Lessons

Our boy is back in the hospital.  Not the kind where heartbreakingly bald children suffer through chemo, or where broken arms are set in a cast, or where football players come to sign autographs.

This is the kind with the doors that lock from the outside.  Where they won't let you have shoelaces or strings in your pajama pants, and nobody bats an eye at the sound of a scream.

This is his third inpatient stay;  the first one was a few weeks before Thanksgiving.  He'd had something of a breakdown at school, telling the counselor he wanted to die and crying incessantly.  I agreed with the school that he needed professional assessment, so I took him to Peachford Hospital in Atlanta.

Peachford is situated in a lovely wooded area in northeast Atlanta;  it is well-known and it accepts my health insurance.  It seemed like the perfect place for our boy to get better, to get back on his emotional feet.

Turns out that Peachford's primary objective is to remove and insulate someone from their circumstances for a handful of days.  It wasn't a bad place, but he received limited therapeutic care and mostly spent a week with a couple dozen broken children addicted to drugs, alcohol and self-mutilation.  It bears mentioning that the adolescent ward was overflowing, so perhaps that's why it seemed like crowd control was the first order of business.

After five days, he came home and we slowly returned to our version of normal.  Babble and CaringBridge readers will remember that my husband is quite ill himself and had just recently begun dialysis when our boy was hospitalized.  

And I shook my fist at heaven and demanded answers that still haven't come.

The boy spent the Thanksgiving holiday with family in America's heartland, enjoying picturesque scenery and time with cousins, aunts and uncles who care deeply for him.  He came back to us with a spring in his step and a smile on his face, and I felt hopeful.

In early December, he showed me the cuts on his arms and legs - apparently he has also been a "cutter" for a while and I just wasn't observant enough to notice.  Why didn't I see blood in his laundry, or wonder why he always wore jeans and long sleeves?  I don't know why not.  I don't know.  Maybe I didn't want to look.  I don't know.

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There is a trigger to all this drama that helps make at least a little sense of it all, but I do believe it's a trigger and not a root cause.  As anyone who's ever had their heart broken might guess, it has to do with a girl.

Before I say more about the girl, though, let me take you back to 1997.  I had my first AOL account, and I was delighted to meet a Scotsman online who lived in rural Kansas and who subsequently became the father of my children and is the best thing that ever happened to me.  This was before the days of eHarmony or Match.com;  we were pioneers.

So when our son announced that he had a girlfriend in Maine whom he'd met online, I felt a bit hypocritical when my maternal warning bells started quietly ringing.  I got involved just enough to verify that she really was a 15-year-old female and not some creepy pedophile trying to hook up with our teenage son.

And she made him so happy!  When things were good with this girl, he bubbled over.  They had all sorts of plans for their college years and married life one day, with a cottage near the shore and a little boy between them.  And these were mutual plans - at least at first. 

Like his mother and grandmother, the boy feels things with great intensity, so much so that happiness turns into euphoria, affection degrades into obsession, and sadness can become life-threatening depression.  I can see my 15-year-old self in him, when everything hurtful felt like the end of the world.  Yet he seems more raw, more amplified in some way.

So, when the sparkle faded and the young girl decided he was a bit too much, she began pulling away.  His hurt and his anger over rejection is like a force of nature - I don't think I have ever seen anyone in this much pain. 

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And so began his direct expression and overt efforts to end his life.  At first, I thought it might be the proverbial cry for attention (and some days I still wonder).  Yet he remains on this side of heaven, and for that I'm unspeakably grateful.  We have managed to find help for him each time he teeters on the cliff's edge, and we pull him back into our arms.

I try my best to put myself in his shoes, to try and see things from his perspective, but honestly I can't, not completely.  Whereas I was always a gregarious asshole, demanding attention from the world, he is mostly a loner who stays in his room and refuses solace from friends or family.  Then there's the gender thing, and while I may recognize the intensity from my own adolescence, his is on steroids and completely irrational.  My heart has been broken many times in my life, but his is in shards that he turns on himself and I can barely stand to watch.

