When you are single and you watch countless friends around you get married it is so easy to start to believe that you are not enough.

Not enough to be picked.

Not enough for love or marriage.

And that lie starts to play out in other areas of your life.
But the reality is that everyone single or married, is trying to decide if they are enough or not.

We want to measure ourselves with others so we can feel better. It is like we are playing a game and we have to walk around deciding if we should even be here playing. If we deserve a spot in this game. So the only thing we can do is try and figure out if we are worth it. If we have the same value as those around us.

We saw this play out in the Olympics with Simone Biles, who said “I am more than my accomplishments and gymnastics, which is something I didn’t believe before.” You can win all the medals, get all the accolades, even become famous and still question your value and worth. That is what the question of enough-ness is about. Am I worthy? Am I valuable?

But in reality we are all ashes. We are all dust. We are filthy rags (Isaiah 64:4) But God is the one that decided our value and worth when He created us. When he formed us in the womb. And when we ask God into our hearts at the point of salvation, we become His child (1 John 3:1-2). And nothing can be done to earn His love, we just have to believe it and live it out. He has made you 100% valuable, worthy, and lovable. 

He has made you ENOUGH

We have a hard time believing that, the lie seems so much more believable. Because if we were enough we would be…… married.

That is the problem. Our brain is trying to figure out why you aren’t married yet. What the reason is and so it must go to work measuring. You will measure your abilities, weight, beauty, bank account, possessions, personality, relationships, etc. You are trying to decide what “enough” is. 

If you are someone who continually thinks I am not enough, ask yourself what someone who is enough does or is? Figure out where your brain is going to decide when you will be enough and how you will know. 

Will you be enough if you are picked for marriage? Will you be enough when you finally hit that goal weight or that dollar amount in your job? Will you be enough when your house is organized, or you move out, or get a place on your own. 

You have a defined answer to enough. But the other issue is that we have too many areas to measure. We have all of these areas and we are bound to be not enough somewhere. But again, what are we measuring against? Who is the standard of what enough is? Your brain may have picked someone around you, or in your past, or a famous person to figure out what enough looks like in a human form, but how will you ever get there?

Too often you might start to feel good enough in one area, maybe at work where you are killing it and upholding all the expectations you have of yourself or even others have of you, so you feel good. But you have other areas of your life that your brain will then use against you to remind you, oh yeah, you are great at work, but remember you still don’t have a date.

Thank you brain for the friendly reminder that once again, I AM NOT ENOUGH.

So what do we do with all this information?

Well, you can see that you are trying to solve the question of why am I not married yet, by this standard of enough-ness.  But let’s just go ahead and decide that your enough-ness has nothing to do with it. That is not a measuring tool for why you are not married. Let’s take that off the table and just answer the question. The reason I am not married yet, is because I am not supposed to be married yet. I am totally fine, nothing is wrong with me. Nothing needs to improve for me to get married. 

You are more than enough, but you can only fully live that out if you really come to believe that you are 100% enough, just the way you are. Your value and worth is not decided on by anyone else. God decided it, you get to believe it. Nothing needs to change for you to be good enough. You are good enough to be loved by God. You are good enough to be married, there isn’t a test you need to take to figure that out. 

But for some of you that just won’t cut it. You will want to fixate on it still. I want to help you. I think this is the part where you understand that this line of thinking keeps you in jail. You will spin out in this type of thinking and it just isn’t a worthwhile use of your energy to try and figure this one out. I think the best thing to do is anytime your brain offers you that you aren’t enough you just cut it off there. You acknowledge your brain for that sentence that it is offering you and you let it know that this line of thinking only creates feelings of unworthiness or not valued. You don’t want to feel unworthy and so thinking this thought, “I am not enough,” keeps you spinning there. 

Another thing I like to think when my brain offers me you aren’t good enough is well, I know where this thought leads and I have thought this long enough. Maybe I am ready to try another belief and get a different result. Then you can play with other thoughts.

Thoughts like:

• Maybe this has nothing to do with my “enough-ness”

• Maybe I am good enough…

• Who decides what good enough is, what are the measurements?

• God made me enough, I want to believe Him.

• My worth and value are not determined by others picking me, I can choose me and believe I am worthy and valuable. 

• I am enough.

• Christ in me is more than enough….

Remember, your lower brain has a few goals, to keep you safe, to feel good, avoid pain, and be efficient. So if this has been a tactic your brain has used for a LONG time to get you back into the cave and hiding, then it will continue to use this tactic. It is efficient.

You have to break this. You get to start believing something different. You get to decide if what your brain is offering you is true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable-excellent or praiseworthy—[then we want to] think about such things. Phillipians 4:8

But if what your brain is offering you is keeping you stuck in a never ending spiral of jail and bondage to a bad belief system, we have to let it go. It doesn’t work.

You get to decide.

If I were you I would put more effort into believing I am 100%.

Believing right alongside ya,

Angie