“But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’”

-2 Corinthians 12:9

“Here, this will work.  It’s good enough,” I say to my four-year-old as I toss her a broken yellow crayon for letter Y show and tell at preschool that day.

I sweep the hair out of my crying two-year-old’s face and pin it as we run out the door.  “Good enough.”

I look around the house demolished by the storm of rush and chaos that morning, throw the dirty dishes into the sink and again assure myself that it’s good enough for now.

No matter how many times I tell myself, “Good enough,”  the overachiever in me desperately cries out,

“It’s not enough!

I’m not enough!

I’m never going to do enough or be enough!”

This feeling of “not enough” is a feeling I am convinced has plagued every woman out there at one point or another.   Enough is something we so badly want to be, but truly something we were never meant to be. 

This is a lesson God has been trying to teach me repeatedly through mornings like this, through moments of pure chaos…moments when my weaknesses are so glaringly obvious that I just want to crawl back in bed and hide my head under my blankets.

God has been teaching me that I was never made to be enough.

If I was enough, I wouldn’t need Him.

If I didn’t have those moments of weakness, I would miss out on the opportunities to see His power made perfect in my life.

One morning as we were hurrying out the door, my two-year-old insisted on carrying her diaper bag by herself.  She wanted to be “big enough” like her big sister who skipped along with her backpack on her back. She struggled immensely as she carried the bag that was clearly too heavy for her.  After tripping and stumbling around enough, finally, she agreed to let me carry it for her.

This little incident was a revelation into my own life.  It was as if God was telling me, “This is what you look like when you try to be enough by yourself.  You carry weight that is too much for you, and it causes you to trip and stumble around.  You were never meant to carry that much weight by yourself.  Let me carry it for you.”

What about you?  Are you carrying the weight of burdens you were never meant to bear?  Are you striving to be enough and do enough when in fact you were never created to be enough?

What if today, we all take off those heavy bags and let God carry them for us?

Let’s be okay with not being enough, because His grace is more than enough!

And His power is made perfect in our weaknesses.