The Trouble With Enough

Tuesday, September 29, 2026

I was sitting at cheer practice when Haggai made me cry.

I had my AirPods in, worship music playing loudly enough to dull the noise around me, because I had decided I was finally going to write something I had been avoiding since March.

The Rat Race 5K.

I knew what I wanted to write about. Ambition. Achievement. The strange ways we learn to measure ourselves by titles, salaries, productivity, and proximity to importance. I knew I wanted to write about running right past the finish line because nobody ever taught us how to recognize enough.

What I hadn't quite figured out was why I was still so bothered by all of it.

I've been struggling with the ladder lately. Not climbing it, exactly. Missing it.

And being super annoyed with myself for missing it.

Me and that ladder, we trauma-bonded, as it were.

Then I read Haggai.

Haggai is one of those tiny books of the Bible that is easy to pass over. Blink, bye. Two chapters tucked near the end of the Old Testament, written to people living in circumstances so different from ours that it would be safe to assume there isn't much there for a woman sitting at cheer practice in 2026.

Safe to assume... Perhaps the worst posture to take with Jesus.

Anyway, Haggai - it's about people who had returned from exile to Jerusalem and had been given the task of rebuilding the temple of God.

They began the work, but opposition came. The work stopped.

And then it stayed stopped.

Years passed.

Meanwhile, the people rebuilt other things.

Their own homes were completed. Crops were planted. Money was earned. Life resumed. They weren't necessarily doing terrible things. They were doing ordinary, necessary things. They were establishing households and making a living after a period of enormous disruption.

The problem wasn't that they had houses.

The problem was what their houses revealed about their priorities.

God asks them through Haggai:

“Is it a time for you yourselves to be living in your paneled houses, while this house remains a ruin?”

And then comes the sentence that stopped me:

“Give careful thought to your ways.”

Consider [my] ways.

Not just your intentions.

Not what you say matters to you.

Look at your actual life.

Look at what you are building.

Look at what receives your money, your energy, your attention, your worry, your best hours.

Look at what gets finished.

And look at what you've decided can wait.

Because our lives have a rather inconvenient way of revealing what we value.

Cue me crying at cheer practice.

I realized the problem with this season isn't that something is missing from my life. It's that my desires are off.

I know my life is richer now than it was before.

My wrinkles aren't digging in as deep, my jaw has unclenched, and my shoulders are remembering where they belong.

Yet, some part of me misses the paneled house.

Our Paneled Houses

I don't think Haggai gives us permission to simply substitute “career” for “paneled houses” and “church” for “temple” and call the interpretation finished.

The temple meant far more than a building. It represented God's presence among His covenant people, their worship, and their restored relationship with Him after exile. Rebuilding it was something God had specifically called this particular people to do.

But what Haggai exposes is painfully recognizable.

The people had found the energy to build what mattered to them while God's priorities remained unfinished.

That travels rather well across a few thousand years.

Our paneled houses may be careers and bank accounts. They may be reputations, platforms, homes, bodies, schedules, accomplishments, children's activities, retirement plans, ministries, businesses, or the carefully constructed version of ourselves we want other people to see.

Good things can still get out of order.

They can take up too much space. Ask too much of us. Become the thing we reach for first, protect most fiercely, or depend on to tell us who we are.

A career doesn't have to be bad to become too important. Ambition doesn't have to be selfish to become consuming. Success doesn't have to be sinful to become something we need to feel worthy.

Sometimes the problem isn't what we've built.
It's the place we've given it.
That's what makes this difficult.

I spent years learning how to measure myself this way.

Titles.
Salary bands.
Org charts.
Promotions.
Awards.
Metrics.

Numbers that tell you you're doing well.

There are whole systems designed to answer the question, How am I doing?

And if you spend enough time inside them, it becomes very easy to let them answer a much more dangerous question: How much am I worth?

Then one day the organization changes.

The title disappears.
The job ends.
The room you used to belong in belongs to somebody else.

And you discover just how temporary man's measurements always were.

Haggai asks me to consider that.

A Purse With Holes

God doesn't only tell the people that their priorities are wrong. He tells them to look at what those priorities are producing.