It's certainly not the little girl's fault, although I wish she hadn't gone that far into the woods with him.  Yet, through the miracles of modern technology, he keeps finding ways to circumvent my embargoes and beg her to forgive him, to come back and have things be the way they were. 

And we all learn, one way or another - things can never be the way they were.

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So, last night when he told me for the umpteenth time that he just wants to die, I took him back to the hospital.  He'd had a noisy meltdown at school, so I picked him up and was returning home when he opened the passenger door and tried to jump out of our moving car onto the highway.  Terrifying is an understatement.

We were greeted by a state trooper at the hospital, and he was subsequently sedated and stabilized for transport to Lakeview Behavioral Health.  Of note is the fact that he was discharged from Lakeview just three days ago, after a week's stay that stemmed from ingesting rat poison mixed with sweet tea.

My dear, wonderful, exhausted husband came to spell me in the emergency room so I could take our daughter home (yes, she had a front-row seat on the ride home from school), and he stayed with our boy until psych transfer plans were confirmed and he finally settled down into a deep sleep. 

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I've just spoken to the boy on the telephone.  He is remorseful and eager to come home.  What do I say?  I love him more than my own life and I desperately want him here, under our roof and supervision and protection and care.

Yet.

If there is one thing I've learned, as an adult with depression and as the daughter of a diagnosed schizophrenic mother, you cannot protect someone from mental illness.  You can't love them out of it, any more than you can love someone out of cancer or a broken limb.

But what you can do is love them anyway.

Lenses

Back in the late 70s, there was a country song called Rose Colored Glasses that was both touching and goofy.  Frankly, most country music from the 70s was goofy - (Convoy and Third Rate Romance spring to mind).  But somehow, the song about the rose-colored glasses has been lodged in my brain since adolescence.

The lenses infer that circumstances are worse than they appear - that the wearer of the glasses is seeing a rosier picture than is actually in front of them.  I interpreted this to mean that the wearer is a deluded idiot who isn't willing to face reality. 

So - at some point, I made up my own version of the lyrics about my poop-colored glasses.

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I enjoy etymology.  I always have to think carefully before typing that out so as not to profess an affection for bugs (entomology).  No, I am fond of words - the study of them and where they came from.  It's less about definition and more about history, although the history of a word's construction gives us a map of how it came to mean what it means today.

Such it is with the word "perspective".  I love this word.  "Per-" is a Latin word that means thoroughly, utterly.  "-Spective" comes from Latin as well, from the word inspectus, which means "to look into". 

Over the last few months, I have been utterly and thoroughly looking through poop-colored glasses, into things outside my control (i.e., everything) and loudly declaring defeat.  I forfeit, I concede victory, I am vanquished and my ass is officially kicked.  Uncle, already.  UNCLE!

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Henry David Thoreau once said, "The question is not what you look at, but what you see." 

Stephen Covey, quoting the Talmud and explaining the principle of paradigm, said, "We see the world not as it is, but as we are."

I'm not as insightful as Thoreau or Covey or Hebrew scripture, but I am smart enough to figure out that we are all talking about perspective.  The way I see the world or my circumstances is as important as what is there to be seen.  But if rose-colored glasses represent false optimism, and poop-colored glasses are Debbie Downer negativism, then how does one see things clearly?
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Hope-colored glasses.  That's what we need.  Seeing circumstances, be they tragic or joyous, through a hopeful lens is neither naïve or disingenuous.  Left to my own devices, I will pick up the poop-colored pair, but faith is the best optometrist of all.  Not faith that I will get my way, or that everything will work out according to my master plan... but faith in a loving God whose ways aren't my ways (and honestly, I'm thankful they're not.) 


Therefore - today I am looking at 2015 through hope-colored glasses.   Would you like a pair, too?

Thanks. A Lot.

Yes, folks, it's time for my annual Thanksgiving blog post.  Try to contain your excitement, because this isn't going to be my usual Christian cheerleader message.

Don't get me wrong...in watching the sunrise this morning, and in contemplating what to say in this post, I remain convicted in my faith.  I believe there is a benevolent Creator of the universe that I call the one true God who loves every hair on my head, who created the oceans and my breakfast.  I believe the mystery of salvation through Jesus - I don't pretend to understand it, but empirical evidence and my own spiritual experience supports it enough for me.

