ENOUGH

How do we know when enough is enough? How much money is enough? How much stuff is enough? How much time is enough? How much work is enough? How much responsibility? How much stress? How much grief?

So many things were going on in our life when we turned 50. We were 30 years into our marriage. If you had been a fly on the wall then, what would you have seen? Our children were grown and gone. We were empty nesters. But that was in the house. In the barn, we were different people. We worked alongside Ken's father milking cows and doing all the farm work. There was so much anger - between the two of them and between the two of us. There was so much noise at milking time with all the machines, the cows, the flies, the mud. 

And in the middle of all that, grieving after the death of my father, the whole farm business got turned over to us. Now, not only was I milking cows daily, I was going to school part time with reading and homework and research papers and exams. Now I had to take over doing all the farm books and financial responsibilities. We were in a full-blown para-menopause transition. In the barn we all screamed at each other. In the house we seldom talked. Depression was my constant companion. Ken just kept on doing what he always did. I was the one who took on most of the extra responsibilities. We had 5 years of back taxes to reconcile; the furnace broke down one fall and the next fall it backed up and filled the house with greasy residue because the chimney was plugged. I hired help to clean up the house, but that brought out the worst in us. In me. Never in public. Just the two of us. Thoughts of suicide screaming in my head.

In the middle of all this, God spoke. I had been crying myself to sleep most nights for a couple of years, crying out to God. He was silent then. But He spoke. It was the same voice that spoke to me the night our daughter died. One evening, as I was walking through the kitchen, I heard that distinct voice in my head. "If you take your life, how can you tell married couples that I AM Enough?" 

It is interesting that, during that semester, I had to keep a homework journal for the course I was taking - Counseling Theories. I failed the exam, but I have the weekly journal notes of what was going on in our lives, in my head, in my heart. Of all the courses I have taken, all the degrees I have earned, what I learned that fall is what I recall with most clarity. God is Enough. As for counseling theories, I like the one that Jesus used when he taught. Change the way you think. This changes the way you feel. This allows you to change the way you behave. 

Today I am being reminded that I am enough because Christ in me is enough. I do not have to do anything to please God. I do not have to earn brownie points by doing enough good deeds. I am enough. I am loved. I am enough because God loves me. God chose me. And God chose Ken to be my husband. He is a keeper. 

Jesus said, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me (John 14:6 NIV).