For me, and for many of us, our first waking thought of the day is “I didn’t get enough sleep.” The next one is “I don’t have enough time.” Whether true or not, that thought of not enough occurs to us automatically before we even think to question or examine it. We spend most of the hours and the days of our lives hearing, explaining, complaining, or worrying about what we don’t have enough of… Before we even sit up in bed, before our feet touch the floor, we’re already inadequate, already behind, already losing, already lacking something. And by the time we go to bed at night, our minds are racing with a litany of what we didn’t get, or didn’t get done, that day. We go to sleep burdened by those thoughts and wake up to that reverie of lack… This internal condition of scarcity, this mind-set of scarcity, lives at the very heart of our jealousies, our greed, our prejudice, and our arguments with life… (Lynne Twist, The Soul of Money, p. 43-45)
Not enough. Never enough. We live in a continual mind-set of scarcity. I either don’t feel like I have enough (time, money, friends, opportunities) or that I am not enough. Not skinny enough, pretty enough, funny enough, smart enough, ambitious enough, unique enough…. fill in your adjective here enough.
I don’t know about you, but I’ve had enough of feeling like I’m not enough or have enough. It’s time we stop telling ourselves this giant lie and stop encouraging our friends to believe it too.
What would it look like for you to look at your day and change your perspective, to believe that you actually have enough today. You have enough time to write that paper, to have that conversation with your friend, to savor a cup of tea while watching Parenthood.
What would it look like for you to believe that you are enough? This one is certainly harder. But you are. You are enough.
You are fearfully and wonderfully made. [Psalm 139]
God delights in you. [Psalm 18:19]
You are redeemed. You are a daughter of the King. You are an heir to His kingdom. [Galatians 4]
You are a new creation. Fully forgiven and wholly loved. [Colossians 3]
You are enough.
Today, let’s stop sitting in the mind-set of scarcity. Let’s choose to believe we have enough and we are enough. Then, let’s extend that grace to others.