I love him, and he loves me.  I know that to be true.  I know that a converted Jew from Tarsus who once hated Christians said that I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me, that I'm to be patient in affliction and that all things work for the good of those who love him. 

I know that Jesus' brother James said that I'm to consider it pure joy when I suffer trials because the testing of my faith produces perseverance, and that I'm to let perseverance finish its work in me so that I can be mature and complete, not lacking anything.

Well, I'm not joyful or patient these days.  I'm sorry to be a buzz kill, but I'm just not.  And I can't muster up the energy to fake it - believe me, I've tried.

Here we are on the morning of Thanksgiving Eve, and all I can think about is being angry.  I know, I know, I have so much to be grateful for, and I'm an ungrateful wretch for dismissing the hundreds of daily blessings and focusing primarily on the handful of trials.  If I was really a "good Christian", I would quit my bellyaching and stop feeling so angry and pitiful.

In re-reading recent Babble and Caring Bridge posts, I see myself wrestling with this notion of "good" vs. "bad" behavior.  Everything is so black and white!  If I'll just be thankful, and do my daily study and meditation, then I will get rewarded for being a good Christian.  But if I give God the finger, do my own thing and ignore what He's got to say, then I'm an idiot who deserves every second of the pain I'm feeling.  And it's been my experience that even when I am faithful in study and prayer, the shit hits the fan anyway.

How much, Lord, and how long?  When I look around, it seems like I've gotten more pain than my fair share in the last 50 years. Yeah, yeah, I know the part about not judging my insides by other people's outsides, and everybody's got their own drama to survive, and of course I know that there are millions of people in the world who don't have what I have - materially, spiritually or otherwise.

And yet I am watching my husband s-l-o-w-l-y deteriorate right before my eyes, every minute of every day.  A heart attack, a couple of toe amputations, now kidney failure and it appears that blindness is not far down the road - all from diabetes.  Giant scary bruises where he's punctured six times a week for dialysis.  Teenage children in emotional pain that they don't understand and I can't relieve.  A church that is struggling desperately to recover from a tragic schism, and a job that I am terrified of losing.  A cluttered house that I don't feel like cleaning because I'm tired and depressed, a bad chest cold as I write this, an unwelcome return of thirty pounds and a half-constructed Christmas tree that I don't feel like finishing because the memories tied to each ornament hurt my heart.

I know I should be thankful, and most of the time, I am - for my husband and children, the church, the job, the house, my body, the food and the Christmas tree ornaments.  For a half-century's worth of a good and deeply-lived life.

I know I should be thankful.  I know that.  The part that makes me angry is that most of it isn't the way I scripted it, and while I'm intellectually aware that I am not actually the author of my life, I am still mad about it.

This should be the part where I see the error of my thinking today and promise myself to "do better" about gratitude because that's what a strong, healthy believer would do.  Sorry.  Not happening, at least not today.  If there's one thing I've learned about myself, it's that I will actively and intentionally choose misery and self-pity until I'm bored with it.

The whole damn country is going to stuff itself silly tomorrow in "thankfulness" for bountiful blessings.  I am going to stuff myself silly because that's what I do when I hurt - gratitude has nothing to do with it. 

Waffling about actually hitting "submit" on this one, because it's full of vomit instead of joyful sunshine... but it's real and honest about where I am this Thanksgiving.  Sue me.

Little Sister

Today is my baby sister's forty-xxth birthday.  Last Sunday was my 51st birthday, so while neither of us qualify for spring chicken designation, I'm still the only one who's an AARP candidate.

How do I describe us?  To say we came from a dysfunctional family is a generous understatement -yet, to say that everyone loved each other anyway also falls short.  It takes a special kind of person to love a train wreck, but it's easier when you're related.

I thought about cataloguing our mutual tragedy - lord knows there's plenty of material - but instead I've decided to celebrate some major accomplishments that defy all odds.

