St. Francis and Tattoos

Last April, I went to a reflection day for local area youth ministers.
Our speaker was Fr. Dave Pivonka, TOR and creator of The Wild Goose. He is also working on a new series on St. Francis of Assisi too.  I'm kinda stoked for it:)

At that reflection day, Fr. Dave talked a lot about discernment. 
How do we know we are doing God's will?  More specifically i relation to youth ministry, are we even discipling the teens in our care?  Or are we just creating "chameleon Catholics" that are just blending in with everyone else?
If everything were stripped in our ministry, and we were left with Jesus what would that look like?  How would it change what I do?  What would that mean?
His talk really really challenged me and left me thinking and praying on the why behind what we do.
After lunch, Fr. Dave was sharing ways in which we can work with and partner with the Holy Spirit.
And in one example he quoted a saying of St. Francis: "Oh God, You are enough for me." I'm trusting Fr. Dave on his source check since he himself is a Franciscan.  Not to mention it is now permanently on my body ;)
Those words rocked me to my core. For a lot of reasons.
Maybe because it was a week after the divorce was finalized.  Maybe because I have never really believed that for myself.  Maybe because for most of my life I thought I would be enough when I had someone to share my life with.
Whatever the reasons, I spent several months just sitting with those words in silence; praying with and wrestling them in my life.
In the silence, they began to take on a deeper meaning for my life.
So when I decided to get another tattoo, I knew I wanted these words of St. Francis. YOU ARE ENOUGH.

This new phase of my life has really become defined by those words.

YOU ARE ENOUGH. God really has to be enough for me. If I don't learn this now, I don't think I ever will. I am enough just the way I am.  I am enough on my own.
I know I never believed I was enough, so how the heck could I possibly believe God is enough for me?
And you know what? That's a really crappy way to live.
But the next amount of years are going to be focused on living more in these new truths for myself and helping others know that too.
I have always been enough, now I just actually believe it. And the freedom in knowing that to the core of my soul is the best thing.



Are there truths in your own life you have wrestled or struggled with? How have you come to believe them to be true?
PS If you have a tattoo, what's the story behind it?! I love me a good tattoo story:)