I do most of my praying at night. I've self diagnosed myself with ADHD -- which I know isn't actually true as I can sit and read one book for eight hours straight -- but I don't generally have a very long attention span. I also think a lot. Or maybe my thinking would be better described as daydreaming, which is not a particularly large difference in my opinion.
But at night when I'm gathered beneath a blanket of darkness, I'm less likely to get distracted. Well, slightly less distracted anyways.
I can remember night upon night when I was praying in that bed -- praying, crying, begging God for something I wanted. Time and time again my hopes were dashed. I woke up disappointed. Angry. Sad. Often the things I wanted were replaced by something only God could have ordained. For some reason I forget about those things. I forget about the good stuff. But I vividly remember all the things I didn't receive.
Probably because I'm selfish.
When I woke up miserable and dejected, I felt like God had let me down. I chided myself and whispered that God doesn't let people down. God knows what's best.
Somehow in my brain, all of this equaled that I wasn't enough for God. It equaled that I had failed. That I didn't quite measure up.
I could list you example after example of things I begged for but didn't happen: pleading with Jesus to give me a best friend who would never be mean, to grant me my favourite part in the school play, to not let her have to go through chemotherapy. Lots in between those, too.
I thought I was inadequate because those prayers felt seemingly unanswered.
I thought I was too inadequate for God. Too much of a disappointment. Too much of an embarrassment. Too much of so much more. Too much and yet not enough all at the same time.
But we're on day sixteen of choosing enough, aren't we?
Perhaps I'll never be the best writer, or the prettiest girl, or the smartest cookie. Perhaps there will always be moments and hours where my un-enoughness is overwhelming in all of the worst ways. And perhaps there has come a day -- this day -- where my inadequacy is a reminder of something greater.
The reminder that there is a God bigger than me. Bigger than all of this.
And I am small.
I'm adequately inadequate. ‹‹‹ click to tweet
I'm not the best.
I'm not in charge of answering prayers.
I'm not in charge of a checklist of enoughness before I come to God.
I'm not in charge of anything, actually.
But I'm enough -- even in the midst of all of this inadequacy.
And that's enough for Jesus.
This is day sixteen. You can find the rest of this series right here.
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