During my school years, my mother who was in an abusive relationship for most of that time with my first stepdad, would scream at my step-siblings and me every day when she got home about the household chores we were required to do each day were not clean enough. It was a daily ritual. She would find something small to complain about. That complaining would turn into screaming and that screaming was a message that we never cleaned well enough.

She would inspect the floor, the dishes, and the bathroom and find something that wasn’t up to her cleaning standards to unload on us. It didn’t matter how hard we tried to anticipate what she would get angry about, or how hard we would clean, she would find something that wasn’t good enough. Looking back at her behavior, I’m unsure whether or not she was aware of what she was doing. I don’t think she was, but I can’t be sure.

Several years and plenty of therapy later, I’ve been able to get more of a 30,000-foot view of the situation, and here is the best I can come up with about that time–

Since she had such a loss of control over her own life–the daily verbal, emotional, and sometimes physical abuse fighting with my stepfather–she hyper-focused on the only things she could control. One of those was cleaning. And the only people she could take out her powerlessness on were her kids. Her husband dumped on her and in return, she dumped on us. We had no one to dump on but each other. Her feelings of not being good enough were transferred onto us. We were her proverbial “punching dolls.”

My brain largely internalized those feelings and translated them into one very clear meaning— No matter how hard I tried, I would never be good enough.

The entire situation was not great (to say the least) and set me up for plenty of childhood trauma that translated into adulthood where I am still trying to unknot and sort it all out.

I know my mother loved me, but she didn’t love herself enough to get out of the situation and stay out. Somewhere in her, I believe she didn’t feel she was worthy to expect more for her life. Despite a couple of attempts to move out, ultimately she stayed for several more years until finally, it took such a toll on her health that she had to leave. But by that time, the damage was done. Parents who try to do right by their kids never mean to cause the damage they cause. They are consumed with trying to figure out how to navigate their own lives, and some simply aren’t strong enough to sacrifice their comfort for the sake of their children.

That gets inherited by default. Even when in therapy, exposure to that kind of toxic existence still gets transmitted to the kids.

I don’t hold my mother responsible. I understand she was just trying to survive. Nevertheless, I still inherited the monster of not feeling like I was good enough. And with it came several hard experiences over my life that I’m still trying to shake off.

I’m positively certain she’s suffered her own familial cycle of not feeling good enough which she inherited from her mother. Her mother before her suffered as well.

I don’t think I’m the only one who has this story. You probably can relate in some form or way. What I think we both need to understand is that we are qualified and authorized by a higher power to bind and heal from our past childhood traumas.

It is this power that we operate from, not from the opinions of others, but by the calling and redemption of our mission, sanctified by God himself. I believe that.

We were anointed with the gift of writing not solely for our enjoyment, but for the benefit of others. We were given the gift of articulation so that we may help others live their purpose, find their truth, and battle their childhood demons.

You are the word warrior. The mercenary sent by God to help others find their voice; to help others stand up for themselves and to make their voices heard.

You are a soldier of the most high God, and there is no greater privilege, mission, or anointing than to be wholly covered in the supernatural gift of crafting a message that can persuade, heal, and forge massive change.

To believe that you are not good enough for God’s anointing is to believe the lie of the enemy. It’s to fall short of your gifts and to short-change those meant to hear your words for their own healing. Essentially, you fail yourself and you fail them.

You can have a career as a writer, or you can have a calling.

An obsession.

An undeniable quest for truth and feeling and understanding that is good enough for our God.

Because the truth is eternal. There are no versions of the truth.

You can choose or be chosen to write– which one do you feel is your calling?

But whatever you do, don’t halfway it.

There is freedom from fear and judgment when you know you’ve been called to soldier the message for the greater good of God’s people.

Be a fanatic.

Be irrational in your mission.

Get unglued.

That unapologetically certain about who you are, part of you who knows what you’re doing, and that you are absolutely good enough for God’s grace.

Stop allowing fear to cause you to reject yourself. Stop allowing fear to flood in and control you.

Instead, together we will require those who would judge, condemn, or admonish us to qualify themselves first to be an authority over us before we consider taking their word as truth (and even then, no one is ever really qualified to tell us what to do with our God-given gifts or mission anyway).

When I experience those moments where I feel my writing isn’t good enough, or I’m not good enough– for my dad and mom and all the messages and subtleties I got from them, from ex-boyfriends, from the silent looks of judgment and condemnation repelling me to stay as far away from ever trying again so I wouldn’t feel that rejection, I remind myself that God has deemed me good enough to die for my sins. And if God is with me, then who can be against me? If God sees me as “good enough” , who am I to call him a liar?

Who am I to not forgive myself when the Creator of the universe and beyond loved me enough to sacrifice His only son for me?

Feeling not good enough is a form of rejection.

When you’ve been rejected most of your life, or taught by experience that you aren’t good enough, you let fear take over and believe it. And as a result, you live your life in a place of fear.

The reality is that you are perceiving that information based on an experience. It doesn’t make it true, but you give it credit because usually as a child you believed your parents were always right. You believed then that other people’s opinions of you were right.

But what if they were wrong? What if the feeling of not being good enough was negotiable?

What if you already knew you were good enough? What if a higher power qualified and authorized you as good enough?

Where would our talents, dreams, aspirations, hopes, and joys live then?

Certainly not bruising our knees scrubbing floors and hoping we don’t get screamed at again.

Turns out, the only “good enough” you need to feel is a squeaky clean spirit of salvation bathed in forgiveness and grace, not in Palmolive.