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Friday, October 26, 2012

Hiding Behind Your Personality Type

This is difficult.

There are so many areas that I need to grow in that I don't even know where to start.

As I shared in my last post, maturity doesn't come naturally, and our flesh fights against it. And fight it does, with everything it has, and it won't let you win as easily as you thought.

It seems that my personality type is also "fighting" against me. As an ENFP, they tell me that I regard routine tasks as unimportant and mundane, and that I have a problem following through commitments, which doesn't really make the most productive worker.

It would be so much easier for me to hide behind my personality type and say "You see! This is how I am and I have no fault in it"

Many of us do this. I have done it many times. "This is the way God created me" we even dare to say as an excuse to not change.

As I was applying to my job at Pacifica, there was a long questionnaire that I needed to fill out that would reveal a lot of my personality, to see how good a fit I am to the job.

A couple of days after filling out the application, I called the manager of the store to see how things are going.

"Jose" she said "I received your application and you got a really low score...in fact your score is the lowest of anyone who has ever applied here...your score is of 60%".

I remained silent, not knowing what to say. I felt as if reality was hitting me mercilessly in the face, and I felt that familiar sense in me, shame of who I am. It didn't help that I could hear the cashier and future coworker (presumably next to the manager as she was talking to me) giggling as she said this. That familiar sense of almost belonging, but not really, because I wasn't good enough...

The manager then proceeded to name the weaknesses that the test revealed "it says here that you have problems following through your commitments, that you are only organized when you have to, that you let your emotions affect your work..."

And then she proceeded to my strengths "You like team work, you are happy when others succeed..."

Yeah, a really nice and lazy guy, I thought. Way to go Jose.

All the wounds seemed to resurface at this point. All the people that told me "When are you finally going to grow up?!". I felt the sting of every word. I remained silent again.

It would be so much easier to hide behind these feelings and wounds.It would be so much easier to hide and simply accept my weaknesses as God given, and grow sour and depressed from all the wounding.

God created us beautifully. It is true that our personality types come with weaknesses, but it is also true that it is part of God's plan to share His divine nature with us, so we can grow into the image of His son.

He will only share of Himself as we allow Him to, gently pushing us to open even more areas of ourselves, until He consumes all. This beautiful union doesn't destroy us, creating cookie cutter versions of Him.

It completes us. We remain completely ourselves as we are completely His.

This is the mystery of the wedding of our Beloved with His Church.

Photo Credit: hang_in_there.













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