💧Whole: Life, Undivided.
Lent: The Hard, Holy Work of Integration
Something in you longs for wholeness.
It’s easy to feel fractured, isn’t it? You move through your days carrying so much—work deadlines, family schedules, the endless news cycle.
Yet you keep going, keep showing up, keep doing your broken best to hold it all together.
And that’s not easy. Because we live in a world that does its best to pull us apart. To be one person at work and another at home. To present one version of ourselves online and another in real life. To be polished and productive—to push aside doubts, longings, and grief so they don’t disrupt the image we’ve built.
In Apple TV’s Severance1, workers at Lumon Industries undergo a procedure that splits their consciousness in two: their “innie” knows only work, their “outie” knows nothing of it. The system promises relief—no more stress bleeding between personal and professional life.
But severance doesn’t bring peace. It brings disconnection.
Mark, the main character, chooses the procedure to escape his grief. He believes that if he can sever himself from his pain, he can move forward. But avoiding pain isn’t the same as healing.
Eventually, Mark senses what has been lost. He risks everything to undergo reintegration, merging his divided selves back into one whole person. It’s painful. It forces him to face everything he tried to outrun. But he knows this is the only way.
Because we were made to be whole.
Lent’s Invitation to Reintegration
Lent invites us to stop dividing ourselves. As we wait for resurrection and renewal, we spend time in the ache, holding what we’d rather avoid, painfully aware of what it is to be human.
Wholeness isn’t tidy. It includes the grief we suppress, the anger we struggle to name, the injustices that feel too overwhelming to hold.
Lent reminds us that we can bring our whole selves to the One who is making us whole.
And Jesus reminds us of the many parts of ourselves in Mark 12:30:
"Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength."
Jesus is not scared of our humanity. He is making us whole and loving us through all that we hold. The belief and the doubt. The exhaustion and the hope. The sorrow and the longing.
There is no need to fear evil. There is every need to understand what it does, how it operates in the world, what it draws upon to sustain itself. The real target of evil is to corrupt the spirit of man and to give his soul the contagion of inner disintegration.
Howard Thurman, Meditations of the Heart
As we explored a couple of weeks ago, Thomas Keating wrote about the false self—the version of ourselves we build to survive, to prove, to push forward. Lent reminds us that we don’t have to live this way.
We don’t have to be severed from our true selves.
We don’t have to compartmentalize our faith from our ordinary lives.
We don’t have to keep pushing through, disconnected and exhausted.
Lent calls us to reintegration.
A Different Way to Live
In Severance, Mark fights to remember who he is. To break free from the system that tells him his division is necessary. To reintegrate.
Unlike Mark, we don’t have to undo a painful procedure to be made whole. In Christ, all we have to do is surrender.
Being whole comes through the slow, ordinary, countercultural practice of staying with ourselves and being with God.
This is why our Lenten prayers and practices matter. Not because they make us more productive. Not because they help us check another spiritual box. But because they remind us:
We were never meant to be severed.
We don’t have to prove our worth.
We don’t have to hold it all together.
We don’t have to keep performing for love.In Christ, we are made whole.
Lent creates the space to notice what parts of our hearts are broken—to come close to our sorrow, our grief, and our need for healing.
To live undivided.
May Lent invite you to exhale, to stop striving for what is already yours, and to let God gather up the fragmented parts of your heart and make you whole again.
March 2025 Reading Plan
As we journey through Lent, I’m grateful to share this printable March 2025 reading plan—a simple way to stay rooted in the season.
This plan follows the rhythms of the liturgical calendar and highlights readings that align with Lent. It guides you to prayers and reflections from Every Season Sacred and To Light Their Way.
Use these prayers and readings as daily touchpoints, moments of reflection with your family, or gentle invitations to slow down and be present.
Lent Prayers & Practices
Lent invites us into wholeness, but in the pull of daily life, it’s easy to feel scattered. If you’re longing for a simple way to step into this season with intention, Year of Breath offers weekly breath prayers, guided reflections, a themed playlist, and more—all designed to help you slow down and live undivided.
For a limited time, get 30% off a paid subscription and journey through Lent with us. You’ll get access to the archives, too!
Breath Prayer
Monday – A Prayer for Wholeness
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