I Am Enough
I want to pose a great question for us to grapple with. Who are we now, and who are we called to be moving forward?
I want speak about healing and wholeness — and about the agency to be healers that is available to us all. Jesus was a healer. In the gospel stories, there are numerous occasions where Jesus heals the sick, broken, outcasted, and marginalized. And Jesus understood that healing was more than just healing physical ailments. It was ultimately about spiritual healing that will lead to wholeness.
And that word “healing” is different from “fixing”. Healing is about making whole. And to be a healer, you have to be able to listen, to learn, and to love. These are three-legged stool of becoming a healer.
Wholeness isn’t something we acquire by stacking achievements or checking boxes or acquiring products or consumer goods. The world tells us what success is. And what I worry about is that right now the world tells our kids and all of us that to be successful, you need one of three things: be famous, be rich, be powerful. But we all know people who have all three of these — who are famous, wealthy, and powerful— and profoundly unhappy and don’t feel whole or complete. And so I worry that many of our kids are being led down a path that will not make them whole or fulfilled.
I think to truly feel whole — it’s not about acquiring something that we don’t have. It’s about remembering who we fundamentally are: created in God’s image with built in self-worth.
When we come into this world, we are content. Our kids don’t care whether we have a big house or a small house. They don’t care about how fancy the clothes we wear or not. They care about finding moments of love and joy. They care about their relationships they have with the people around them. They observe things: bees and butterfly pollinating flowers and the play of lights as they come through the window in the setting sun. And they find joy in that, in those day-to-day, seemingly ordinary moments. The greatest gift that a parent can give to a child is not more stuff but a quality time with an attention. Even if it’s ten minutes a day the child will never forget.
The part of what is challenging us right now in this moment is that there are a lot of forces around us that make us feel that we are not enough, content and whole. We’re not good enough, not thin enough, beautiful enough, not popular enough, not smart enough, and certainly we don’t have enough. In those moments we have to ask ourselves, are those messages speaking the truth about who we are or is that a false narrative?
Your sense of inadequacy is what drives their profit margin. If all the women in the world got up one morning and liked what they saw front of the mirror, overnight the cosmetic industry will file for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy. “You are not enough” narrative is driven by an industry that wants to sell you something with the promise that their product will make you feel more whole and complete.
Healing and wholeness to me is really about recognizing what we already have inside of us. And coming to trust that, coming to rely on that, and ultimately coming to find fulfillment in who we are as God’s beloved. Without our humanity, we will possess nothing of value. And we have the power to change what is happening.
When we stand in that strength of reality, we allow others to find for themselves that they, too, are enough. Every time we treat others with love and dignity free of judgement, whether that’s to a member of your own family or a moment of kindness you express to a stranger, you are mirroring their own God given, innate self-worth. You are inspiring people to be a new way of being in the world that constantly seems to cut us down to feeling of inadequacy. Small act of kindness are radical acts of defiance against the world that incessantly tells us we don’t have enough, we don’t do enough, we are “not enough.”
Instead, let our daily mantra be “I have enough. I do enough. I am enough.”
John
