Enough

I was on my way to work yesterday when I was struck by something very true. I seem to be having a lot of epiphanies in my car these days. I am a captive audience, sitting still for half an hour or so, each way, so I guess that makes sense.

My true thing from yesterday morning was this: I am enough.

At first, I waved this thought away. Well, I know that, I thought.

Do you? 

I've spent my life walking with God, but I've also lived in the world that whole time. Advertising has been trying for decades to convince me that I would be enough if I would buy whatever they are selling. I buy that lie far more often than I would like to admit.

Young girls, Christian and otherwise, made me feel less than until I started tailoring my wardrobe to their specifications. Even then, I never seemed to be able to get it quite right. I still cringe every time I think about those khaki carpenter pants that weren't quite the right brand.

As I got older, I learned that I wasn't enough on my own. I needed a boyfriend, a car, a perfect GPA, a snazzy job. A book deal.

The voice of God continued to speak, and He told me that I was beautiful and spotless, that He had created me and when He did so, He made me enough.

It's hard to listen when everyone else is speaking so loudly.

In adulthood, a new level was added to this not enoughness, or maybe I just missed it before. Now, God isn't blessing me enough when it can't be seen from the outside. Now, I'm not growing in my faith when life doesn't look the way it might have, or like someone else's does. It's a lot easier to fight you're not thin enough, pretty enough, rich enough. It's harder to fight: God must have something more to teach you, first. Then you'll be enough. Or have you prayed about this?

If only I would have bought those khakis, right?

These things are lies.

Right here, sitting on my couch in the sunlight, I am enough. God made me, and He made me even for this moment, commonplace as it might seem. Without the mascara, the cool clothes, the "right" people in my life. I am enough because God doesn't make mistakes.

I have been through a lot of seasons in my life, and I know that I will go through many more. In each season, I will face challenges, I will grow, I will fail, I will try really hard, but I will always be enough. There is nothing whatever that I can do to be not enough.

I have friends in all sorts of positions and places. One friend is getting ready to welcome a darling baby into the world while another is grieving a recent miscarriage. I have friends planning weddings and friends picking up the pieces after divorce. These things don't make sense to me, but they make sense to God. Each of them is enough for their season, lovely or heartbreaking, or a little of each. These circumstances will change, and these people will change, but God won't.

I thought I knew this, yesterday, when the thought came into my car, unexpectedly, but I needed to hear it again. I needed to let this truth filter into the soil of my heart and take root. The world tries hard to tear out these tender shoots of truth but I'm trying not to let it. I want to plant these words deep: I am enough.