Not Enough

Chapter 2 of Ann Voskamp’s book, One Thousand Gifts, hit home hard for me.  I remember several months ago my mom calling me one afternoon & the conversation started as normal,  “Hey honey.  How are you doin’?”  Tears instantly filled my eyes & a huge lump was stuck in my throat.  All I could say was, “Mom.  I’m . . . soooo overwhelmed.” 

Taylor had just left, Truman was so sick, the holidays just ended, and I was trying to find some kind of normal for us.  I was totally overwhelmed with life.  I suddenly didn’t enjoy the hobbies I traded late at night instead of sleep, I was so short with those I loved most, & I was being really hard on myself.  All the sudden life hit me in the face with a 2x4 & I just didn’t feel like I was enough.  I love homeschooling – this is our life, but it felt like such a burden.  Each day, I woke up feeling like I was going to fail somewhere (again). How am I going to do this?  How am I going to teach them (all of them!) to read & write before they graduate?  Dinner?  Honey, is pizza okay again?  Every aspect of life overwhelmed me & I felt like I was failing at it all.  I was just not enough for these sweet little faces that look up to me.  I felt so much pressure to have it all together & I was so far from it. 

I had allowed circumstances, ridicule, things not going my way, things out of my control (but completely in His!), like Ann describes, “It’s the in-between that drives us mad.”  I was certifiable crazy at times.  Slowly, very slowly, & in all honesty, it was only by the GRACE of God that I was able to let go of that wild depression.  I began waking up oddly early & not being able to go back to sleep.  I had always deeply desired to wake up & have personal quite time with the Lord, but it just never seemed to work out.  I grasped this opportunity & found myself spending hours with God.  I was even getting a warm, quiet bath without any interruptions.  It was so nice.  It was the Lord, wrapping His arms around me & filling me up at a time I just didn’t feel like I was enough.  As one of the ladies at the book club shared, “I am enough, because He is enough.” 

My absolute favorite parts of chapter 2:

“How do we live fully, so that we are fully ready to die?”

“Jesus offers thanksgiving for even that which will break Him & crush Him & wound Him & yield a bounty of joy.  ….I’m celebrating greater gain through great loss.  ….The eucharist invites us to give thanks for dying.  To participate in His death with our own daily dying & give thanks for it.  ….grace, thanksgiving, joy – it might be like that – reaching for stars.  So hard.  So hard.  ….thanksgiving is what precedes the miracle of that salvation being fully worked out in our lives.”

This is a from another reader I think very profound, I have to include it as one of my favorite parts:

“One sin brought condemnation on all, and through one death, redemption came for all.  …..He could break the bread that last night with joy and thanksgiving because He was already looking at the outcome.  He wasn’t focused on death (or the scourging, or the spitting, or the judgment, or the climb carrying the beam, or the nails being pounded into His flesh), but on the JOY set before Him.  The joy set before Him was me!  It was us! 

And what does He ask of us?  Thanksgiving.  The recognition of what He did, the way He made, the grace He extended, the LIFE more abundant that we have because of His obedience to the Father.  If that isn’t something to be eternally madly, crazily thank for, I don’t know what is.”