I am enough! At least that’s what I’ve been told recently. Social media has declared it to me frequently. Here are a few examples:

I will tell you this again and again and again: You are enough. You are so incredibly enough. You are so enough. You are so enough, It is unbelievable how enough you are. You are enough. A thousand times enough.

When I first saw these proclamations of my enoughness, (I know that’s not a word, but it fits.) I was a bit puzzled. Obviously the phrase is intended to encourage and to build up self-confidence, but what does it even mean? It seems like an incomplete thought. Enough how? Am I good enough? Smart enough? Pretty enough? Fat enough? Skinny enough? Old enough? I wasn’t too sure I agreed with the whole concept, so I decided to check it out online.

I found this statement in a blog about the sentiment behind the phrase “You are enough”:

There is nothing you need to change about yourself to be more worthy of love or attention or to belong. –from Joyful Through it All

When I was in college, I had a very dear and kind friend. She was such a sweet person that I was surprised when one day she said to me, “If you weren’t handicapped, you’d have a lot of boyfriends!” At this time in my life I wasn’t severely disabled and I could walk independently without any form of assistance, but I walked slowly and with a very odd and awkward gait. I wasn’t offended by what she said, because I knew her, but I was taken aback. I remember clearly how I responded. “If they can’t love me now as I am, I wouldn’t want them anyway!” In other words I wanted to be ‘enough’ for someone just as I was.

But sometimes in an effort to be loved and liked we try to change in order to fit in. I am reminded of the lines from a song in the animated movie Jungle Book. “I wanna be like you, I wanna walk like you, and talk like you, too.” And so we follow the trends of the day, adjusting our mindsets and interests, so that we can be accepted by society.

In John Bevere’s most recent book, The Awe of God, one of the chapters is titled “Three Images”. He says this:

Every human being has three images of themselves: a perceived image, a projected image, and an actual image. Our perceived image is how others see us, our projected image is the way we desire others to see us, our actual image is who we really are.

I think he missed one. We also have a self-image and that can be very different from our actual image. (The actual image is the one God sees.) Our self-image can be distorted in a number of ways, but more often than not our self-image is less than it should be. So we concentrate on that projected image, trying to make ourselves more appealing to the crowd around us. It is for this reason that sometimes we need to be reminded that maybe we are enough just as God created us. We all are created in His image and for a specific purpose. We all are His handiwork and are “fearfully and wonderfully made”. We are to be what He wants us to be.

When they measure themselves by themselves and compare themselves with themselves, they are not wise. –2 Corinthians 10:12

And yet there is still something about this phrase that troubles me. Am I really enough?? And what if I’m not? What then? Look for my next blog for another perspective of what it means to be enough…or not.

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