“You have planted much, but harvested little. You eat, but never have enough. You drink, but never have your fill. You put on clothes, but are not warm. You earn wages, only to put them in a purse with holes in it.”

That image has stayed with me.

A purse with holes.

You keep putting things in.

They keep falling out.

And somehow, more still feels like the answer.

In Haggai, this wasn't merely a clever metaphor for dissatisfaction. God explicitly connects their frustrated labor to their covenant disobedience. They had neglected His house while attending to their own, and God used their lack to get their attention.

That distinction matters.

The paycheck that feels too small.

The crop that should've produced more.

The job that disappeared before we were ready.

The season that refuses to satisfy us.

I don't think every not enough means God is punishing us because we've gotten our priorities wrong. Hardship isn't always evidence that something in us is out of order.

But I do think Haggai reveals something true about the human heart:

We can pour enormous amounts of ourselves into things that were never capable of satisfying us and then wonder why we still feel empty.

That's the part that got me.

I've had the title.
I've made the money.
I've had access to important rooms.
And I'm embarrassed by how much I still sometimes miss those things.

Because I know better.

Yet some part of my heart still whispers that maybe another title would settle something. Maybe more money would make me feel safer. Maybe being important again in the ways our culture recognizes importance would make something click back into place.

Consider [my] ways.

Look in the purse.

There are holes in it.

The Trouble With Our Definition of Rich

Maybe that's what has been so disorienting about this season of my life.

On paper, there are things I used to have that I don't have now.

And if I use the measurements I spent years learning to trust, I could probably pen a pretty convincing argument that I have moved backward.

But then I look around.

My marriage needs me.
My big kid needs me.
My little kid needs me.
My body needs me to care whether it stays healthy.
My mind needs enough quiet to remain sane.
And there are things God has actually called me to that need more than whatever is left of me.

That's why my own longing frustrates me so much.

My previous life wasn't richer than this one.

Sure, it was easier to measure.
There were titles for it.
There were numbers attached to it.

But there is no ladder for a healthy marriage.

Nobody issues a promotion because your daughter knows she can come to you. There is no impressive title for loving people well. There is no merit increase for learning to rest.

Maybe that is one of the reasons our culture gets this so wrong.

We have become exceptionally good at measuring things that aren't necessarily the best measures of a life.

And then we confuse measurable with valuable.

Haggai disrupts all of that with one command:

Consider.

Don't assume.

Look. Really look.

The Part We Sometimes Miss

The story doesn't end with God pointing out everything the people have gotten wrong.

They listen.

Haggai speaks. The leaders and the people respond. They begin the work again.

And God's next message to them is astonishingly simple:

“I am with you.”

I keep coming back to that.

Because after all the discussion about houses and harvests and wages and priorities, God's answer is His presence.

I am with you.

Maybe that's what I need to hear in this season too.

None of those things can become substitutes for the thing I actually need.

I need Jesus infinitely more than I need a title.
I need Him more than I need to feel important.
I need Him more than another zero in my salary.

And if He is with me, perhaps I can stop demanding that everything else prove that I'm okay.

What Are We Building?

I can't read Haggai without wondering what it says to people like us.

We are builders too.

We build careers and companies and brands and portfolios and houses and ministries and résumés and five-year plans.

We are very good at building.

The question Haggai leaves me with isn't whether I should stop.

It's whether I have the order right.

What gets the best of me?

What have I decided can remain unfinished while I attend to something the world has taught me to value more?

What am I asking money, achievement, recognition, or status to provide that they have already proven incapable of providing?

And maybe most painfully:

What if the life I keep being tempted to look back at wasn't actually richer?

What if it was only shinier?

I sat at cheer practice with tears rolling down my face because I already know the answer.

Look around, dummy.

There is good work in front of me that I can do faithfully without asking it to tell me who I am.

And there is Jesus.

Still there.

Still [more than] enough.

Still calling me back to those words from Haggai:
Give careful thought to your ways.

So I am.

And the more carefully I look, the less interested I am in rebuilding what I thought I lost.

Maybe God is teaching me to recognize how much richer the one in front of me already is. 🤎