 

1.  We are decent people.  True, we are still vaguely snarky and condescending to those with lazy hygiene, phony personage and/or government jobs, mostly because we've had all three.  Yet we still give and love generously and care for others and make sure that people who need stuff can have our stuff whenever possible.

 

2.  We are survivors.  While our aforementioned upbringing would make Tennessee Williams need smelling salts, the reality is that a good bit of destruction in the last 25 years is both tragic and self-wrought.  Blaming your parents has a fixed shelf-life.  Arguably, we came into adulthood with some effed-up coping skills, but regardless, one must rise above at some point and tend the roses instead of smelling the manure.  And here we are.

 

3.  We have faith.  Although Hal Lindsey's "The Late Great Planet Earth" was a favorite bedtime story when we were youngsters, and our maternal lineage espoused Southern Baptist AM radio (can I get an "amen-AH!"), we ended up loving God with our own individual faiths.  Growing up with fervent believers will plant something in your gut that is both frightening and hopeful, and if you're lucky, it eventually turns out to be made of nothing but pure love that goes beyond words.

 

4.  We are good moms.  It's a hard thing to say, but as messed up as she was, our mom was a decent mother.  Yes, we ate Captain Crunch for dinner, and we pinched her toes after she passed out on Thorazine because it would make her say some really funny shit, and we shivered in fear of the Infernal Revenue Service because they were coming to put her in Leavenworth any day.  And yet - she loved us more than breathing.  True, we learned a lot about being a crummy parent too, but mostly we learned that a loving mother can help you survive freakish and desperate circumstances, even if you cause them yourself or if she is one of them.

 

5.  We love each other.  This one is hard too.  In years past, we have gone months without speaking, and there are seasons of angry words that break my heart even now.  Nobody can hurt you like your sister, and yet nobody's affection has the same worth.  We are bound together by memories and DNA, and I consider every call and card and email and hug something grace-filled and sacred.  I know of other people with siblings who loathe each other because they can't resist picking each other's scabs - my sister and I have learned which ones we can help heal and which ones we need to leave alone because nothing good will come from rubbing salt in them.

In short - I love my sister and it both surprises and delights me that we have made it into middle age with affection and sanity reasonably intact.  And I wish her a lovely, joy-filled birthday - and I celebrate the fact that she is my sister.

Slow Learner

When I was in elementary school, I received regular praise for my intellect.  What a smart little girl! they said.  My little construction paper-bound report cards bore it out, too... rows upon rows of As (with an occasional B in gym class - I've never been one for working up a sweat.)

Middle, and then high school proved far less successful.  Granted, there were a few distractions in other parts of my life, which I wore as proud excuses for Ds, sort of like a girl scout badge.  I continued to do well in those things that came easy to me, but anything else received half-hearted effort if any at all.  There was much "tsk-tsking" from teachers and parents and other adults - "she has such potential - what a shame she's wasting it."

I once heard a speaker describe it this way:  "I don't know how to play the piano, but I've always wanted to play the piano.  I don't want to LEARN to play the piano, I don't want to have to PRACTICE playing the piano, I just want to sit down and play the piano." 

Regarding potential, he said, "I had plenty of potential...but it's MY potential and I'll do whatever I want with it."

I can relate.

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I want to be a great wife and mom;  I want to be healthy, respected, a friend to all, especially those in need - I'm trying hard to learn, practice and keep learning how to be each of these things.  I have the potential.

But if I'm honest, the thing I want most is peace. 

Contentment in all circumstances, is how Paul put it.  Peace.  Contentment.  All the potential in the world won't yield it because it isn't in our nature.  Not mine anyway.  It requires super-natural intervention, meaning something that is not of my own nature.

Yet for some reason, I don't appear to want to learn or practice in this area.  I just want someone to give peace to me.  Right now, right this red hot minute.  I want my life to be smooth and simple and full of everything I think will give me peace.

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I haven't had much peace lately.  There was a long stretch of time where I borrowed it from friends;  it was sort of like stealing cable TV.  If I connect with you, and you've got peace, somehow or another I get to use yours too.

