Lately I’ve been seeing a phrase floating around reminding women that they are enough. It’s meant to encourage women that just being themselves is enough. The sentiment is sweet and self-empowering and I get it.

As women, we don’t feel like we’re good enough in almost all areas of our life. Whether from society, media, family, or our own inner voice, we are constantly being sent the message that we don’t measure up. Woman are infamously known for playing the comparison game and carrying around guilt for not being able to “perfectly” balance it all. 

But, even though I understand the intention behind the phrase, every time I see it or hear it I can’t help but think no, I’m not enough….but God is.

See, sometimes I fail. Even my well-intentioned words or actions fail. Even my “I gave it my best shot” fails, at times. Sometimes I’m not enough. I fall. I make mistakes.

And the whole I’m enough phrase aims to not make me feel like a total failure or that my good enough is enough, and I appreciate that. But I don’t have to feel like a failure and I can still know that I am not enough. For me, there’s actually freedom in that.

How?

I was never created to be enough. I was created to do life in communion with God. It’s there that my weaknesses are made perfect in his strength.

I’m not enough for myself. I get exhausted. I get panicked. I can let my emotions rule me and drive me into dimensions that I didn’t even know existed until I created them! It’s hard to center yourself when at the center of self is an exhausted mommy who multitasks the numerous needs and wants of her family all the while trying to pursue her own needs and wants.

No amount of telling myself I am enough is every really going to make me feel like enough. I need more than enough. I need to be refueled from an outside source. I need the creator of this body and this life to lavish me with His love, remind me of His faithfulness, drench me with His peace, pull me out of the hole I find myself in at times, and remind me whose I am.

I find hope and encouragement in the fact that in the hands of God, even my failures are enough. I serve the God who multiplied the loaves and the fishes. He can take my not enough, my missed it by a long shot and in his hands, it is enough.

I’m not enough for my children. I’m not enough for my husband. If they put all their expectations on me to fulfill them or be enough for them, they will be sorely disappointed. No one can fulfill such expectations. But God can. He is enough for them. He can fill the voids that life can carve in us.

I know that because God is enough, I am enough.