Lessons in Sufficiency from my old yellow chair

... and how do we know enough-ness?

But where do you sit?, my mother wanted to know.

I pointed to the daybed, the metal chairs. There, I said, or maybe there.

Go buy a good chair, she told me. My treat. Everyone needs a real chair.

She was right (and generous); I needed a real chair. I went shopping the next day on my lunch break and found the perfect chair. It was like finding the right puppy – when you know, you know.

The chair and the puppy… enough.

It’s been a long time now, since that conversation with my mom and the gift of the yellow chair. Twenty-plus years ago. I had just walked away from a toxic marriage. It was the most difficult/painful/wise decision I’d ever made.

When I left, after 25 years, I literally walked out one morning and didn’t return.

It seems so distant now, that first marriage and the end of it.

Would I be okay? Would I have enough? Would I be enough?

That marriage had its share of pain and challenges, lots of details you don’t need to know, lots of things that lots of too many people have, unfortunately, experienced. I’d been told that I wasn’t enough. Name a category –that’s what I wasn’t enough of.

* If you’ve ever been told you’re not enough, hear me now: You. Are. Enough.

You are created in the image of love and goodness. You’re not only enough, you are abundantly, fabulously, perfectly you.

You are more than enough.

Read this section as many times as it takes.

You can trust me on this: YOU ARE ENOUGH.

During those volatile years, I felt like I was living on a volcano that could erupt at any moment. And it did: it blew up on the Wednesday of Holy Week in 2003. I had wondered for a long time what I would do when the volcano blew.

I found a little efficiency apartment near the church where I worked. I borrowed a daybed from my sister and bought the coffee maker at Target. A friend gave me a lamp.

It doesn’t take much when your options are limited. I had what I needed and it was enough.

My sons were already on their own; they were concerned and thoughtful and understanding. My parents were supportive and knew to give me a little space. I was 40-something, they all knew I could manage.

My sufficiency

A month or so after the move, I showed my mom the little apartment: “my sufficiency", I called it.

It was a tiny room, but it was enough. It was sufficient, with that borrowed bed and a tiny metal bistro table and two matching chairs from Pier One.

That’s when she invited me to find a “real” chair. (And I’ve tried to tell her so many times over the years, but it’s impossible to articulate how that gift continues to bring me joy, and comfort, and solace, more than enough, every day.)

The extra-wide soft and cushiony yellow-and-rose chintz upholstered armchair was delivered the next afternoon. I’m sure the delivery guys thought they had the wrong address, delivering this lovely new piece to this dreary old efficiency apartment. But when they left, the apartment wasn’t dreary. The chair took up a big chunk of the space and brightened every inch of it. Think of Karen Blixen’s chair in Out of Africa. That was my chair.

My yellow chair became my best place, my safe space, my sacred space. I could read, think, cry, eat, pray, sleep, dream, scheme in that chair.

The chair became my symbol of sufficiency, the reminder that I already had everything I needed.

In a season of uncertainty, I learned that I had enough, that I am enough. And enough is just right.

I had family, friends, and colleagues who listened, cared, and encouraged me. My work was meaningful. I had a roof over my head, running water, and my yellow chair.

It was enough. It was all I needed.

It was sufficient. Not in the “minimum requirement” way, but in the “this is just right, you have all you need” way”, like when you pack just right for a trip and you have exactly what you need, when you’re not lacking a single thing, and you’re not carrying unnecessary ballast.

A year later, I moved into a little condo, and my yellow chair continued to hold me, heal me. I wrote a dissertation in that chair.

A few years later, when I bought the old Craftsman cottage in the M-streets, the chair had her place in the front room, and looked like she’d always belonged there.

My yellow chair held me every morning as I read or journaled or prayed. In the evenings that’s where I sat to read, or make phone calls, or write lessons or sermons or wild ideas. I wrote a little book for my denomination in that chair.

That’s the chair Tom and I cuddled in to watch Casablanca, on our first shared New Years Eve (it wasn’t quite a love seat but it was big enough for snuggles).

When we moved to Beaufort, I insisted the chair would join us, though she was showing her age. I wrote a novel in that chair, in a rental house that first year.

When we bought our sweet old house on the river, the chair came with us. She was threadbare in more than a few places, but I loved her and she came. Tom didn’t fully understand the relationship, but he honored it.

The old yellow chair needed some attention, Tom suggested. Maybe re-upholster her?

I was defensive. She was younger than me, by decades. I thought the aging added to her elegance. She’d always been there for me, just as she was.

But in our new home, in the bright light of the big windows, I could hear Rod Stewart: The mornin' sun when it's in your face really shows your age. She needed a little TLC. We offered her a rehab and she came home radiant, more elegant than ever. She wears a soft cream now, but she’ll forever be My Yellow Chair. We gave her a quiet corner in the guest room, where coffee spills and dirty sneakers and dog drool are less threatening.

After Tom’s illness and death, overwhelmed and confused by the pain and loss, I would go sit in the formerly-yellow chair. For hours. I didn’t know what I needed, but I needed to be curled up there.

Several months ago, after a long season of re-arranging my internal and emotional life, I knew it was time to bring the chair out of the guest room and give her the prime real estate in the sunroom, where we can watch the river and the birds and sunrises and sunsets and wild winds and shy deer.

This isn’t about a chair (although I do cherish this chair)

This is about knowing that in a world that shouts You need more! and You’ll never have enough!, life itself is a generous gift: abundant in joy and sorrow, profound in its beauty and brokenness, trust and terror, fear and fragility, and the faithful rhythms of life.

In a culture that wants us to collect and accumulate, to buy and gather more, in an attempt to be more, this sweet old chair whispers, No. No, you don’t need more and you don’t need to be more. This, all this, is enough. This is the beautiful enough-ness of your life.

In a culture of busy, my chair invites me to sit, to be still, to quiet myself, to listen to the Spirit, to trust the Creator, to choose Love.

In my drive to be productive, to be relevant, to be significant, this sweet old chair invites me to rest, to be insignificant, to simply be.

In this culture of more, the chair tells me, again, that I am enough.

So, as often as I can, I curl up here in the once-yellow chair, and remember the gift of sufficiency.

And so I invite you to celebrate the wonderful enough-ness, the profligate extravagant abundance of simplicty and hope and connection and possibility that lives and breathes and loves – in and through you.

That is enough.

You are enough.

Sufficiency abounds.