Last week was about the struggle with leading in uncertainty.  This week is about my mom cooking breakfast and being enough.

A couple of weeks ago I went on a vacation with my family and my parents to a cabin.  The cabin has its own private lake and NO cell phone reception.  It was awesome.  We kayaked, fished, played games, and hung out.  Anyway, my mom is a cooking beast, a one woman show, and she made breakfast for us.  Breakfast included: sausage gravy, biscuits, bacon, breakfast potatoes, confetti pancakes, French toast, and scrambled eggs.  It all came out delicious, hot, and on time.  During the meal my mom talked about how she should have brought stuff down to make cinnamon rolls or how we could have cut up potatoes to have fried potatoes.  My oldest daughter jokingly told her that doing those things would be a little too much, as if my mom making all that other food on her own wasn’t too much to begin with.  Every other person in that room appreciated my mom for everything she was doing, and my mom was the one wondering if she should have done more.

What does this have to do with anything?  I don’t know where you are mentally right now.  There is a part of me that sometimes wonders if I’m enough and what I’m doing is enough.  Maybe it’s because I’m tired after 1.5 years of being in a pandemic.  Maybe it’s because I’m splitting my energy between different things going on.  Maybe it’s because I’m still newish to my role.  With all that said, I’m learning that feeling like I’m not enough doesn’t mean it’s true.  In these situations, I might just be like my mom who was blind to how awesome and appreciated she was for making a great breakfast.  In times where I feel I’m not enough, I need to step out of my own head and look at the evidence around me to determine if this is true.  The fact is that I’m providing for my family and my kids know I love them.  My wife appreciates me for helping hold things down with her.  People at work have been telling me I’m doing a pretty good job so far, even though it’s still early.  COULD I do more?  Maybe.  It’s likely that we could all do more if we recklessly threw ourselves into it.  Do I NEED to do significantly more to be enough?  Probably not.  At the end of the day, I am enough and what I’m doing is enough.

The challenge: Will you embrace that you are enough the way you are?  Will you embrace that you are doing enough?

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry