adjective
1.
adequate for the want or need; sufficient for the purpose or to satisfy desire: enough water.
pronoun
2.
an adequate quantity or number; sufficiency.
adverb
3.
in a quantity or degree that answers a purpose or satisfies a need or desire; sufficiently.
As I mentioned in a previous blog, I have never felt “unwanted” from my family. After losing 6 children to miscarriages, I was #7, the last hope and the only survivor. I was wanted. I was enough. I satisfied a want, a need, and a purpose in my parent’s lives. My folks made a promise to God, “Give us a child, and we will raise him/her to love you, and we will give him/her back to you.” God said ok, and here I am.
When I was a child, strangers would come up to my parents and say, “Do you know how anointed your daughter is?” or “She is going to do great things for the Lord!” People would pull me aside and tell me that God had big plans for my future. I felt special to God. But then the enemy began to speak. “What if you fail?” “What if you mess up and ruin your witness?” “What if you’re not enough?” As I got older, I came to expect that people would recognize my anointing and if they didn’t I would worry that I had offended God in some way, and lost my usefulness to Him. Silly, I know, but it is still true.
These past 2 months in Africa have been life altering. As much as I’ve desired to minister to others, God has been ministering to me. And from the overflow of His presence, ministry exists. You see, for a very long time I have believed that I wasn’t enough. I wasn’t good enough. I believed that I wasn’t smart enough, pretty enough, holy enough, spiritual enough… The list went on, but the concept of “being enough” was always overshadowed by my knowledge that clearly, I was found “wanting”. I confused hard times as the Lord taking His hand off my life. I equated pain as punishment. I had inadvertently made God’s love contingent on my opinion of my worthiness. I had essentially made God’s power about me.
As I’m sure you have already figured out, that makes for a vicious cycle of spiritual ups and downs. Over the past few years, I have made some pretty dumb mistakes. The kind that leave you looking at a person going, “Really? SERIOUSLY!?!?!?!” With the afore mentioned thoughts of being enough, along with clearly made mistakes, I had lost all confidence in my ability to walk in my calling. I would express God-ideas, and secretly doubt that I was the one to fulfill them, because surely I was going to mess them up. I had made a habit of letting people’s praises of my spirituality determine whether or not God could use me, because obviously others knew better about my life, than me.
After having a sit down with some of my team members I realized that I had unforgiveness in my heart. This unforgiveness was preventing me from walking in complete freedom. This particular person has wronged me over and over again, my whole life. She always held me to standards that I could never reach, she rarely said nice things about me, and so I justified not forgiving her. Until recently. The problem was I had held such hardness in my heart that I didn’t know how to forgive her. So I prayed this prayer; “Father help me to forgive myself. I don’t know how, but I need to.” Yet even after taking this step, I didn’t feel like I had done enough. Then Valentine’s Day happened.
We are a squad of 42 people, 10 of those members being guys. Not just any guys, but Godly men. Men who will change this world with the love of Jesus. Men who, if any of them said, “Hey, God said we need to do such and such…” I would have no issue going, “Ok, let’s do it!”
These men went all out for Valentine’s Day. They started the day by walking the 1/2 mile to the well and getting all the water needed for the day. They made us breakfast and announced that they would be doing all the manual labor for the day, so we could spend time ministering to each other. 10 men, doing the work of 40+ people. But before they left, my friend Jesse prayed for us. I don’t remember his whole prayer, but he asked God to show us how beautiful we each were, and how we were enough.
His words echoed in my head. Enough, enough, enough. YOU. ARE. ENOUGH. I sat there quietly and cried. His voice had changed in my head, and I heard my beloved’s voice telling me over and over again, “Kimberly, you are enough.”
The whole day was spent being loved on by those wonderful men. They made us lunch. They encouraged us to have girl time. (They even rescued us from the lizards that tried to make their homes in our Chitanges.) They performed the winter olympics for us, complete with commercial breaks. They made us dinner, bought us chocolate, and they made us hand written cards. But the last bit of the night was the most powerful. They washed our feet. Which, if you could have seen our feet, just that gesture alone was enough to bring anyone to tears. In the washing of our feet however, they made a covenant with us as our brothers in Christ. Taking a page from John 13, they promised to respect us as the “Beautiful women in Christ that we all were”. They promised to look out for us, not just physically, but emotionally and spiritually, and they gave us permission to speak up if we felt that they weren’t fulfilling their covenant. As they took each of us by the hand and led us to the wash basins, one would kneel and wash our feet, while another would stand behind us and pray over us. It was the most beautiful gesture of love that I and many of the other women had ever received from a man. Being that no one is married or dating each other on the squad, there were no “brownie points” to be doled out. This was a pure act of love.
After the tears dried, I thought incessantly as to what we, as the women of Z squad could do to repay this act of love. The truth was, and still is… We can’t. We shouldn’t even try. That’s when God spoke; “Kimberly, why must you always try to even the record? Why must my children try to match my love with good deeds? You can’t. I will not be undone in my expression of love for my children. These men have done this because they love you and they think you all are treasures, I have given them my heart for you. As you accept this gesture, you are accepting a piece of my heart for you”.
Wow. I was awestruck. God really loves me, just because I’m His! There is nothing I can do to earn it, and there is nothing I can do to make Him stop. He loves me because I am enough, right now, right in this moment. Mistakes, triumphs, victories and defeats, I. am. enough.
II Corinthians 3:18 puts it this way:
All of us are looking with unveiled faces at the glory of the Lord as if we were looking in a mirror. We are being transformed into that same image from one degree of glory to the next degree of glory. This comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.
We as believers are being actively made more like Christ all the time. I read a quote from Michelangelo and I imagine this is what God would say about us. This quote was said when someone asked him how he created his famous statue, “The David”. He said this:
“I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.”
Jesus walked in ultimate freedom. He was sure of who He was because He was sure of who His Father was. Michelangelo didn’t have to add marble to “the David”, as an artist he used what he had and made it great. God is the ultimate artist, and as all artists they see before they create. They begin with the end in mind. It’s a beautiful process, and each brush stroke or chiseled piece is key to making a masterpiece.
We are enough. You are enough.
