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I had the most amazing conversation last week with a two-year-old named Louise, the granddaughter of a good friend of mine. Louise had a remarkable vocabulary for a two-year-old.
“Where do you live?” she asked.
I let her know I had a house in Atlanta.
“Do you have everything you need at your house?” she asked.
I had to pause there and think for a moment. We are a little short on toilet paper and yogurt sometimes, but eventually I had to admit, “Yes, Louise, I have everything that I need.”
She persisted, “Do you have everything that you need?”
It seemed like such an odd question coming from a two-year-old.
“Yes,” I affirmed. “I do. I have everything I need.”
About thirty seconds of silence passed and then she asked again, “Do you have everything you need? At your house, do you have everything you need?” This child seemed most concerned for my wellbeing!
“Yes, Louise,” I replied again, “I have everything I need.”
The question was repeated a few more times and each time I replied in the affirmative. At some point, my friend and I decided to take Louise outside in the stroller. The conversation, though, had had a strange settling effect on my soul. It felt like I was praying Psalm 23.
The Lord is my shepherd. There is nothing I shall want. Or perhaps more simply stated: The Lord is my shepherd. I have everything I need.
I am not sure in the past that I could have answered Louise with such confidence. I grew up in a large family, and while my parents certainly provided for us, I did endure a lingering sense of worry. At our dinner table, if you did not take from the mashed potato bowl the first time it was passed around, there was a good chance it would not get to you again in a second round. I continue to struggle with an ongoing sense of that scarcity is right around the bend. You better hold on tight to what you have because tomorrow might not be as kind as today. Those who know me well will readily acknowledge I can be a bit stingy (sometimes a lot stingy.)
But one of the gifts of having circled the sun over fifty times is that you’ve seen enough stuff and been through enough stuff to know that you are probably going to be okay. You probably have enough toilet paper and yogurt to make it through another day, and if not, you can improvise. Make do. You begin to discover you don’t need all that you thought you did.
I remember preparing to study abroad in West Africa thirty plus years ago. The college gave us a list of items it recommended we pack for our six months overseas. But then at the bottom of the list there was an added note: “If you forget something, remember that you probably can get it there. And if you can’t get it there, it means the people who live there also don’t have it, and that means you don’t really need it.”
It was a good lesson to learn on the cusp of adulthood and one that has been reinforced in numerous ways since then. If other people can live without it, you probably can, too. Consider the lilies of the field, Jesus says. You are going to be just fine.
I say this not as a way of encouraging “positive thinking.” There are problems in the world. They are serious. There are many people who do not have what they need to provide for their children, who don’t have any mashed potatoes at all, who do not have what they need to survive another night. I must remember my own enoughness primarily so that I don’t become tightfisted when standing before their need. So that I am not stingy when they are hungry. If I live in a space of fear, a space of scarcity, I will not be able to respond adequately to the need of our time.
One of my own greatest learnings when writing Redeeming Power was that those who experience themselves as having enough power and resources tend to be much more generous and magnanimous than those who don’t. The more I know for myself that I truly do have everything I need, the more I can give to others without feeling a sense of threat or needing to cling.
In recent years, the deeply intertwined political and economic systems in the U.S. seem to have done everything possible to increase our sense of fear that we do not have everything we need and that we must hold on to everything we do have with tight fists because it is about to be taken away from us—either by some mysterious “elites” or by our neighbors who have even less than we do. Our way of being in the world is marked by anxiety and defensiveness. We behave like those who do not believe we have everything we really need… which is something no amount of toilet paper or yogurt is actually ever going to fix.
Do you have everything you need? In your house, do you have everything you need? Can you rest in the enoughness of your life and trust things are okay… and will be okay? Can you trust enough to live without fear? Enough to be generous?
I will be crisscrossing the country the next two weeks: Florida, Maryland, Virginia, California, Illinois. I don’t have all those talks written quite yet and definitely my slides are in all forms of disarray.…. But I’m trying to trust that I am enough, that I have enough, and that whatever comes out will be enough.
Thank you to Louise for preaching to me this past week.
(PS – As a parting gift for the week, I want to leave you with an interview I did with Danielle Harrison, the president of Mission, Faith, Equity Consulting. She is such a great example of a woman coming into own her “enoughness” and, in doing so, learning to trust even more deeply in God’s goodness. )
Image credit: Jyoti Sahi, artist from India