When I chose the theme of “fear” for October, I had this blog entry in mind.

I knew I would write it, because this fear has a place in my life every day for just about as long as I can remember. Some days, I’m better at fighting this fear. Some days, I give it into this fear all together. This fear is the fear of not enough.

The first layer of this fear comes from living in an attitude of scarcity, instead of gratitude. I look around and find things that I don’t have enough of. I don’t have enough money or I don’t have enough beauty or I don’t have enough respect or success or feathers in my cap. I don’t have enough patience or courage or energy. Everything I’m lacking stresses me out.

But these fears are just symptoms of a bigger fear. I often look to money and things and success and beauty to cover up a greater fear. I clutch at these things as ways to distract myself from this fear, to cover it up. This fear is the deep down one: I am not enough, and I don’t deserve love and acceptance.

I clutch at beauty to cover my inside ugliness. I clutch at success because admiration feels like love. I clutch at things because everyone seems to equate them with peace and a good life. Beauty and success and material things seem to be the answer to my “not enough.” In my clear thinking hours, I know that money and success and things “can’t buy me love,” but they seem to be enough to garner people’s respect and even their envy.

Somehow, somewhere down deep, I think that if I collect all of these glittering treasures I will have enough. That “enough” will also solve my inner craving to be enough. I’ve chased. I’ve tried. The problem is…I’m right.

I am not enough.

Confronting this fear, this reality every day is not fun. This realization brings with it fear and disappointment. But it also brings the truth. I am sinful. Always have been, always will be. I will always struggle with the feeling of not being enough because I am not enough. I am not worthy of love because I am a sinner.

Starting here at the bottom, in this harsh reality, is somewhere I start every day. Some days I run after things and beauty and money and success to cover up the knowledge that I’m not enough. But some days I remember the second half of the greatest truth I know.

Jesus is enough.

He is the only one who is enough. And through faith in his perfect life and death, I am also enough. What beautiful words. Although I am a sinner who struggles with her “not enough,” I rejoice in the fact that even though I’ll never be enough, I don’t have to be. Jesus gives me his perfection and his wholeness. He took my “not enough” to the cross with him.

God loved me even before I was enough. And he has brought beautiful words into my life. These words are perfection and sufficiency and completeness. Jesus is perfect. His grace is sufficient. He forgiveness is complete. How beautiful those words sound to my broken and lacking and imperfect life. He binds me up in Him. And that is the enough, that is the love, I’m always longing for.