Enough

Here's a thought I had today, sparked by some words from How Not to Be Afraid...: The miracle of consciousness is that you are the only one who can ever know you from the inside. I know it seems obvious, but I've never considered it. I have worked hard at getting to know other people, as it were, from the inside. It's been sometimes out of self-interested curiosity, but, I hope, mostly out of empathy and affection.

I have also spent time getting to know myself, that's a fact. However, my self-exploration has been motivated less by either curiosity or affection and more by a determination to ferret out and fix what's wrong with me.

When I look at myself, I consistently see a problem to be solved.

I could say problems, plural. My weight? Problem. My neglect of tracking our finances consistently? Problem. The weeds I haven't pulled? Problem. It boils down to one common thread, one problem: Me.

That's how I've learned to think. When I think about myself I am ever looking for what to fix, improve, or revamp.

Recently a dear friend shared a picture on Facebook of a sign posted in her workplace.

She tagged me, and I saw the image, and I thought, "Aww, how sweet of her to say. I need to hear that." But that's not what she meant. She said in her post, "When I read this, I hear Chris saying it to me." Took my breath away. She hears these words in my voice.

I don't.

I don't know that I've ever heard me saying these words to me. Yes, I say them to other people all the time. Whoever you are reading this, whether we've ever met or not, if we were together and you expressed a fraction of the "I need fixing"material I lay on myself, I would say to you in the most sincere and heartfelt way I know how, looking you right in the eyes, "You are enough! You are so enough, it's unbelievable how enough you are," and I would mean it.

What if I could say that looking in the mirror, making sure I looked me right in the eyes? The thought makes me squirm.

A devotion I read the other day says this: "Once I can see the Mystery here, and trust the Mystery even in this piece of clay that I am, then I can also see it in you." Stopped me cold. I have to see it and trust it first in me, here, in my body, looking out from my eyes, with my unique wiring and experience, the one-and-only-in-history I that I am -- I have to see Mystery, the living out of the life of the God who is Love, in me before I can see it in you.

I want to see it in you. I look for it in you. I believe that I see it in you and want to help you see it in yourself, because, well, because of Love. I want this more than anything, and now I am challenged to wonder if that means that I have to quit evading the mirror, look me right in the eyes, and see the Beloved -- Enough. So enough. Unbelievably enough.