When you are sick, or disabled, or poor, or lost, or trembling in the dark, or different, the world will begin to tell you that you are not enough. It will whisper at first, saying that you don’t belong, that you are the wrong fit, that you are not welcome. It will be like an evil breeze, a soft harshness that sounds a little bit like truth, and because you do not feel whole, you will give it houseroom. You will let it in and allow it to wander through the corridors, because, why not?, they are dark and dreary anyway, filled with your own pain. What harm does giving in do? It is just another whooshing sound rushing through the emptiness.

When you are hyper and joyful and skyrocketing, or multi-talented or very, very bright, the world will tell you that you are too much. It will say that you are too large, too overwhelming and too loud. It will give you pills and tut at you from unseen corners and threaten you with sanctions and punishment. And you will take the tablets and hide parts of yourself until they begin to atrophy, and the rage that you have done this to yourself will also swirl around inside and make you miserable. You will stop using long words and the hard-earned gleanings of your intelligence, stop making people laugh, and the poem that you are may lose the will to live, and never be spoken.

And the whispers and the breeze, the pills and the disapproval become louder and louder, and the corridors of your mind and the veins in your body may become, then, so full of that negative cacophony that nothing else can be heard.

And because this happens, I am here to tell you something.

You are not too much, you are just the right amount. You are exactly enough. You are not less than or more than, you are you. You are perfect. No, not without sin, not without dark thoughts, not without failings and strange quirks. But these first two are overlooked by love, and the second two only make you more like yourself.

I will not say that you are awesome or stupendous, because I know you will not believe me, and anyway these words have ceased to mean what they should. I will not tell you that you are made of stardust and have come from eternity, because these are things too far away to reach your aching heart. I will say instead that you are loved. You are looked upon with an adoring gaze such as a good mother or father first gives their child. You are held, cradled in a grace that will forgive any misdemeanour, as you walk this strange and fearful journey.

You have missed out on no medals: they do not get awarded in this life. You have not failed to reach the mark: God will always move the target for you and risk an arrow in his already pierced hands. You do not go unnoticed: every hair on your head is known and numbered, every combing monitored. It is only your sins which are not counted.

And here in this resting place of the heart, which is so much larger than it looks from the outside, you are known and comforted and given peace beyond understanding. It will say few words, and mainly it will just sit with you and rock a little back and forth and sing sweet, soft lullabies of understanding which will blow through you like a warming glow, dissipating those ill winds and sharp words. Those mean mutterings will burn up into ashes like scraps of newspaper tossed up into the fire that rages in God’s heart for you. Did you not know that you were the object of such passion?

Here then, lies the truth. At the centre of the holy family, you are welcomed and known. Before the throne of heaven, you are accepted and loved. It is not just that you are enough, but that here, where it matters, we are all beyond measuring.

©Keren Dibbens-Wyatt Photo from Pixabay