Not Enough

For the last few days I've felt like less of a man.

Nothing dramatic has happened and this isn't the beginning of a long drawn out epiphany. There was no failure, no argument, no loss and realistically, life is quiet. It's a low hum underneath everything that says I'm not doing anything worth remembering, I'm not leaving a statement. When my son looks back at what a man is supposed to be, I ask, is this it?

The funny thing is I know the feeling is unreasonable and I have a mountain evidence against it. My reality is contrary to everything I'm feeling about myself.

I show up for my son every day, which we ask of men constantly. I'm not just talking on weekends or after work. Every day, from the same house, because I built a career that lets me work from home. I train consistently in one of the most brutal sports on earth, MMA. I box, I kickbox, I lift, I embrace discomfort now for the sake of my health and longevity. By any traditional measure that's masculine. I run a business that makes good money and I'm happily married to a woman who knows every part of me, yet stayed anyway.

Still, the list doesn't touch the feeling. That's the part I want to be honest about is that you can win the argument against a feeling and still lose to it.

In my head, what I keep coming back to is the word "enough". Not enough in my community, not a big enough impact on humanity, not enough money, not enough time to execute.

This week I wrote seven devotionals about hustle culture and the lie that a man's worth is measured by his output. In my head, I can hear Jesus say, "Come to me, all who are weary." and "It is finished." Then I closed the laptop and felt like I wasn't doing enough as if my work still wouldn't amount to anything worth repeating.

You can know something is true and still not feel it, and what I found is the gap between knowing and feeling is where I seem to live. When I'm honest, "leaving a mark on humanity" isn't a goal, it's a measuring stick with no end on it. No amount of community work, money or impact would ever make me feel adequate. Whatever this feeling is, it's not asking to be satisfied, it's asking to be fed. It's a voracious appetite, one that I'm starting to fear is turning inward and asking, how much is enough really?

At the same time, I keep feeling like I'm in the wrong place. I love Texas, I'm born and raised. I love the culture of honor here, the yes sir-no sir, the handshake, holding the door, being friendly to strangers because that part of Texas is real and it's good. But it gets buried under ignorance, under religion as performance instead of faith, and under the fervor of people who've made politics their personality. I look around and the things I love are harder to find underneath the noise.

So the urge to leave Texas comes back, again and again. However, I've noticed that it keeps coming back no matter which plan I make, whether that's moving to Colorado or leaving the U.S. entirely. This fact makes me wonder if the wrong place is geographic at all or if "I'm in the wrong place" and "I'm not doing enough" are the same sentence said two ways. Both of them carry the same energy of inadequacy and both of them create anxiety.

However, the worst part about all of this is the guilt. I'm in a position almost no father in history has had. I make money from home and I can watch my son grow up in real time, instead of hearing about his day at dinner. My grandfathers' generation would have called this a miracle and most men alive today would trade places with me without thinking twice. So feeling inadequate from here feels ungrateful. Almost obscene. What could I possibly complain about, I've got it made?

Deep down, I know that gratitude and struggle aren't opposed. I can be deeply thankful for this life and still have these feelings of doubt in myself and God. Pretending I don't, because I haven't "earned" the right, is just another way of measuring myself and coming up short. It's nonsense.

I don't have a resolution and I'm not going to tie this up with a verse and call it healed. Perhaps this isn't something to be healed, maybe I need the angst to keep me sharp, or I need to feel that the foundation could always shake loose. What I have is this, God said, "this is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased" BEFORE Jesus had done a single public thing. No miracles, no sermons, no mark on humanity yet. I want to believe that applies to me. Some days I do, but this week I mostly know it without feeling it.

Maybe the example my son needs isn't a man who has conquered this, invented that, or has his name in bright lights. Maybe it's a man who feels it, names it, doesn't run from it, yet keeps showing up anyway.

In today's age, that seems like the true might of a man.