Enough

The kitchen looks like a bomb went off. Dishes are everywhere. The counters are nowhere to be seen. The little ones are clamoring for me.
Mommy…mommy...
There are five of them, but those younger three have been bickering since they opened their eyes this morning. And I feel like my head is going to explode.
One of them has had an accident in the bathroom. The family room floor is strewn with toys. There’s a heap of towels and sheets in the hall outside the laundry room and a mountain of clothes on our bedroom floor. A pile of backdrops sit waiting to be painted for a children’s play I’m supposed to be producing, and a list a mile long is demanding my attention… (somewhere).
Props that need finding and costumes that need making. Lesson plans that need writing and church classes that need preparing.

I was fortunate enough to remember it was dinner time and that I needed to put something on the table. But that is an unusual occurrence – the remembering part. Usually it’s 4:58 and I suddenly realize I have no plan.
Oh yes! Food! (Have I eaten anything today other than Jovan’s crust of sandwich bread?)
I am moving inside of a hurricane. At least it feels that way.

Most of the time this job feels overwhelming. And I often find myself thinking, I’m not cut out for this. I’m doing a horrible job. Those words follow me around, day in and day out, like a shadow of disgrace cast on my back and a heavy weight of guilt in my heart.
I am not enough.
I will never be enough for this.

Well, I found myself at a breaking point today. Actually, that’s wrong. I think I’ve always lived there and it’s just that sometimes I look around and realize where I’ve set up camp.
But this particular night, I felt myself on the verge of tears.

And then the phone rang.

A shaky, tired voice says my name on the other line. I hardly recognize it until she says her name, amidst the screams of a toddler hanging on my leg. I break free from the chaos and I find a quiet place behind a closed door. I want to hear this voice I haven’t heard in many years. I want to know if everything’s alright.

“I’m in the hospital. I’ve just had surgery. Oh, but that’s not why I called,” she says. “I’ve been thinking about you.”

She assures me she’s fine when I press her.

“I was thinking of you just the other day too,” my voice waivers. “I was thinking about that summer we spent together. How special it was to me.”

There was nowhere for me to go back then. I wasn’t old enough to stay home all day every day by myself. And school was out. My dad would leave at sunrise for his long commute to work. I would get myself up and dressed, and have a bowl of cereal at the kitchen table by myself. A key hung around my neck on a black chord because I often came and went from an empty house.
A latchkey kid.

Sometimes I’d be playing in the back yard when her car pulled into the driveway. She would call my name. I’d come running. And she would take me home with her.

We spent many long days together that summer, me and my mom’s old friend. We went on errands. She showed me how to cook, how to do things around the house. And we often went out for ice cream at her favorite place. Nearly every day, if I recall. Just the two of us.
She loved to be silly. She loved to laugh. At a time when I needed to remember how to laugh.
She talked with me.
She nurtured me.
And I have never forgotten it.

“I just wanted to tell you,” she says affectionately into the receiver. “That your mom would be so proud of you. And that I love you.”

My throat catches. Because I realize as she is speaking, that I know intimately the love of a Heavenly Father who does not leave his children alone.
I am enough.
I will always be enough, He reminds me.

Sometimes we need an audible voice from God. And sometimes He uses one to reach us.