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When you tweet something on Sunday night at 11pm, you should probably just not tweet it. Last night, rather than falling asleep, I hopped on twitter, and seeing the buzz about Conversion Diary‘s “7 posts in 7 days” link up, mused about whether or not I should join in. I tweeted (and tagged Jen in the tweet) about how I wasn’t sure if I could do it, as if wedding planning and trying to figure out where to live after said wedding wasn’t enough for my plate. When I woke up at 5am and hopped back on twitter (not my usual early morning routine) and saw that Mrs. Jennifer Fulwiler herself had responded to my tweet (again, just don’t tweet at 11pm), I found it impossible to say no. So here I am, committing to 7 posts in 7 days, and I thought this would be a fitting one to start.* Here goes seven days of…something. 🙂
Daring Greatly. Have you heard of it? It is, hands down, one of the best books I’ve been reading as of late. I’ve been slowly working my way through it for months, so when some friends of mine decided to host a weekly-ish link-up through the chapters, I…stalled. I stalled because it already feels as though there are a zillion things on my plate and if I add one more, surely the plate will shatter. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized what beauty there is in the link-up, in stretching myself to do exactly what the book challenges me to: dare greatly.
Chapter 1: Scarcity
Chapter one deals with the cultural phenomenon that we are never enough. We are never brave enough, smart enough, wise enough, pretty enough, whatever enough. It is interesting to me as I read through Brené Brown’s book how much of what she says overlaps with what I wrote about in Worthy. You’d think, then, that I’d have this stuff down because I wrote my own book about it. That, my friends, is where you’d be wrong – and that’s what I love about Brown’s book. She writes about this stuff freely admitting that she doesn’t have it all together yet (though not for lack of trying). Brené writes the book without bringing God into it (at least as far as I can tell), and yet I find this book bringing me closer and closer to the God who says that I am enough.
This fear of never having or being enough leads us to shame and we combat those feelings with everything we have. We work harder and later. We date more, heck, we may even sleep around more. We sign up for more clubs and meet more people because we feel like we never have enough. We never have enough friends, enough of a social life, enough money we are making at work, etc. We look around and effortlessly compare our lives to others, and in this world of Instagram-perfect lives, we see (or at least we believe) that everyone around us is doing this whole ‘living’ thing better than we are. They, whoever they are, have enough. They have a house, a husband, 2.3 children, a nice car, toys and food for their children, and a budding social life. This sense of ‘not enough’ makes us feel so ashamed, so we fight tooth and nail against it until we are so worn out, and then we realize we still don’t have enough. It is exhausting and detrimental.
So how do we fight this notion of never having or being enough? We live, as Brené says, wholeheartedly. We dare greatly. We fight the shame and embrace vulnerability (which can be as terrifying as it sounds) and accept our worthiness. That’s where Brené hooked me. We have to embrace our worthiness – our own worth which comes apart from who we know, what we have and our accomplishments – if we are ever going to beat the sense of shame and scarcity that runs so rampant in our culture today.
You are enough.
You are worthy.
*I should perhaps mention that I only have 3 of the 7 posts actually written and the fact that I don’t have seven posts yet written and I’m committing to this anyway is very against my type A personality. So here’s to daring greatly this week!