One of my favorite indulgences is putting on music while I shower and get ready in the mornings. On normal days, I'm getting ready for work later in the day while both my parents are at work, so I'll blast my music and sing till my heart's content. But with quarantine going on, our schedules have been shot to pieces. They are both home with me so I rarely put my music on, and when I do it's at a more respectful volume level.
Today, however, I gave in and put my music on. I had been alone in our downstairs during a workout and had blasted my music as I ran and lifted. So when I came upstairs to shower and get ready for the rest of the day, I decided to keep the music playing.
I switched playlists for my parents' sake, choosing one more mellow than the high-energy workout playlist that had been on. As I washed myself clean, I could feel my own spirit coming clean with the music. Just as I was reaching a point of utter contentment, this song came on.
"You Say" by Lauren Daigle. It's a song I've heard countless times before, but for some reason it struck me in a new and powerful way as I stood in my bathroom this morning.
"I keep fighting voices in my mind that say I'm not enough.
Every single lie that tells me I will never measure up."
These opening lines almost brought me to my knees. It is my daily struggle. Enough-ness. It's so important to me that it was the focus point of 2019 as "Abundance" became my word of the year. I chose that word out of the desire to fight those voices in my mind that tell me lies about my own enough-ness. I fight those voices almost every moment of every day. I have an internal dialogue of scarcity.
As much of my life that I can remember has been colored by this internal dialogue. It is the lens through which I see the world. It is the lens through which I see myself. Am I athletic enough? Smart enough? Good enough? And sadly, I have sought validation from others all my life to tell me that I am indeed enough. I have needed outside influencers to prove my internal dialogue wrong. Because when left to my own devices, when I ask those questions of enough-ness, my knee-jerk reaction is to answer "No."
It was through choosing "Abundance" as my word of the year that I learned to think of God as a God of enough-ness rather than of scarcity. That was the first step. God promises Abundance. After that revelation, I realized (with my heart also this time instead of with just my head) that God loves me so incredibly deeply. God's love is abundant. That means that God sees me as enough regardless of what that internal dialogue tells me. There is no scarcity involved in God's love for me.
And so I turned away from the word "Abundance" with the idea that I had learned all there was to learn from it. I chose a new word of the year, thinking that I would be turning over new leaves with the word "Worth." I thought I had closed an old chapter and opened a brand new one in picking my new word of the year. But as "You Say" played this morning in my bathroom, I realized that wasn't the case.
"Am I more than just the sum of every high and every low."
Everyone in life experiences highs and lows. I don't mean to take away from that reality. But I experience highs and lows in unique ways. You see, I have bipolar disorder. My counselor and I have worked hard to come up with language I am comfortable with when describing my mood changes. Last year, I realized that we had shifted our names for Mania and Depression to Highs and Lows. So as Lauren Daigle sung out about this question of highs and lows, I could feel tears start to sting at the corners of my eyes.
My counselor and I have worked hard to combat the idea that experiencing bipolar disorder makes me "less than" in some way. Getting diagnosed with a mental illness was another nail in the coffin for a long time for me. Just another voice telling me that I wasn't enough. The label "Bipolar" felt like a stamp on my forehead that might as well read "Unstable." I have come to realize that I have felt like the label "Bipolar" was all that could define me. I was just the sum of a bunch of Highs and Lows, as the song put it.
I've worked hard in conjunction with my counselor to see myself as more than just my diagnosis. My psychiatrist has also played a huge role in this endeavor. I remember when she first talked to me about this diagnosis. "A diagnosis is just a way of talking about a group of symptoms," she told me. I remember another time that I came to her incredibly disheartened after failing in some tasks at work. Those failures were linked to my instability in mood and energy levels as we hadn't found the right medication at that point. I asked her what kind of jobs were best suited for someone with bipolar disorder. I didn't realize it at the time but I was really asking a question about enough-ness. Was I good enough to do this job? Was I worth more than the symptoms that were making life so hard? It is the only time I've ever heard her get indignant. With a fire in her voice she declared to me that "a person with Bipolar Disorder can do any job that anyone else can do!"
"Abundance" and "Worth." Two seemingly different words, but two words that strike at the heart of my core values of self. They are two sides of the same coin, in a sense. I've asked these questions all my life, about enough-ness and my own self-worth. And they all are asking the same thing. Am I loved?
That's really what it comes down to, I believe. If I am smart enough, I merit approval. If I am athletic enough, I merit praise. If I am good enough, I merit love. I have to earn love. Because at the root, I'm not enough on my own. I'm not worth it.
As I listened to my own questions come to life in song this morning, my breath hitched in my throat. I realized in a sudden flood that my words for 2019 and 2020 were really all about asking these questions. They were all about enough-ness, worthiness, and love.
For a half-second the weight of the questions weighed on me and my shoulders sagged as I looked at myself in the mirror. All I saw there was ugliness. Shame. Regret. There was scarcity there. A vacuum of "potential" that was left unattended. I could have been and done so much, if not for my illness. If not for my broken relationships. If not for my poor decisions. The list went on and on, but thankfully so did the song.
"You say I am loved when I can't feel a thing.
You say I am strong when I think I am weak.
And you say I am held when I am falling short.
And when I don't belong, oh you say I am yours."
That internal dialogue of mine? It's just that. MY dialogue. It's what I tell myself, not what God tells me. God has proclaimed me enough. God has called me worthy. God had deemed me lovable. God has spoken over me truth about my own goodness.
I like to think of myself as a unique person, but I know that deep down, almost everyone's internal dialogue questions themselves. I write this, dear reader, to let you know that you aren't alone if you question your enough-ness and worth. Lauren Daigle reminded me this morning of that truth. We aren't alone. We have a God who speaks truth to us when our own internal voices get a little too loud. And we have each other, this beautiful, mystical Body of Christ, that acts as one of God's mouthpieces to remind us yet again that we are not alone.
I've known for a long time that God loves me. But this morning, standing in the bathroom and staring at my messy, wet head in the mirror, I was overcome. Because God loves me. I want to love me too. If God loves me, if God sees abundance in me, if God says I am worthy, who am I to say that I am anything other than that? Who am I to look at myself and claim that I am less than the beautiful creation God has made?
I pray that you have a moment like I had this morning. I pray that you look at your messy self and see beauty there. I pray that you look in the mirror and see someone so worthy of love. I pray that you hear God's voice speaking Truth over you. God is speaking. Let us open our ears and hear.