The brain science reinforces this truth: We are not whole people, but rather, we are people who contain an abundance of “self-states” that are activated or quieted depending on cirucmstances, traumatic experiences, and adaptations to our social and physical environments.

IFS basically says: we are many. The mind is made up of multiple parts, each of them true parts of a person’s self, but also each overshadowing and sometimes hiding our essential person. In Christian terms, while we each bear the Image of God, the imago Dei, we also have layers of selves we put on to protect ourselves, to compensate in times of anxiety, and to perform in the world in order to be positive contributors to society.

In IFS, there are generally three categories of parts that make up and orbit around our true self. First, there are Exiled parts: these are parts of us that we have shut down, pushed aside, and “exiled” because of some trauma we have experienced. For example, as a child we are told we are too rambunctious or outspoken, so we exile that excitable, creative part of ourselves in exchange for a more orderly, well-behaved persona.

Second, there are our Manager parts. These parts take a protective stance in us, they are the guards we put up, the act we play. In me, I know I have Manager parts that seek to be high achieving, articulate, and put together. These parts have benefited me in many ways; they have led me into higher education, afforded me positions of leadership, and trained me to be good with my words. However, they also betray anxieties about now ever being good enough or having it all together enough — Managers tend to hide our insecurities in plain sight.

Finally, there are the Firefighters of our personality. These are the parts of us that seek to extinguish any discomfort or potential harm. These are the parts of us that numb out, disassociate, and even avoid conflict. Now, these postures are generally seen as less-than-healthy, but if we step back, we can also see that the Firefighter parts of us are serving a protective, defensive role. While they might take the form of substance abuse or other impulsive behaviors, what they are attempting to do is take care of places in us that hurt or feel shame.

Ok, so now you have a very basic overview of Internal Family Systems. What does this have to do with Psalm 86?

The Psalmist opens vs. 11 with a familiar cry: “Teach me your way, O Lord, that I may walk in your truth.”

When we learn to map the contours of our inner lives and get a real sense for who we area, we begin to realize a deep longing for these parts of ourselves to be redeemed and restored. Yeah, I get why I have Firefighter parts working in me, as the Psalmist does too: There are bands of ruffians and insolent people out there who we’re trying to protect ourselves from. So we set up safeguards, boundaries, walls to help keep us safe.

But the deep cry, beneath these walls or firefighter states is this: God, teach me your more excellent way. God, you are the one who can deliver us from the garbage heap, from the painful places in our words…come quickly.

And the Psalmist contrasts the struggles they face in the world with a reminder of the Goodness of God — God is merciful, gracious, slow to anger and abounding in love. God’s love is the ideal which we long for the world and our interactions to be like, somehow. We seek this undivided heart, but also acknowledge it is not by our own strength or ingenuity that it will be found.

Turn to me, the Psalmist says. Give me strength — strength that I clearly do not have myself, strength from you, Oh God, the source.

Seeking an Undivided Heart

We seek this undivided heart. Friends, I think its important for us to acknowledge, together as a church, that we each have parts in us that are hurt, ashamed, and longing for this kind of wholeness that an undivided heart embodies. And we catch glimmers of that goodness in each other, at times, don’t we? We can sense what that undivided, whole self means.

Here’s the kicker: People of God, we are tasked with calling out this wholeness in each other and supporting it. We are meant to be a people who, together, call one another to be fully alive, fully our true selves. Here, you are invited to be a part of a community of people who a) don’t have it all together and b) are seeking to work towards this wholeness of self nonetheless. This is the invitation of Jesus Christ — to work from where we are and pursue wholeness together.

Do you have it all figured out? Do I? Nope. Not yet. Trying, seeking, stumbling, healing, hoping, moving forward, yes…this is the walk with God.

And our prayer is: Teach us your way, O Lord. Teach us what wholeness and undividedness means. We thank God for all God provides and all God shows us. And we pray for this work to be complete in us.

Close:

Now, there is some good news and some not so good news.

First, the not so good. The reality we face is that while we want to live with undivided hearts and offer our whole selves in love and service to God’s creation, we aren’t there yet. We’re growing, maturing, trying…but we’re not there yet.

Sadly, this is the state of our world — there is much that is not quite or not by a long shot as it should be. If we can affirm that together, recognizing what we still long for, then we can move to the good news.

And the good news is simply this: Wholeness is coming. As Christians, we believe that we live in tension between what is and what will be. What already is and what is not yet fully realized. We await this wholeness, whether it be in death as we meet our Creator and find rest in the Creator’s wholeness and love. Or as we collectively await the full pronouncement of God’s reign here, on earth, as it is in heaven. We wait for all things to be made right.

We don’t like waiting, thank you very much. We’d like this all to get on with it and wholeness to arrive. But the sweetness of our reality is that it is in this place of longing, this hoping and waiting, that we find God’s sustaining presence all the more powerful. Because we wait, we rest upon God’s goodness to make up what we lack.

Back to our IFS model in closing: Each part of us, the exiles, the managers, the firefighters, they each cover and protect a deep goodness inside us that we call the image of God. It is from this place, this Image, that we find our wholeness and our identity in Christ. This is our true, whole self. The greatest news is that that self already exists, it’s already within you. The joy and work of following God is saying “God, show me what you already know to be true about me.” Show us what we are only tempted to believe.

We may not be undivided quite yet. But, friends, God is making us whole. We need but only follow, ask, and trust that the Good Creator is at work in and through us.

Amen.