I wrote swiftly in the third bathroom stall at the Olive Garden, scratching notes on a blue spiral notebook I had grabbed from home on my way out the door. My husband and I had just enjoyed a quiet dinner together, and as he waited for the bill, I stole minutes from the evening to scribble a few of the words that swirled in my head and begged for release.

Many of my essays begin, as this one did, in the most unusual places. While my fellow female occupants in the restroom contended over which color of lipstick to apply and readjusted the straps of their dresses, I huddled fully clothed on the other side of the locked door with a pen in hand.

I began writing five years ago when we were transplanted from a small city in Idaho to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Collectively, we were a family unit, but individually, everyone seemed content but me. I was a small person absorbed by a big city, and I felt that I had no real place - there or anywhere. In the mirror, I saw "David's wife" and "Jordan's mother," but once again, I had again failed to fully arrive with us.

Confused and empty but looking for fulfillment, I threw myself into as many passions as I could access. I searched for completion in friendships, shopping, a career, physical fitness, and a variety of pastimes. I felt that if I could somehow add more to myself, then there would finally be enough of me to feel good about.

After trying and failing and trying and failing some more, I finally realized that no magical solution was going to make me whole. A successful job wouldn't truly fill me. A perfect body wouldn't create the sense of completion I craved. More outer success couldn't make more of me. Each of these would, at best, divert my attention from my core problem, but there was no outside source that could truly complete me. I was the only one who could do so, but sadly, I was not yet present in my own life.

I had hit my head against the ceiling of my insecurities for so many years that finally, skull throbbing, I had reached my level of tolerance for pain. At that point, I was willing to seek for wholeness no matter the cost of time or effort it required.

The first thing I did was pray to God and diligently and sincerely ask for help on this personal quest. I didn't know the way, but I believed that He did. Then I began to ask questions. I sent deep and probing queries into the darkness of the unknown with a modicum of faith that answers would return to me. Why did I feel incomplete? What was the origin of my many fears? How could I - a person who had felt inadequate for so long - finally experience wholeness?

I committed myself to an inward search every evening. While our boys were in bed, my hands wrote hour after hour after hour, exploring the crevices within me. That time became the most sacrosanct part of the day. While the washing machine rested and the dishes dried by air, I embarked on a more important kind of housecleaning.

Like an inquisitive child, I grabbed whole sections of my life by the fistful and dissected my inner world as the tip of my pen met the top of a blank sheet of paper. As dusk approached, I opened the window shades to let in the last few rays of the sun that sank into the western sky. Night after night, it descended and promised to rise again in the morning. Night after night, I wrote, hoping that a whole person might also arise with the coming day.

In time, my Eternal Father received my small crumbs of faith and returned my questions with tiny morsels of insight each day. He taught me that I looked for security from anywhere in the world, but never from myself or from Him. I realized that I sought for approval and fulfillment from ephemeral sources that could only inflate my ego, yet never truly fill me. If I was perceived in a positive manner by those around me, I felt valid. If I did "important" things, I felt worthwhile. However, if outside sources could give me the approval I needed, they could also take it away. Therefore, my flawed sense of completion rested on ever-shifting fault lines.

These initial inquiries and the answers that followed were keys that unlocked a floodgate of understanding, a grand comprehension that eventually unfolded before me. This process also birthed an authentic relationship between my Eternal Father and me in which I came to know that He is the source of all truth. As such, He is also the source of freedom. He is a generous Giver to those who search for Him, and He delights to heal His children who are broken and bound by falsehoods. If we become seekers, He is the one who teaches us to part our ceilings and travel beyond them in freedom.

There is a natural law that states that creators produce offspring like themselves. A lion produces a young lion, an oak tree produces a young oak tree, and even a blade of grass will bring forth a creation like unto itself. How odd would it be to find that your cat had given birth to a litter of parakeets or that the family dog had produced six young boa constrictors? This law is so common in our world that we would never consider it to be otherwise. Creators produce offspring like themselves. If this law exists in our physical world of creation, how could it not exist - even more perfectly - in the spirit world of creation?

Our Eternal Creator is a Being of perfect worth who is peaceful, loving, and intelligent. When He created each spirit, He transferred these traits to us. Though these qualities are young and not fully developed, at our spirit center we share similarities with the One who made us. We naturally inherited peace, love, wisdom, and most certainly - absolute worth.

However, that is not the truth we are taught in the physical world. Even though we were created by God, we now live among human beings, and the human world is immersed in scarcity. Here we are taught that high value is limited; therefore, we must compete for our portion. We are taught that love is in short supply, and so we must earn it. We are taught that confidence and security are only for those who prove themselves worthy. Thus insecurity is behavior we have learned. When we were born, we loved ourselves, but as we grew, the world taught us not to. As young children, we were secure, but eventually, we succumbed to beliefs of inadequacy.

Unfortunately, a system of scarcity is imbedded within our very culture. Those who have "more" - more money, more beauty, or more talent appear to be exalted in worth. Those who have "less" feel the pain of an apparent decrease in value. Of course, the entire system is incorrect, but that doesn't prevent the world from paying homage to it. These falsehoods are not only perpetuated in our culture, but parents can easily project their own feelings of scarcity onto their children. Without examination and cleansing, a new generation is then born and bred under the ceiling of insecurity.

The theories of the world are not our only hindrances. When our eternal spirits partnered with a human body, we inherited a physical packaging. Within that packaging exists what has been called the ego, the flesh, the natural self, or the carnal presence. The carnal presence is a feeling within, often manifesting as a voice in our heads, which constantly asks the question "Am I enough?"

