What color are you?
I am a recovering personality quiz junky. At first I thought they were fun, and then I just got really scared because I was 27 and had no clue what I liked or what my hobbies/talents were. Umm...changing diapers in record time? I didn’t know how to answer the simplest questions. I needed a panel of 10 questions to give me some idenity. If I had enough time I would sit through 100 questions, and then get to the end and see I had to pay for the result, of course I never paid for these, some one who paid for these clearly had a problem.
The severity of these panels ranges from, “What Psychological Disorder do you have?” “What your favorite color says about you”, to “What Disney Princess are you?” During our training to move overseas Mike and I took the Myers Briggs test. The mac daddy of tests for personality quiz junkies. This was it, being someone who never really fit in to a particular group, I would finally know which box was mine to climb into. At the time of taking the test I was feeling rather confident and surprisingly my results were ENFJ. E=extrovert ( though in my defense it was borderline) N= Intuition F=feeling J= judgment. The judgment doesn’t surprise me, I had a lot of anger bottled up in me from past hurts and had a strong sense of right and wrong, black and white, the strong hand of JUDGEMENT. At the time I believed that was who God was, the great and mighty Judge, whom all will stand before and bow down in shame. It is interesting and providential how being taken out of my comfort zone while in Vietnam, left without my defenses about me .... chaos began to crush this personality profile and picture of God I was hanging on to.
The E quickly turned into a strong I=Introvert. The N and F stayed intack because I am a reflector and read into peoples words and actions, a lot of the time I am right. For the other times , I am really sorry, I misjudged you and it was wrong of me. I am not an analytical thinker, I am a feeler. I feel things deeply to the point where it is hard for me to move on out of the funk. 7 years later the J has become a P. P for perceiving. How I perceive the world has changed. My thoughts on right and wrong are being redefined for me as I began to see the world differently through the eyes of grace, though I believe in truth and seek truth in every situation. You will always find me on the side of fighting injustice towards the abused and neglected.
I had a very western world mindset of Christianity, which involved a lot of rules, one liners and quite frankly lies regarding the Christian life. One liners and false humility don’t hold up when you are thousands of miles from home in a communist country, where you literally have no power or voice. I began to see through the psedo-power of myself and how ridiculous it was to bring my western mindset with me and expect it to hold up. Living a Christian life is Christ’s life being expressed through us - as us, any behavior that is not dependent on Him comes from the flesh. God Has no desire to help us to live the Christian life. I had heard the opposite and prayed that for so long. “God, please help us in this ministry or God please bless my efforts”. Christ wants to do it Himself-through us. I had been trying for so many years to be a person God would be proud of, a woman people would look up to. I believed holiness was something to be pursued, and earned by Christian service and worldly denial. This brand of Christian life mentally defined me but it was not a holy union, it was a burden.
When I was a teenager, I used to say with a chip on my shoulder...Hey this is me, take it or leave it. Of course then it was because I was rebelling and didn’t want to conform to anyones box. Then I spent the next 20 years parading around in the box I called Christianity. Thank God, He used the perfect moment of my chaos to obliterate it. It’s all Christ or it’s nothing. He does it all or it’s in the flesh. When He said Rest, He meant it. He meant it because the work was finished, he accomplished it all on the cross. If we could have done anything in our power to earn favor He would not have had to die. My days of asking for his favor or favor in the eyes of others is over. Again at 40 I say, This is me, completely united with my Father who delights in me just the way I am, you can take me or leave me, I don’t need a box because my Heavenly Daddy has freed me.
Before my daughter went off for college this year, we took one last personality test for fun. I am a strong INFP but more than that I am confident of who I am. I am Belle with a splash of Pocahontas. That’s me, so dearly loved by God and those that know me well. I will fight injustice but now with the realization of a clean and renewed heart, not with the pangs of shame, duty and bitterness. I believe in truth and my heart is drawn to the underdog. My heart has been ripped open so that I can see the potential in all people, even those that are the perpetrators. I am an artist, a writer, a psychologist, a counselor, a social worker, a nurse, a guide, an activist, and a lover of life. The days of figuring it out are over. I am a Me. I am loved and I am free.
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