Being Enough
What do we do when everyone needs more of us than what we have to offer?
I ask myself this every single day. In this season of our family life, I’m homeschooling our three forever children. Each has very different needs, very different strengths, and very big ideas and feelings.
Our house is rarely quiet. There’s laughter and singing, but also fighting and yelling. My people are loud people. They feel their feelings openly. Loudly. Frequently!
I can’t say I would change that. I don’t think stuffing feelings is any healthier than learning how to manage them. As long as the feelings are being felt, I’m glad we can show them, share them, and work through them. Yet it certainly is a loud and long process!
There are moments where life here captures the way I wish things could be. There are moments when the kids are building a snow fort together outside. Days where a lesson really sparks their interest and we dive into rabbit trails of learning and come out so much richer in our understanding. Times where they spend hours playing together, sometimes even acting out the topics we learned at school. Mornings of sipping tea and listening to stories around the kitchen table.
It takes a lot of intentionality to let those moments define the way I see our home and our homeschool. The chaos moments can be so consuming; they want to dictate how I see our days. The weariness often tries to speak louder than the joys.
Families see each other’s lows. That’s a fact of family life that we just can’t avoid. We are most comfortable where we feel most loved, seen, and understood. Homeschool and life together 24/7 does mean we get all of each other’s worst moments; but we also get all of our best moments, too. I love that!
This is my journey. I know each of you are on your own journeys, yet I’m sure we all run into that same tension: Am I enough? Enough for the people who count on me, or enough even for myself? The answer will always be the same: Yes. And, No.
Yes, everything you have to offer is good and beautiful and building and healing and lovely. You are a spark of beauty in the world, and your contribution is significant and important and good. You are enough!
And, no. None of us can accomplish perfection, not even you. So breathe and let it go. You can’t be perfect. You won’t be perfect. That is not a burden you need to carry. Your best will not be enough if you’re looking for perfection. But we can fall so short of perfection and still find goodness and love and beauty. We can help each other grow stronger and braver and better.
I used to think I had to be enough. I thought following Jesus meant watching him make me into enough to fill all the holes and gaps and hurts in myself and in the people around me. But if I could do that - well, I wouldn’t need Jesus. I would just need me. This is where it’s okay to be not enough and to embrace being not enough. Because Jesus is absolutely enough - to restore, to redeem, to make beauty and bring healing. He is good in ways I can’t be. He lets me do great work in his strength when I’m empty. That is beautiful. That is what makes me, a person who is sometimes limping along metaphorically and physically, into the perfect person to parent my children and fill the roles I have to fill - my imperfection made lovely in Jesus’s absolute love.
That love that makes me feel whole enough and at home enough to be the best and worst version of myself, not afraid to try the big and beautiful and hard things, because I know I can live as my biggest and loudest and still-growing-est self in this safe space that is the love of Jesus.
