I recently heard a young man who was paralyzed from the waist down and confined to a wheelchair say, “I have a disability, but I am not disabled.” While I understand what he meant and admire his attitude, what he said is not completely true. Someone with a disability is disabled. Perhaps I take things too literally or perhaps I like to face reality or maybe I am a proponent of truth, but statements like that bother me. Here are some more examples:

You can accomplish anything if you put your mind to it!

If you believe in yourself anything is possible!

The word can’t is not in my vocabulary.

No matter how much I put my mind to it or believe in myself, I will never be able to climb a mountain or run a marathon. And there are simply some things I can’t do! So to me, and in reality, these statements are mere platitudes. I found this definition of a platitude online and I like it:

Platitude: an idea (a) that is admitted to be true by everyone and (b) that is not true

And this is the case of the now popular phrase, “You are enough!” In my previous blog about this statement, I shared how its intended purpose is to encourage us to be ourselves and that we shouldn’t change just to belong or to be loved. (If you haven’t read it, you might want to check it out.) But we need to look a little more at this idea of being enough.

When my husband passed away almost two years ago, I posted on Facebook, “Half of me is gone.” So recently I asked myself, “If half of me is gone, how can I be enough?” The truth is:

I AM NOT ENOUGH

And neither are you! (Don’t leave me now. Keep reading.) None of us by ourselves is enough. I am not talking about marriage; I am talking about our need for each other. I have often had people say to me, “I don’t want to be dependent on other people.” But in reality, we were born dependent. Babies and children that are neglected and deserted cannot survive. And as we grow older we continue to be dependent on each other. I like the word ‘interdependent’. We rely on one another. The clothes you wear, the food you eat, your home and your possessions are all produced, created, transported, provided and maintained by someone. But this reliance on each other goes beyond even this. We are to care for each other, not just physically but emotionally as well. The Bible tells us to “Share each other’s burden.”

But I have a greater concern about this concept of being enough. If taken too far, as we continue to pat ourselves on the back for being enough and self-sufficient, we will lose sight of our need for God. But the fact is without Him we will never be enough! A quote attributed to Pascal, but which is actually a paraphrased summary of what he said, puts it like this:

There is a God-shaped vacuum in the heart of every person which cannot be filled by any created thing, but only by God the Creator made known through Jesus Christ.

Being enough is not about being good enough, strong enough, or important enough. It’s about allowing God to fill that empty space in our lives that only He can complete and satisfy. By allowing God to be an integral part of who we are, we can then truly become enough because of Him!

This verse says it well:

May you experience the love of Christ though it is too great to understand fully. Then you will be made complete with the fullness of life and power that comes from God. –Ephesians 3:19

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