Enough!

Discerning Your Next Step

Photo by Iván Díaz on Unsplash

My post earlier this week on “The Shift,” has been an invitation for me to find a poem that Gwen wrote a few years ago. I found the poem in my archives and the card she wrote me when she gave it to me some years ago. It’s titled “Enough!”

Knowing when you’ve had enough;

heard enough;

done enough;

enabled enough;

helped enough;

tried enough;

led enough;

and served enough— is a vital and important step in recovering our lives. It’s an essential way of re-ordering our one and only life. It’s one way of re-setting your life—all things I’ve been writing about on Substack for one year now—-by the way, Happy Birthday Substack? I’ve been here for one year now. Thank you to all of you who support my work here!

Put almost any word in front of ‘enough’—what word fits your situation right at this moment. Go ahead. Be brave with yourself. What have you had enough of?

Sit with that question, then come back when you’re ready.

Gwen wrote this poem one morning as we camped by a white water stream in the Colorado mountains. She wrote the poem and gave it to me for my birthday six years ago. But there’s a back story. There’s always a back story.

Gwen came to conclusion earlier than I did that she wanted to reposition her life and reprioritize how she loved and whom she loved. She wanted to circle the wagon and make our grandchildren her focus. She made this decision after co-laboring with me in four pastorates and founding Potter’s Inn in 2000. She married a preacher, is the daughter of missionary parents and has served in so many capacities as a wife, mother, daughter, sister, Registered Nurse; and spiritual director. A convergence was bubbling up in our soul that she faced. This one word—”enough” could just be a sort of convergence you might be in search of now.

I well remember our conversations where she told me she wanted to stop traveling; stop speaking; stop teaching and stop hosting so much and live a smaller life. She was telling me that she felt like she had crossed an invisible line that had “E-N-O-U-G-H” inscribed on the line itself. The next step she would take would be to admit it—to tell herself—to tell me—that she had done enough.

For me, that decision has taken more years; more seasons and more shifting. It may be a male thing. It may be a me thing. I’m not sure. But the metaphor I adopted, is “build an off ramp and start walking on it.” I was realizing that there was way too much freeway traffic—like eight lanes of it going on in my mind with all I was doing. More and more, I grew tired of merging my life, energy, thinking and helping with opportunities and invitations. My sense of saying “enough” came about when Parker Palmer published his final book: “On the Brink of Everything.” This book came out in 2018 and I was quick to get it, read it and absorb it. In that book, Parker published one of his own poems titled, ‘Harrowing.’ As I read that specific poem, I felt the convergence of my words with my passion; with my action and effort with my desire and I got up from my chair and walked over to Gwen where she was sitting by the river and said, I’m ready… I’ve had enough. That’s what led to her writing this poem.

How is it that one poem, one verse, one note, one message from beyond us, somehow finds the bullseye of our heart and pierces us in such a way that we cannot recover from that message? We simply have to rise up and do what the message says for us to do. Once the heart is struck, we must respond or we die.

Gwen wrote this poem the next day and gave it to me. Gwen hit the bullseye when she wrote this poem and in reading it again this morning, I’m sure that this will be a bullseye poem for some of you.

I hope this poem might help some of you embrace your own convergence of timing, gifting and opportunity. I hope this poem might bring the clarity it did for me. I hope this poem will muster courage to find the words that your own heart just might be telling you. And to answer this important question: If not now, then when?

Trust me, you don’t have to be my age to say “enough.” Some of you will say it now about your current work; some will say it about a place you’ve lived or a person you’ve tried and tried to make “it” work in a role or in your own soul. You might say it about church. You might say it about alchohol. You might say it about almost anything…

I use Substack as my own way to mine out the gold that is still in my veins. It’s a morning ritual now to sit quietly in my own room—my glass tree house—a room attached to the second floor of my house. Here, I let my body catch up with my soul and just tell me what needs to be said.

After having eighteen people in our home for the past seven days, I’ve come to this quiet space yesterday to write my article “the shift” and this morning to dig out Gwen’s poem and read it for myself. As I read it, I somehow felt this poem—Gwen’s poem is just so good, it simply cannot be for just me. So, here it is.

If you want to leave a comment for Gwen, please do so here.

Photo by freddie marriage on Unsplash