I worked another night shift this past weekend, and a brief chat with another nurse on the floor that night reminded me how easy I had it with my assignment. I was busy, but I had time to take good care of my patients, and make plans for how I would spend my time over the course of the shift that, for the most part, weren’t waylaid by unexpected occurrences. At the end of the shift, I came in to say goodbye to one of my patients, and she asked if she could give me a hug. I said yes.

Since I work very part-time, if a patient is having a longer stay, there is a very good chance that the eight hours I spend with them will be forgettable. I do my best to make their lives better in the short time that I spend with them, but I don’t hang onto any expectations that it will make a big difference for them or their families.

Despite the fact that I obviously made impression on a patient, I left wishing I’d been able to do more. As I walked towards the stairs on my way home, I absently pulled my phone out, opened up Instagram, and started scrolling. One of my friends had tagged a post with someone else we went to school with. I clicked through to her Instagram, then to her website. If the site is any indication, she’s successful and happy.

I knew her because we lived in the same suite freshman year. She lived next door to me and for some reason, she didn’t like me. She took it upon herself to “fix” me, since I didn’t wear makeup or even really know how to use it, let alone how to shape my brows properly.

I remember the day in the dining hall at lunch at a table full of a mixed group of friends when she made a derogatory comment about my eyebrows being uneven. She was the one who had tweezed them for me, so it certainly wasn’t my fault. But no one else at the table knew that. One of the guys who was sitting with us actually came to my defense. When I saw that HE felt she had crossed a line, it became clear to me for the first time the bullying that was taking place.

I was already struggling mightily with depression that year. I had this automatic circle of acceptance in my cross country team, and yet I didn’t accept myself. I was also struggling with some stuff that had happened during my high school years and probably had  some PTSD from that. I pierced my tongue, and shaved my head. I wasn’t happy.

And there was this girl who kept picking at me. I can look back on it now and be pretty sure it was her own self confidence that was lacking, despite the fact that she always looked totally put together.

I still have my struggles, but I’m a little more self aware now. Still, I came home from work feeling disgruntled, slept for nine hours, and woke up still feeling disgruntled. It took sleeping that night, waking up in the morning disgruntled AGAIN after a long, bad dream in which the theme was that I wasn’t enough, to realize how much just seeing this person’s name and her smiling face on the website had bothered me.

There is something I am not good at: forgiving people who haven’t said they’re sorry. It’s hard. I don’t even know if she realizes that she hurt me. She may have been hurting too much herself. I know forgiveness is a process and a choice. I haven’t been thinking about this person all the time for all the 15 years since I graduated from college. But I was surprised at how fast I went straight to the pain when I was reminded of her.

A theme that has been visiting in my life right now is that I am enough. It isn’t coming from me. That isn’t the way I think. According to me, I am NEVER enough. There is always something I could have done better or differently. But God says I’m enough, and my husband wrote the book on Self Love.

It saddened me that when I was already feeling vulnerable, it just took a little tap to send me over the edge. I want to be better at self acceptance. I want to find it easier to rest when I need it. I’m not sure how that is going to happen IRL, but one practice I’ve been trying to adopt is to rest in God’s presence. I am not good at being alone with myself or my thoughts, so learning to do that has been no easy task.

What I think I am trying to say is that it’s pretty easy to go to the answer that you are not enough. In fact, everything in your life may seem to confirm that you are not enough. But I am, and you are. And the person you are struggling to forgive, and the times when you go on social media to unplug your brain, but instead find yourself short circuited right to a bad place – none of that means you are not enough. It just might mean you need to do a little course correction.

None of us are alone in our struggles, and even if we aren’t always able to believe it, we are enough.