You are Enough
“You Are Enough”
I often see memes that offer these soothing words to harried, worried, stressed-out people. Are you overwhelmed? Are you burdened? Do you feel inadequate? Well, then—all you have to do is realize something. You are enough. You are good enough. You do enough. Stop worrying. Stop stressing. Stop trying so hard.
Why should I? How can I?
Because “you are enough.”
But are those memes true? Am I enough?
I stop to look.
The truth sets in. I’m not enough. I can’t fix my kids. I can’t help my son get well. I can’t help him find the stability he needs to get a job. I can’t take his anxiety away so that he can learn to drive. I can’t make my daughter less depressed. I can’t fix her exhaustion. I can’t make her enjoy life. I can’t make her well again. I can’t make any of them well again. I can’t fight hard enough for medical care and other services. I can’t.
Not only that, I’m not enough to keep the yard trimmed. The weeds are taller than I am. There’s a candy wrapper in the grass that I’ve looked at every day for three weeks and have never picked up. I don’t even have enough “enoughyness” to care. I’m not enough to make sure there is a sufficient supply of peas in the freezer. I’m not enough to keep scum from building up around the rim of my coffee cup. I’m not enough to get the cat to the vet to find out why he can’t run. I’m not enough.
And those lists don’t even count the things that are truly sinful. Have you ever tried to be good for one whole day—in thought, word, and deed? Not holding yourself to God’s standards, but to your own? I know for me, I can’t even keep my own measly standards, much less God’s perfectly holy ones.
The truth is, I’m not enough. I never will be.
Psalm 14:2-3 says, “The Lord has looked down from heaven upon the sons of men to see if there are any who understand, who seek after God. They have all turned aside, together they have become corrupt; there is no one who does good, not even one.”
None of us are enough.
But there is One who is.
Jesus came to be our “enough.” He did the things we couldn’t. He met God’s holy standards. And then He died and gave all His goodness to us and took the punishment we deserved upon Himself.
Jesus is enough.
Maybe, instead of asserting “you are enough,” we ought to be saying, “You aren’t enough. And you don’t have to be. Someone else was ‘enough’ for you.” You can have the rest you crave. That’s what the “enough” memes are really about, isn’t it? Finding rest from the continual backbreaking heart-wrenching striving? Telling me I’m enough won’t give me the rest I need—I can clearly see that it isn’t true. But telling me that I don’t have to muster up “enough”—that someone else has already filled that cup to the brim, full and running over—that is what can bring true rest.
II Corinthians 12:9-10 says, “And He has said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness.’ Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. Therefore I am well content with weaknesses, with insults, with distresses, with persecutions, with difficulties, for Christ’s sake; for when I am weak, then I am strong.
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