Enough.
Naomi Johnson remembers the day she heard about Stonecroft’s latest Conversations guide.
As a new Stonecroft volunteer, she was co-leading the planning of a Detox: find your balance event for women in the Chicago area. Stonecroft staff member Sarah LeBlanc, Naomi’s former college roommate, gave Naomi a copy of the Enough guide during a visit to Chicagoland. Sarah serves as Stonecroft’s Divisional Field Director for the Great Lakes Region.
When Naomi saw the guide’s title, she sensed God was up to something.
“I was like, ‘Wow! God is awesome!” Naomi remembers.
What was behind her excitement that day? Weeks earlier Naomi had written a theme for the Detox event she was helping to organize. The theme? “Enough: Striving No More.”
Naomi explains why she felt led to focus on that particular topic, although she knew nothing then about Stonecroft’s newest Conversations guide. “Let’s face it. A lot of women are too overwhelmed and too busy,” she says, noting that many women feel they’re never quite enough. “And our society isn’t helping with that.”
Naomi herself has a full platter as a wife, mother of a 15-month-old daughter, and a full-time mental health-care professional. A marathon runner, she also leads a mentoring ministry for women through her local church.
“I think I struggle with it myself, believing that I’m enough sometimes,” she admits.
Naomi often hears that same struggle in her interactions with other women. “They say things like: ‘This woman’s doing that, and I’m not. So should I be doing that? Maybe I should be doing something else? How am I supposed to know what God really wants? What’s a calling?’”
When women voice these concerns and questions to her, “I just want to say, ‘You’re doing fine. You are exactly where God wants you right now. You don’t have to figure out everything,’” she says.
But as women, “I think we’re always trying to look for that ‘next thing,’” she adds.
Through her service as a Detox volunteer, Naomi looks forward to helping women in the Chicago area find a healthy life balance. She’s especially excited about the “Enough: Striving No More” event planned for April 9 in Elmhurst, Illinois, a Chicago suburb. The program offers interactive breakout sessions on body, mind, and spirit and a healthy-living expo featuring local vendors. Naomi will lead the breakout session on spirit, where she will show women how to journal their story. She’ll also tell the story of the One who has helped her find balance in her own life.
Women attending the event will be invited to four-week small groups Stonecroft volunteers later will lead in the Chicago area. Naomi and the planning team are considering using Enough as a conversation guide for these groups.
“God shows us that we don’t have to keep doing and doing and doing. He is enough,” says Naomi. “He wants us to be in His presence. When we’re being and having that connection with Him, then we can do what He wants us to do. It’s about being in His presence and believing that He loves us.”
Mary Speidel
Writer and Editor
Detox
