Am I Enough? by Tamlynn Rideout

After hearing that same question ring in my own head and heart for many MANY years, I finally did it! On September 1^st of 2015 I asked God Himself: AM I ENOUGH? That I was so hesitant to do so was a huge indicator of my core belief regarding my own value. The words below are from the nine pages of free flowing and uninterrupted journaled response that bubbled up from the still small voice of the One who created and loves me beyond my wildest hopes and dreams. 

The healing that took place that day and in the days since has changed my thoughts, my heart and my life forever. After sharing it with two close friends during the Christmas 2015 holidays, they encouraged me to write it down and share it with others. It is intimate and will remain a part of me as long as I live for it came directly from the One Who Loves Us ALL beyond all knowing. May it speak to you and heal you as well.

AM I ENOUGH?

I made you.  You did not make yourself.  You were My plan, and I hold the patent. I alone am the planner, designer and creator of you.  How then could you not be enough? 

I, the divine artist and creator of all life, designed and built you to My own specifications, with My eternal and omniscient purposes and plans as well as My delight in mind.  Don’t I do ALL things well?

Who questions the creator?  Surely not those who are My most magnificent and highest creation?  How inappropriate and inaccurate would the assessment of those which I create be? Since that which is created cannot see all, understand in fullness, are not all wise and knowing, and have not been since before time or space began, how then could such an assessment be fully just and true?

Am I alone not the all-knowing, all seeing, all wise, WAS, IS and IS TO COME?  Am I not the One that fashioned your life and your frame even down to the most minute and intricate details of your being? Was it not I that painted your personality with its unique colors and textures unlike any other?

Do you know that I even established your posture? That’s right; I even planned the way you stand, and the gait with which you walk.  Do you realize that it was Me that calibrated your heart to leap at things that move you most deeply? I intentionally included all of these things in the mix when with My own hands I knit you together in your momma’s womb. 

Don’t you know that nothing in you was a standard ingredient? In you there are no fillers. Do you also know that I never followed a recipe in My creation of you, for you, My love, are one of a kind?  You are the only one who is uniquely and wonderfully you.  In fact, I threw out the specs when I was finished.  Do you realize how I much I love that about you; that there will never be another one like you ever again?

Have you ever wondered why even in the case of identical twins, there are clearly perceivable differences in both appearance and attributes if you take the time to look closely?  I never have and never will make two exactly the same. All, each one, has planned and purposed uniqueness imprinted upon and with them.

Was I remiss in My design of you?  Did I scrimp on the recipe or withhold anything?  

WHO TOLD YOU THAT? 

Did I accidentally spill an over-abundance of anything into the mix so that you are somehow TOO MUCH in any capacity?

WHO TOLD YOU THAT?

I will ask you again, beloved.  Do you not know that I do ALL THINGS WELL? Do you not know that when I made you, My design was GOOD, VERY GOOD?  No mistakes, no deficiencies and no excesses.

Enough, Am I Enough?  Where does that kind of question evolve and grow?  In what soil was it planted?  From what spirit does it come?  Surely you know that it cannot evolve in a place of belonging and acceptance and unconditional love?  Such a question is not found “in Me” and is not of Me.  Therefore, neither should it dwell, remain or grow in you either.

I ask you again, beloved, where did it come from?  Of what nature is it?  It has no place in you and is not befitting of a son or daughter of the King.

It was birthed on a lying, accusing tongue full of poison and bitter jealousy and rage and all manner of comparisons and dissensions, divisions and rivalries.  It is a thief and a robber intent on destruction and you, beloved, are its intended target.

Ahh, but fear not, little shepherded one….. for who is your Father?  Of what lineage are you?  Whose voice do you hear and know?  Who is Truth?  You are safe and secure in Me.  

"Am I enough?" is not a Kingdom question for it savors of the unspoken yet implied possibility that there are deficiencies and flaws in My design.

I will tell you how I see you and how I designed you.  I will tell of My plan and purpose in the beautiful and wondrous pattern and design that is you.  I will also address your submission to a lying, accusing tongue that injects such a question.

From before time began, My plan with all the specs for your life were on My design table.  I looked at them daily in eager anticipation of your beginning long before the day of your creation.  From the beginning of time until the day you were born, I never once re-worked, reconsidered, scratched a plan or single attribute.  No, not even once!

You were designed to be sunshine and light bursting forth as well as ever unfolding love, deep and rich and wrapped in strength, wonder and joy all in vast varieties and quantities. 

With great joy, I liberally poured into your being gifts and abilities wrapped in passionately unique and wondrous expression and emotion.  You are a regal and beautifully complex tapestry and a mystery to be searched out and unfolded.  You are a sheer delight and a sign and a wonder in every capacity. Yes, you are!

Who told you that you are not enough?  Lies!

Who told you that you are too much?  Lies! 

You are neither deficient nor too much for you contain in perfect measure all that I included and planned in My original one-of-a-kind recipe of you.  Not too much and nothing left out and nothing withheld.  Just the right amount so that you are complete in your intended design.  It is all within you, deposited and ready for fullness to arise and grow.  It’s in there, even if you can’t see it.  I do not lie.

You were perfectly planned, perfectly designed and watched over with the greatest of care as you became.

Enough and too much….such ponderings come from a twisted frame of reference.

It is a travesty; a false and absurdly distorted representation that those who I created in love; that those reconciled in love as well as those still wandering would consent to measurement and evaluation against anything or anyone other than Me, your loving and kind Creator.  

Consenting to and meditating on questions birthed and distorted, twisted and debased by the one who can speak only lies and half-truths.  Why listen to the orphan of all orphans, the fallen one?    

Why, beloved, do you line up willingly and often for such measuring? Why entertain the thief of comparison?   He whispers lies in your listening ears as your true value and identity are raped and you are reduced to a number on a scale, an ethnicity, a gender, a level of intelligence, a social status, a body type, a chronological age, a failure, a human evaluation, your history or any other of the innumerable labels that are created not by wisdom and truth but by fear and lies.  Yet you assent to both the process and do not refuse the labels being slapped on you to devalue who I have created you to be?

Your view of yourself has been distorted and twisted when you have submitted to any other measurement or value system outside of and apart from Me!

I ask you, do you want Truth?  Do you choose Truth?

Choose then and if Truth then you must die to every other measuring system but Mine.  You must no longer partner or empower them by any means whether in your heart, your mind or with your words.  

Beloved, did you know that beauty is not in the eyes of the beholder?  That too is a lie?

Beautiful is everything that I have made.

Ugly is what I have made being twisted and distorted and devalued and thwarted from fulfilling its intended purpose.

You are Mine, I have created you and you are one of a kind, unique and irreplaceable and immeasurably valuable beyond human comprehension. 

Here are the questions, beloved, that I will gladly answer time and time again and with great joy: 

God, am I accepted?  

My reply:  a resounding yes!

God, am I loved?

My reply:   Fully and completely.  You cannot know it, for it transcends all knowledge. 

God, am I justified?

Through and through child, through and through.

Am I qualified? 

Jesus alone did so on your behalf and to the fullest measure.

Am I forgiven?

Yes, indeed, though of what I do not recall; for I have chosen forgetfulness in this regard.