But after a while, the cable company figures it out, and there are unpleasant consequences and basically everyone eventually has to pay for their own cable.  Likewise, I can only poach someone else's peace for so long before I start running into trouble and have to figure out where to get my own.

My church has been the source of my peace for several years now - I love these people like family.  But we recently went through a gut-wrenching schism and it became excruciatingly clear that I'd been depending on a pastor, a steeple and its people for my peace.

Time to pay for my own cable.

Overreaching the metaphor, I need to plug in directly to the source of peace, the only true peace I've ever known - my spiritual relationship with my Creator.

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I'm told and I believe this particular relationship predates my own birth, that He knew me and loved me before I was even an itch in my daddy's pants.  (Well, that's not exactly how it reads in the good book.)  As a kid, I heard about this love in Sunday School and from my parents, but mostly all I understood was about floods and bread and fishes. 

When you're little, you don't really know much about what's going on and who's really listening to your bedtime prayers other than your mom.  But still - I started learning the basics of how to have a reciprocal relationship with God - how to love Him back.  I think it made Him very happy for me to learn "Jesus Loves Me" and sing it regularly, whether for joy or because it comforted me when I was scared.

I began journaling around age 10 (yes, I had a diary, with a lock and everything!) and it wasn't terribly long before I started writing "Dear God" instead of "Dear Diary".  After all, what the heck was telling a diary all my junk going to accomplish?!  At least if I told God, He might intervene and make Bob Culver have a crush on me, too.

When I was old enough to truly decide for myself, I said that, yes, I was a sinner and that yes, I was all about accepting Jesus as my Savior, especially if that meant I'd get me some peace.  And over time, and through horrible seasons, and through some of the most joy filled moments of my life, I developed my relationship with God through talking with Him and reading His book. 

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But see, here's the thing.  Like any relationship, this one needs continual maintenance and work.  Continual learning and daily practice.  Not on God's part - He knows every hair on my head and every thought inside it.  (EEEK!)  And loves me anyway, unconditionally and endlessly. 

The problem is that I fall in and out of love with Him like a gold-digging floozy.  Sure, I will holler for His help when the feces hits the fan, and sometimes I remember to say "thanks" when I pause long enough to notice that my life is actually pretty darn good.

Yet there's no real relationship in that... and guess what?

There's not much peace, either.

In fairness to me, there truly have been long stretches of time in my adult life where I was diligent and faithful to our relationship - regular study, worship and prayer journaling.  So I do know how it's supposed to work, and the ball is always in my court.

But I've been so mad at Him lately!  Slowly, I've given up learning and practicing over the last several months.  And guess what?  No peace.  None, nada, zilch.  Now I can't even friggin' sleep.

I even began entertaining the notion that all this Jesus business was hooey cooked up by a bunch of Jews in the first century just to piss off Rome.  That this book I've been underlining and memorizing for the last umpteen years was just written by several centuries' worth of deluded sheep, and I'd been drinking their dopey Kool-Aid most of my life.

It hurts me to admit I have had these thoughts.  As if He didn't already know I had them.

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Still, I've kept my Bible and my journal on my desk, sort of off to the side where I can glare at them every day and fuel my guilt. No peace in that.

There's this bumper sticker I've seen and rolled my eyes about:  "No God - No Peace;  Know God - Know Peace."  Well duh, I know that already, I've lived it and experienced it and BULLY FOR YOU, bumper-sticker-person.

But knowing and doing are light years apart.

Lately I've found myself pulling away from friends, shoveling food into my face and shaking my fist at heaven, squarely perched on my pity pot.  And glaring at the side of my desk.

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Four days ago, I picked up a pen and opened the journal.  And I proceeded to write a long letter to God.  I can't really describe it as a prayer because it was mostly me telling Him off, with f-bombs and everything.

Three days ago, I picked up the journal, read what I wrote the previous day and then wrote an apology for being a selfish a**hole with a dirty mouth.

