What is enough.
This last week, I spent some time pondering my own mortality at an appointment to check on a new lump. Turns out my body has a knack for growing cysts and when you get a new one, you've gotta get them checked out. Doctor's offices are not comforting places, are they? Sterile and efficient. That's what we expect and need, but it's what makes them horrible places to spend much time in. All those people smiling in the pharmaceutical advertisements aren't fooling any of us.
After my exams, I sat in the dark ultrasound room, masked and in my robe and wondered if this time would be different. If the radiologist would enter the room and sit down and start in... We saw something abnormal, we want to follow up. This was not my first clinical rodeo and still my nerves were raw, my attention drawn to any kind of distraction. Overhead an oversized, paper flower spun in circles, caught in the draft from the ceiling vents.
Thankfully, when the ultrasound tech came back without the radiologist I knew I was in the clear. There was no need for a long talk or explanation. They saw nothing concerning and I could go ahead and check out. Oh, and the tech liked my hair. She said whenever she cuts it this short she looks like Justin Bieber, which I assured her was not really possible. So that was an easy ending.
Later in the week, I walked past a storefront with these words scrawled in loopy script on the window: You are enough. It felt oddly placed, in the window of a shop selling clothes, but it stuck with me. I do get what they were driving at. I sympathize with the idea that each one of us is “enough” in the sense that each of us is innately valuable and worthy of love. That's good news in some ways.
Yet, when I end up thinking a little harder about it sometimes, like when I'm sitting in a thin, polkadot gown on an examining table, I find myself desiring a deeper place of grounding of my identity; a resting place that is unchanging, safe and secure. In that moment, I can't get my inner goddess to roar louder than the fear I feel. I need to know not just that I have value, but that God is with me. When I am unable to speak the truth of my value and worth to myself. When I'm angry that my body is hurting and scaring me. When I can't just assume things are going to be okay, I need God to be with me.
And so, I find myself wanting to be solidly IN God. Not just calling out when I'm staring blankly at the wall of the doctor's office, shaken by the potential that this time, something actually might be really wrong. My prayer is to be so grounded in Him that I feel and know my “okay-ness” to such an extent that I can rest, come what may. If I place myself at Jesus’ feet, I can rest in the fact that He knows exactly what I need. He is able to discern the lack and His presence is what meets that lack and that need in me. That promise is even better news: God is enough.
This quote from St. Teresa of Avila was a comfort to me this week:
Let nothing upset you, let nothing startle you. All things pass; God does not change. Patience wins all it seeks. Whoever has God lacks nothing:
God alone is enough.
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That's all for this week, friends! Look for these newsletters to come on Wednesdays now. Peace!