Twenty-five years with a little scratching and clawing mixed in didn’t keep me from being giddy as I thought about how we would commemorate this milestone. For starters, I would wake up, make my husband coffee, and pour it into the “Silver Anniversary” mug I had stashed. I would say to him,”We did it!,” and I did so in “Griswold” fashion.

As part of the trip to Door County, Wisconsin we took to celebrate, I brought along the dusty letters we had written each other during our last week before the big wedding day. Neither of us remembered what we had written (I only knew they WEREN’T poetry!), but I imagined those frayed envelopes would reveal a warm reflection of a new, excited, committed love ready to dive head-first into the pool of life (And I thought it would be romantic. Ooo, I love romantic!).

As I listened to my husband share my old words, the only warmth I felt was from the crackling chiminea in front of us.  This didn’t even sound like someone ready to stick their toe into a kiddy pool. This was a letter I couldn’t have written.

“I’m scared.  What if I’m not good enough for you?  What if I don’t meet your expectations?  I’m afraid I will let you down.  Please, help me.”  Yikes.

I had no recollection of writing those things, of feeling so desperate, and I knew I couldn’t come close to having those same views today.  I was stunned speechless like a middle-schooler who had just fallen flat into a mud puddle in front of her class.  How could I have felt so insecure back then?  Didn’t I already know I was enough for him since he had already chosen me?  Actually, I didn’t.  

I was coming off years of insecurity watching my mom quietly push through her days after my dad surprisingly left our family to marry someone else when I was thirteen years-old.  How badly the thirteen year-old me wanted to know she was good enough, smart enough and pretty enough.  Though a twenty-two year-old woman, it was that discouraged thirteen year-old who wrote the letter, who didn’t yet understand how much God loved her and that in Jesus, she was already enough.  In the meantime, her new love had a mammoth load to carry whether he realized it or not.

So the striving began…be the model cook, be the model home decorator, be the model neighbor, be the model employee, and be the model “pretty little wife” (I had a pageant reputation from college to uphold). And when kids came along, it was “be the model young Christian mom.” Don’t miss a Bible study, teach Sunday school, invite your neighbors to church and take meals to the needy. Add that to kids activities, regular mom duties and being the family CFO. Exhaustion and disappointment were common as my active husband was regularly distracted with work or hobbies and didn’t often notice I needed to be cheered on.

There were a lot of good, even great things happening, things that God wanted someone to do, but the race for perfect I was running had left me limping, dehydrated and about to fall flat on the pavement. My race to be enough and make sure everything I touched was enough had drained me, and I was going to need a stretcher.

Fast-forward to me today, I thank God I can no longer write the distressing words in that old letter (though they were my words, and I’m not ashamed), and I’m also thankful that I have them as an indicator of how far God, in His grace, has brought me. But how He brought me to the point where I was okay not being “model everything” and to a place of peace is the rest of the story.

As I ponder the how, I am drawn to the short, yet concise verse, Jeremiah 29:13, “You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.”  ALL your heart. I was seeking a lot of things, but somehow the MOST important thing was being missed (even though I thought I was doing it right!). Until God rearranged my circumstances and distanced me from things that were tugging me away, He had only been getting an insulting small piece.

I think He was saying something like, “This girl is stubborn, and I’m gonna have to mess with a lot of stuff to get her attention.”

Church relationships were strained, money was tight, work ventures were discouraging, schools were struggling, children were challenging, marriage was hard, family connections were distanced, neighbors were rejecting, and the family activity schedule left me with little time to cultivate friendships or take on roles to make me feel “important.”

God limited the things that were distracting me from Him so my heart would have room for the fullness of the words that had been stopping in my brain for years.  He had to make me feel ALONE. Then I would “seek first His kingdom and His righteousness,” so that “all these things will be given to (me) as well” (Matthew 6:33).

In my loneliness, I found God to be a much needed friend. With all the clutter removed, I could hear His voice and believe Him, that His “grace is sufficient for (me),” for His “power is made perfect in (my) weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9). That’s how the thirteen year-old learned she was good enough.

All scripture notations are from the New International Version.

This devotional was originally written for Compel Training’s Devotional Writing Challenge 2020.