This presence generates continual thoughts of inadequacy, which easily form an entire paradigm of insecurity. When we believe the thoughts and take them for truth, they produce fearful emotions within us. Together, the thoughts and the fears yield a false, but very influential reality - that we are inadequate beings. If we don't know otherwise, that false reality becomes our only reality. It causes us to feel insecure about our worth and propels us to struggle to obtain the value we already possess.

Insecurity operates as an internal vacuum that seeks to fill itself. Like all vacuums, it sucks. Insecurity sucks in praise from others and prompts us to prove ourselves to the people around us. We become intently concerned about how we are being perceived, and we seek to drop or manipulate information in a way that we feel will impress others. Some attempt to mask their insecurity by exerting bold confidence, yet fear may be the wind that blows behind their social sails.

Intimate relationships are another place where inward lack seeks fulfillment. We feel that if we could just obtain that one special relationship, then we'd finally feel whole. Unfortunately, the vacuum of insecurity usually sucks the life out of the loving relationships we do have. It dictates that even if we're loved, the love doesn't feel like enough. Even if we're praised, the satisfaction fades and leaves us looking for more. Blind to the truth, we often blame other people for the fact that we don't feel whole, secure, and at peace with ourselves.

Without spiritual wholeness, we easily become obsessed with temporal representations of value such as our physical appearance, making money, acquiring new possessions, or gaining power. We feel certain that these things will bring the satisfaction we seek. This causes us to become consumed by the future, because we believe that through some future achievement, we will finally be declared "enough." Of course, by themselves, achievements and possessions are not necessarily harmful. However, when the carnal presence attaches a self-inflating agenda to them, they become part of a damaging mirage.

The carnal presence has base instincts, and by nature, it can only serve itself. It is terrified to surrender its ulterior motives with the physical world and behaves as an enemy to our spiritual wholeness. Even if it harms our relationships, our finances, our health, or our well being, it will seek solely to fulfill its unending desires. The only point at which it feels satisfied is in the brief period of elation that occurs just after acquiring what it seeks. Yet soon the emptiness returns. Because the carnal self arises out of insufficiency and seeks hollow sources for fulfillment, it has no potential to transcend its own scarcity.

While the carnal presence tells us to keep searching in the world for our security and identities, the Spirit tells us that this world cannot grant either. It never has, nor can it possibly do so in the future.

The only power that can absolve the human inadequacy from which we suffer is the power of God. When we become wholly connected to our Eternal Father, our relationship with Him causes us to feel certain that we are literally His creations, and as such, we inherited worth that cannot be changed or destroyed. Paul teaches, "The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God" (Romans 8:16). When all of who we are becomes immersed in the reality of our spiritual identity, we wrestle ourselves free from the insatiable need to search for our identity in the world.

When God declared his existence to Moses he said, "I am that I am" (Exodus 3:14). He did not make a list of His qualifications, possessions, talents, or works of wonder to describe Himself. Though His works are astounding and magnificent, He merely said "I am." However, when we make statements of our existence, we usually skip over "I am," because we are so attached to what comes after it for an identity. "I am affluent." "I am educated." "I am overweight." "I am divorced." "I am unqualified" We do not often feel that just to be - just to exist - is a valid reason to possess absolute worth.

When we live from "I am," our identity is rooted in its indestructible core. This allows us to abandon our agenda with the physical world. We may still participate in this world, but we no longer seek to find ourselves in any facet of our temporal existence. We are not our careers, our education, our possessions, nor are we the numbers on the bathroom scale. We are not our accomplishments or failures, the people who have raised us, or even the traumatic circumstances of our past. These things can be added to or taken away from our outer life, but our divine identity operates in its own eternal dimension.

Of course, we will never truly be free from the condition of human insecurity until we actually experience our spiritual identity. Spiritual truth comes through spiritual channels. We access these channels by immersing ourselves in God's teachings and by using His designated line of communication with Him, which is prayer. We must spend time in purposeful meditation, reflection, and peaceful solitude, preparing to receive the full truth of ourselves and our lives.

Today I seek periods of stillness in which I reconnect to my own spirit. I sit quietly and feel the vibrant force of spirit life that is wearing this body and giving it breath. This, I know, is who I really am. I pray for an increased ability to abandon the thought patterns and the emotions of scarcity. I ask Him to teach me His eternal truths and grant me the power to build my life upon the principles of freedom.

Like a young pianist, we must always fine-tune the instrument of our own wholeness. We must return to the forgotten piano in the attic, wipe off the dust, sit up straight, and fumble our fingers around on the keys. We play poorly until we learn to play better; we stumble with the truth of what we're learning, until we find a place of permanent footing.

Fortunately, He promises, "For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened" (Matthew 7:8). Many of us have already spent a lifetime pursuing a physical mirage and have, at best, achieved momentary satisfaction. Therefore, the effort required to seek our divine identity will always be so little compared to the permanent freedom and peace this discovery will distill into our lives.

Today the sun rose in full radiance, bringing the bursting light of day with its warmth. The morning came, just as promised, and all of me rose with it.

I am at home finishing the essay that I started in the bathroom of the Olive Garden as the words continue to fill my head, waiting to find their place on a page. The words don't question my fumbling abilities, and I have learned not to question what they are teaching me to say. They are wiser than I am.

At times, my vacuum from the past awakens. When I first began to compile my essays into a book that I hoped to publish, fear roared aloud in my head, captured my attention, and stifled my work. You will never be good enough to do this. You will only fail if you try. One evening, as I fell asleep, in that moment when the conscious becomes hazy and the unconscious becomes clear, the voice of truth spoke to me again saying, "Bring what you have. It is enough."

The carnal self may always ask the question, "Am I enough?" But only through God, will we come to the answer.