Two days ago, I started with the Bible first - I thought it might be better to hear from Him instead of me launching into the mood du jour.  And you know what He said?!  He said "My grace is sufficient for you" (2 Corinthians 12:9 - hey, didn't I quote that recently?) and that "the peace that passes all understanding will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus."  (Philippians 4:7)

The peace that passes all understanding.  Now, I'd like to have me some of THAT.  My reply letter was that of a thirsty wanderer in a miserable desert who has just spotted an oasis in the distance and it looks to be the real deal.

Yesterday, I did the Bible-first thing again, and this time He said, "Peace I leave with you;  My peace I give you.  I do not give to you as the world gives.  Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid." (John 14:7)  My reply letter is dotted with grateful tear stains.  And I felt a little wave of peace pass over my heart.

And so - this morning He has said to me "do not fear, for I am with you;  do not be dismayed, for I am your God.  I will strengthen you and help you, I will uphold you with My righteous right hand."  (Isaiah 41:10)

Then Jesus said to me - yes, really, to me, right here in my basement office with the cat puke behind the desk - he said, "and surely I am with you, to the end of the age."  (Matthew 28:20)

He's here.  Right here with me, to the end of the age.  I know it, I believe it, and I have more peace in this moment than I've had in a year or maybe more.

Wonder what He will say tomorrow?

Toolkit

I joined a new Sunday School class this fall.  I'm taking a sabbatical from teaching a class myself, mostly because it is time for me to be a student again... but also because these days I am so empty by the time Sunday rolls around, there's not much left to give to anybody else.  (cue tiny violins)


We are doing a Kyle Idleman series called "AHA - Awakening, Honesty, and Action".  And it is seriously pissing me off.


I'm good with Awakening... I stay awake to my defects of character and behavior pretty much 24/7.  I even see stuff in this category that may not actually be there, or at least isn't as dire and degenerate as I see it.  But I am brutally aware of those things that are real.


I'm a tad better at Honesty now than in years past... I have found out the hard way on multiple occasions that honesty with others as well as myself can circumvent a whole lot of heartache.  (What can I say, I'm a slow learner.)  Honesty is like ripping off a bandaid that was covering a self-inflicted wound;  sometimes it hurts like a mother for a split second, but then it's over.  If there's still a bit of healing to be had, then keeping it aired out is probably the best remedy anyway.


Action.  Here's the next logical step to awakening and honesty - and it is my greatest stumbling block.  What do I DO with these things that I've realized and admitted?  If I know what they are, and I am honest about them, then what happens next?


I have a toolkit.  It has a divider in the middle and is filled with all manner of tools and tinkering implements with which I can take action. 


On one side, my favorites are the hammer and the wrench... perhaps I can bash the living hell out of myself or wrench my heart so tightly that I can't feel it anymore.  There's a giant bag of Reese's miniatures and a twelve pack of diet Cokes - the chemical combination of these two comestibles has a wonderful albeit temporary numbing effect.  Over in the corner, under a pile of good intentions, there is still an unopened airplane bottle of vodka.  Just in case I might want it tomorrow.


On the other side is a well-worn Bible, filled with various colors of highlights and underlining.  There are parts that I've memorized and still lots to be learned.  There's a journal into which I can puke out vitriol and plant flowers instead.  There are photos of my husband and children, photos of glorious simple joys, and a contacts list chocked full of phone numbers and email addresses for people I love and who curiously also love me.  There are beautiful projects that will help someone else.


I think I'm annoyed by this study series because it is making me take a hard look at my toolkit and decide which tools I want to use to take action on a daily basis. 


Wonder which set I will choose today?

Enough Already

That's enough out of you.
Haven't you had enough?
Enough is enough!
Do we have enough?
Did you bring enough for everyone?
Am I (good-attractive-rich-happy-fill in the blank) enough?

Enough.  Such a simple word.  Such a powerful, emotionally-charged word. 

The two American generations immediately before mine lived through economic and social conditions where large swaths of people actually did not have enough.  My maternal grandmother Mildred, born in 1916, came through the Depression as a little girl in rural southern Appalachia and most certainly did not have enough.  By the time WWII rolled around, she'd paid her own way and pushed herself through business school and into a lifelong career as a legal/political secretary.  She was, by God, going to make sure she had enough.

