COURAGE, BRAVEHEART

YOU ARE ENOUGH.

Just as you are. Without putting anything on. Without pretending, or striving, or doing. Without hiding behind walls or makeup and clothes and false lashes and a plastered smile.

YOU. YOU are enough.

You with the imperfect skin. You with the cellulite and misshapen breasts. You with the short temper and character flaws. You with the mental health struggles. You who drink too much, or cut to numb the pain, or pull out your hair from the anxiety you feel inside. You who keep yourself busy on the surface so you don’t have to look at the deeper things below the surface because it might be too much. You who starve yourself or purge yourself or try to bend and pretzel yourself into being the person you think they want.

YOU. You are. You’re enough.

If you were to stand all covered up and someone was to take a firehose and wash everything away. All of it. Every last little piece. And all that was left there was you, naked and alone. The one left standing there, sopping wet, lashes and clothes blown off, with makeup running down your face. That girl.

SHE’S enough. Just as she is.

This can be hard to take in. Sure you can hear it, but actually taking it in and believing it deep down, is something entirely different. But the fact is, it is vital to our well-being! To our growth. To our success. To our contentment. To our peace and joy. We must work, with all our might, to drill this into our own thinking. To have others around us gently remind us, if that’s how you need it. Or maybe you’re the kind that needs it screamed at you, while someone shakes you fiercely, in order for you to hear it.

We need to hear that we are enough from ourselves. “Stefanie, you are enough. Just as you are. It’s okay, dear heart. You’re enough.” We need to hear it from those we love in the midst of a screaming match. “You mean more to me than this stupid fight. And I know you feel hurt and scared right now, but I want us! I want you, because you’re enough!” We need to hear it when we are alone and it seems like there’s no one to tell you otherwise. And that’s when the Lord’s gentle voice comes in and whispers, “My beloved, you are enough. Just as I made you. You are enough. Come to me. Let me fill you.”

The truth of the matter is, we are all enough. But only by the Lord and His grace. And even though we may feel alone, we are NEVER actually alone because the Lord promises He will never abandon us. That He will never leave us and He will never forsake us. He promises that He goes before and behind us. That we are His beloved children and that we are enough because we are His and He deemed it so. And we are enough, because His Son is enough. Because God gave what He loved most, because He knew it was the only way to NOT abandon us. To NOT leave us alone. To keep His word. To be in relationship and connection with us.

Think about that…

Here is the God of the universe, our Maker, who wants nothing from us except for us to know His love and receive it. To walk together hand-in-hand with Him through this life until we walk straight into His loving arms when it’s our time to finally go home.

What a profound love this is. Do you have anyone in your life that you’ve experienced a version of this with? Anyone that loves you without wanting anything in return? Anyone that just wants you to know you are loved and that all they want you to do is receive that love? Someone that tells you day after day, without growing weary, that you are enough?

If you do, you are blessed more than you know! That is a treasured gift and you should thank your lucky stars that you have it, because most people don’t. I am so thankful that I do. My father displayed and continues to display this kind of love to me. He pours it out like a rich, fragrant offering. I don’t know how He does it, but he does and I am so thankful for the ways the Lord has used my earthly father, to reveal Himself to me.

And the best part of all of this? You know what the Lord asks for in return? It is the simplest thing.

He asks for our hearts.

There is actually nothing we can give Him that He needs, except our hearts. And that’s because, when our hearts are connected to His, then we can know and experience this deep profound love, and because when we know His character, just as you learn someone’s character from being in relationship with them, that’s when we can trust that He wants only what’s best for us.

I read an article in Darling magazine awhile back, where Meghan Markle (before she became the Duchess of Sussex) shared when she finally realized she was enough. Take a look.

“I was in my early 20s, still figuring so much out, and trying to find my value in an industry that judges you on everything that you’re not versus everything that you are. Not thin enough, not pretty enough, not ethnic enough, while also being too thin, too ethnic, too pretty the very next day.

It felt unapologetically impossible, and I spent my evenings eating my feelings with grilled cheese sandwiches and cheap wine. There was a casting director named April Webster who has basically casted everything of note from TV to film for close to two decades (think “Lost” and “Mission Impossible”). I had never met her before, and at my very first audition for her, she stopped me mid-scene and said so simply, ‘You need to know that you’re enough.’

I was breathless. No one had ever seen it, or perhaps no one had ever called me out, but there in that small box of a room in Burbank, this woman I had never met saw me. My gut reaction was to smile. To smile hard. Maybe that would keep the tears tucked behind my draping eyes.

… there in that small box of a room in Burbank, this woman I had never met saw me.

It wouldn’t have mattered if I cried, because she saw me. She saw all that self-doubt beaming through the self-tanner and excessive blush. ‘You need to know that you’re enough,’ she said. ‘Less makeup, more Meghan.’ She went on to say that I was like a ‘shrinking violet,’ wilted joy and energy and exuberance behind this shroud of insecurity. You couldn’t pay for a therapy session this good. And that moment, for me, was a wake-up call.

As an actress, you spend your days believably saying someone else’s words for a living. Bringing life to someone else’s thoughts. The Tig has given me a space to share my own words, to have my own voice.

It was six years ago that I booked the role of Rachel on “Suits.” It was called “A Legal Mind” at the time; it was the fifth pilot I would have filmed. I remember hoping this one would see the light of day. Never would I have imagined that this show would not just change my career, but also change my life—that on my journey of trying to get what I wanted, of trying to see my dream come to fruition, I would learn who I am.

That I would discover that I am enough.”

Beautiful, right!?!

Sometimes we can’t see it in ourselves and we need other people to help us out. Gracious people. Maybe strangers who are brave enough to see something. To see what we can’t. Who see we need encouragement and who are brave enough to speak it over us.

Whew…I’m crying just thinking about it.

The kindness of the Lord. The kindness He gives in using others in our lives. So I’m talking to you beautiful woman. Sweet friend. My fellow Braveheart. I want to speak a good word over you.

YOU ARE ENOUGH.

Hear it. Receive it. Believe it. Walk with head held high in the truth of it. And rejoice in the goodness of the Lord for making it possible.

You are enough. We are enough. Just as we are.