enough.

The pen pauses a half an inch off the page as I hesitate in indecision. So much to say, no way to say it. Endless amounts that need to be recorded, that need to be frozen while the coals are still lit, and yet...and yet. The words never measure up to the mind that never measures up to the heart.

Joe White came to our school last night. He spoke, and I suppose it was emotional. He showed some clips of the crucifixion that moved me in a way that had nothing to do with his words, and God spoke to me through them. It was different than it was for most of the others, though. God speaks to me constantly - His voice is nothing shocking and His revelations are simply part of the hourly struggle. I'm used to having lengthy conversations with an invisible deity where I do little of the talking and most of the listening, and I'm used to no one understanding in the slightest. It's normal for me. It's always been normal. I've been this way since I was four, and this curse of a blessing is the only thing that keeps me alive.
I guess it's important to know that there was never really a choice for me. I'm lucky, or maybe I'm not - I don't know. I've tried to live in places without God, and I've suffocated - I've gone mad or found the world was now full of death and things that try to strangle me. I can only breathe when I am near Him; it's the only place I can laugh and sing and dance. The choice was only whether to live or to die, for somehow my fragile self is not as adaptable to the dark as more normal humans are. I am so irrevocable connected to my King that Joe's call for re-dedication was rather lost on me. In order to choose to come back I would have had to leave, and if I had left I would be dead right now.
I met Joe after - I just wanted to shake his hand. It seemed right. He's this sixty something grandfatherly type, and as I met him he started asking where I was from and why I chose pepperdine and how college had been. Then he asked the question a part of me knew he was going to ask the whole time; "So what has God been saying to you tonight?" I was prepared, I could feel it coming. I wanted to answer honestly and I didn't want him to think he'd done a bad job, so I began very matter-of-factly explaining the more acceptable parts of my story. I explained, delicately, that I come from one of those homes where he father's there but not really, and how I had pretty much been trying to measure up my entire life. Not good enough, Never good enough. I am never good enough for pretty much anything. I was tactful about my explanation, not being weepy or dramatic, just stating things easily and clearly. I'm fairly sure I was in the middle of a sentence when I suddenly found myself completely embraced by this old man as he whispered in my ear.
"You are good enough, Brittany. You will never have to measure up again."
And then I cried. I cried because I hadn't let myself cry about that for years. I cried because I don't know if I'll ever actually believe that. But most of all I cried because I don't remember ever, in my entire life, being hugged like that. I don't remember ever feeling like a daughter, beloved and known. I don't remember ever feeling like it was safe for me to be a child. I don't remember ever feeling that if I fell down, someone would pick me back up. And here was this man, who had known me for five minutes, making me his daughter. Showing me I was beloved.
Who am I, afterall? Always failing, always falling. Not enough. Never enough. But someone once told me that that wasn't true, and it started with God and it came through Joe White and I just might start to believe it. Maybe. Someday. Maybe I'll start believing what He's been saying all along.