My mother Linda fared somewhat better; while she grew up in the same rural community as her own mother, Mildred would regularly send checks to my great-aunt Ruthie who was charged with raising Linda.  My maternal grandfather was mostly a phantom;  he was away doing construction in Roosevelt's Civilian Conservation Corps for several years and was not part of Linda's life other than a random letter or two.  So - while my mother may have had plenty of fried okra and pretty homemade skirts, she did not have enough love, nurturing or attention from either of her parents.

The result was an insatiable need - a demand - for the affections of others, be it her high school boyfriends or her husband (my dad) or her kids.  And no matter how much she was loved, it was never enough.  Her depression and subsequently diagnosed schizophrenia amplified her craving for affection beyond imagination.  We could never quite love her or attend to her enough.

I always felt like if I could just do or be enough for her, then Linda would be happy.  But my hair wasn't clean enough and my short stories weren't funny enough and in fairly short order I was not well-behaved enough to merit approval.  As a pissed-off teenager, I decided she could shove her approval and I proceeded to dramatically and noisily not care about being good enough. 

I love my dad - always have and always will - but he finally had to escape and find happiness elsewhere.  There is no longer bitterness for me in this part of the story... but at the time, I thought it had something to do with me not being enough.  Kids are funny that way.  He got a new wife and family, and I was livid with everyone involved for decades.  Resentment aside, for years I harbored a quietly narcissistic suspicion that it all happened because I wasn't enough.  (Yes, I've since had excellent therapy.)

A mentally-ill single mother with two kids, Linda feared "not enough" more than anything.  I can't talk about it much without getting a little dizzy, but suffice to say that the reality show "Hoarders" is precisely how my sister and I spent our childhood.  God knows we had enough critters and clothes and Cokes and cigarettes and stuffed animals and books and prescription meds.   But we often didn't have enough money for school supplies, income tax payments or water heater repairs.

Enough of the autobio.  I just wanted to provide a backdrop

for my relationship with this business of enough.

Enough infers a comparative quantitative analysis of what we have against what we need.  Interestingly, what we have is generally fact-based, yet what we need is often subjective and sometimes even predicated on mood.  Impulsivity and addictions distort wants into needs - be it food, alcohol, drugs, shopping, gambling, etc.  Often I will tell myself I need something when the truth is I just want it.

I think most of us struggle with some form of enough-ness.  Good enough, healthy enough, pretty enough, skinny enough, rich enough, smart enough, kind enough, happy enough, loved enough, yada yada yada.  When, exactly, is enough ENOUGH?

I regularly wrestle my own enough-ness (actually my perceived lack thereof).  Am I doing enough to be a good wife and mother?  Am I serving my Creator and my fellow man enough?  Am I working hard enough at my job?  Am I fun enough, kind enough, generous enough?  I know I don't get enough exercise or sleep, and there are never enough hours in a day for me to do everything I think I should.

The doctrine of grace informs me that I can never be good enough to earn God's love or forgiveness.  This initially feels like bad news, sort of like "then why bother with God at all".  But, for me anyway, on the heels of that flippancy comes the conviction that He bothered to create me in the first place and all that's asked of me in return is... me.  If I give Him me, then I get His grace.  And I don't even have to shine myself up or be "good enough", because that's an impossibility anyway.

In his second letter to the members of the church in Corinth, Paul imparts a pearl of faith wisdom that stills the storm of "not enough"-ness for me.  And with one single word, housed within a sentence of hope that I believe to be a statement of fact, I am - in fact - enough.

But the Lord said, "my grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness".  (2 Corinthians 12:9)

Hmmm.  Sufficient.  Sufficient.  SUFFICIENT!!

Sufficient means "adequate for the purpose;  enough".  (dictionary.com)  By virtue of God's grace and limitless love, I am enough.  I have enough.  I may not have or be everything I want, but I absolutely am and have everything I need.  It is enough.

Not on my own, mind you - left to my own devices, I will always battle a nagging sense of not enough-ness.

But, placing my 50-year-old hand in His and glancing backwards down the path that brought us to this point in time, I can see that I've always had - and been - ENOUGH already.