I am enough

February is pink and red and heart shaped. As if that's not fabulous enough, February is also my birthday month and therefore becomes saturated with excuses to pamper myself and eat copious amounts of cake. I can handle that. Not that I've ever required an excuse to eat cake, but once a year it's nice to actually have a reason. Fact: I grew up with a girl named January and always wondered why I wasn't named February. It made so much sense at the time. Life as a 7 year-old was ridiculously unfair.

[Enter 100 self-deprecating comments about this photo]. Image courtesy of my amazing, ever-talented and dearest friend Jessie.

January came and left and I didn't even give a smidgen of a thought to producing New Year's Resolutions of any kind. Been there. Done that. Failed at most. I'm, like, so cliché. I'd like twenty-eleven to be the year I stop trying to change. This is the year I celebrate who I am right now. The best part is that it doesn't require a gym membership, a big fat mortgage, or septuplets. Take THAT 2010. I'm going to give myself a break this year and just be me. I am enough.* The catch though, because there is always a catch, is that this concept is a hazy camouflaged kind of sort of resolution. Just by typing "I am enough" I nearly choked on my own inadequacies. It is much easier to think of all the things I am NOT. The real trick is to focus on all the things that I AM. That's the goal.

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Recently someone gently reminded me that the infinite Atonement is not just for sins. The Atonement also covers our heavy emotional burdens such as sorrow, disappointment, fear. And it instantly clicked with me. I am enough, because He can make me whole again. Jesus is totally invited to my birthday party! I'm admitting to myself right now, upfront, that this could be at least a year-long process. Just as I'm about to hit publish on this post I'm fighting the urge to call a friend to have her read it first. Is it dumb? Do you hate it? VALIDATE MY CRAZY!! I'm a work in progress people.

Comments Off because now I'm feeling vulnerable :).

*The concept "I am enough" is taken from Brené Brown's 2010 TED speech The Power of Vulnerability, I highly recommend you take 20 minutes for yourself and watch the whole thing.