by The following is an excerpt from Enough for Today: Forty Reflections for Surviving the Wilderness by Donna Barber. Enough for Today releases on December 9, 2025, and is available for pre-order now.
“While we were still helpless [powerless to provide for our salvation],
at the right time Christ died [as a substitute]
for the ungodly.”
Romans 5:6
“Why do you need to be in control?” he said. No answer.
He went on, “Because you’re afraid. What are you afraid of?”
“Failing,” I whispered.
“Not being loved. Not being accepted. Not being as good as you think, or as people think you
are,” he said.
I can remember the times, when as a child in elementary school, our classroom door would open and a student would enter and approach the teacher’s desk with a note from the office. If the paper was white, the message was generally informational and held no concern for us as students. But if the note was not white, all activity would cease and the room would go silent as if the entire class was holding its collective breath. If the note was yellow, we knew someone was being called down to the principal’s office and if the note was pink, it meant someone was being suspended! In either case, you did not want to hear your name called once the teacher got the colored note.
It was one of those mornings, one of those days when the activity in my devotional classroom had ceased because the note delivered from the Spirit had my name on it. Thankfully, pink slips are rare in God’s schoolhouse. Our Lord is patient and suffers long with his children. But from time-to-time God calls us up to his office for a chat and this was one of those days. When God is in the posture of correction, I feel every bit the size of my seven or eight-year-old, powerless self and I bow my head and lower my eyes in reverence but also, truthfully, in conviction knowing that I will again be seen and known, fully and completely in all my human frailty.
God has an office in the wilderness where there is no cover by degrees or titles, and without the fig leaves of busyness or the flashy distractions of talent or personality. In this barren landscape I can see easily what God has chosen to reveal – the truth of my fear. Through childhood experiences we learn how to be in the world, how to navigate, how to survive. As a child, I wasn’t afraid of being seen. I was afraid of being rejected. So, I learned two effective methods for avoiding that pain – invisibility and perfection. Be the hero or be unseen.
I learned to enter a room and quickly disappear into the safety and obscurity of the margins of the space, to listen intently, observe carefully and to speak only when you had something substantial to say. In work it was dot every I, cross every t and avoid making any mistakes.
In the kingdom, neither of these mechanisms are useful or required. I am justified by faith. I have peace with God through Christ. I have access into a grace that allows me to stand in hope. I have been reconciled – brought into agreement with the one who has given me this salvation. I do not need to hide or kill myself in the pursuit of perfection. The miseducation of the world teaches me that I must earn love and acceptance. Racism and classism tell me that I need to work twice as long and twice as hard to get half as much and that as a black woman who grew up poor, what I get I don’t deserve. Religion implies that I must keep the rules to gain God’s love and avoid damnation. However, grace is not transactional. God proves his unconditional love by the fact that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. And since we have now been declared free of the guilt of sin by His blood, we will be saved from the wrath of God through Him.
I don’t have to be the best and the brightest student, the parent, spouse or partner that is continually in control or the leader afraid of being discovered as less than perfect. I have a God. I don’t need to be one.
In God’s office in the wilderness, I am met with a love that dispels my fear and I remember that I can have joy even in the arid conditions of everyday life. Challenge will produce patience and through patience I will gain experience and through experience a hope that will not disappoint. Stripped of the hero capes and camouflage, there is still room in the mercy and grace of God to risk and to fail and to try again. I am loved. I am accepted and forever reconciled to the God who made and chose me.
I am likely not as good as I am thought to be but in Him, I am enough.
About Donna Barber
Donna Barber, a Jesus follower, is a contemplative who expresses her faith through writing, preaching, program creation, and the development of leaders, both in and outside the church. She is also a passionate educator advising teachers, administrators, and nonprofits in order to transform education systems to eliminate harm. As Co-Founder and Executive Director of The Voices Project, Donna uses her voice to mentor, train, and promote leaders of color. She is mom to six adult children and currently lives in Atlanta, GA, with her husband, lifelong friend, and ministry partner, Leroy Barber.
