You Are Enough : Conyers, GA Newborn Photographer

It was several weeks before our sweet Lucy was born. We were sitting in our living room one evening after dinner. I was hurriedly working away on my computer trying to finish editing all of the dozens of sessions that needed to get done before I went on maternity leave. I looked up. There on the couch across the room sat my husband. He was staring at the iPad. I’m pretty sure he was on some mindless website like Buzzfeed or ESPN. On the other couch sat my 18 month old son, glued to one of our phones watching PBS kids videos over and over and over again (he really loves the intro songs to all those shows… “Whose got the power, the power to read…” plays in my dreams at night!) Right at that moment I had a mental meltdown. So many thoughts started running through my head. I couldn’t believe how disconnected we were as a family! I am a horrible mother! I hadn’t cleaned the house in days and there were strange smells coming from the kitchen because of all the dirty dishes. My pregnancy hormones were CRAZY making it where I didn’t want my husband to come within 2 feet of me, and here I was letting PBS Kids raise my child instead of me. And we are about to bring another child into this mess! Life was just too much, and I wasn’t enough.

As luck would have it, a couple of days later I went off to the Pursuit 31 Conference… all by myself. No kids, no husband, just me and God, and a bunch of amazing Christian creatives. It was exactly what I needed. As I blubbered (I’m talking ugly crying) through trying to explain to my small group what a horrible wife and mom I was (aren’t those pregnancy hormones great…) it was a relief to just get it all out on the table. I felt like I would never live up to the high standards I see on Instagram, mommy blogs, and Facebook of being a good wife and mom. After letting it all out, I felt a little bit of relief. I looked around at all the other women in my small group, knowing that they had all been there at some point or another, and that it was going to be ok. I spent the rest of the conference laying all my fears of failure before the Lord, and I spent a lot of time worshipping. It had been forever since I had truly worshipped! There were tons of great speakers at the conference and one was the author of the book Love Does. One thing that Bob Goff said was, “God never compares what he creates!” That thought has stuck with me. I can’t compare myself to the other mom’s out there. I am my own person, my kids were given to me by God, not anyone else.

Since Lucy’s arrival it has been nice to just slow down. I didn’t really have a choice. Though the first 10 weeks of her life were anything but rainbows and butterflies, they were still good. It has been good to just sit and snuggle on the couch with my littles. It has been good to have other people bring us meals and not have to apologize for how dirty the house is. It has been good not working and not having a bunch of unedited sessions on my to-do list. It’s good every once in awhile to have a meltdown so that you can refocus on what is really important.

So to all the mom’s of little ones out there, I want you to know one thing. You are ENOUGH. So many times we look up from what we are doing and think a thousand negative thoughts about how we are performing as a mom, how much we have failed, how big that laundry pile is getting, how we aren’t satisfying our husbands, and a million other things. We have got to stop. The season of life that you are in right now is exactly where God wants you to be, and you are ENOUGH. You are a child of God. He loves us so much just the way we are.

Since God isn’t really into teaching you something once and then forgetting about it, he has continued to show me this truth in my life. A few Sundays ago, our preacher read from Mark 1:11. It’s the story of John the Baptist baptizing Jesus. Just as Jesus comes up out of the water, a dove comes down from Heaven, and the voice of God pierces through the sky to say “You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.” Well of course God wanted to remind me of all that he had been teaching me over the past couple of months. Now that I am officially off maternity leave and life is sure to get overwhelmingly stressful very quickly with things like handling two under two, potty training, trying to lose the baby weight, and going back to work, I still need to be reminded that He is with me and I am enough. He wanted to quietly remind me, before I start putting myself down and feeling like I just can’t do it… I am enough. I am created in the image of God. I am a child of God. Stop comparing yourself with all the “perfect” Instagram moms out there. YOU ARE ENOUGH. As you cuddle up with your babies this year and watch them grow, I hope you remember that YOU ARE ENOUGH.