Personality

I've always had this secret fascination with personality theories. In college, I would profile my friends according to whether or not they were choleric, melancholy, phlegmatic or sanguine. It's pretty easy for me to spot those. Then I moved on to Myers-Briggs and the Enneagram, and just about anything else I could find.

With the Myers-Briggs I was never really satisfied with the results I got. There were always big, glaring inconsistencies with my character and what I believed my personality to be. To some degree it had to do with what God was doing in my life when I took the test ... for instance, while living in South Africa I would score really high on the "judging" scale. Sometimes it was based on the person I was trying to become rather than the person I was when I took the test.

A few days ago, while praying, God dropped into my spirit what my personality type was under the Myers-Briggs system and confirmed that in the Enneagram, I am definitely a One. Since then, I've done research on the internet and gone to the library and copied some Psych textbooks on the subject.

It's so interesting to me to read this and catch glimpses of myself in black ink on white paper. There are so many things that I didn't realize could be explained simply because that is the way God created me to be - the desire to know and understand my true identity, my disinterest in shallow relationships, why people say I could be a diplomat/peacemaker, the high value I place on self-sacrifice and selflessness ... the list goes on and on.

And yet, there are things that God's placed in me that are unique and don't fit the mold. I don't fit in the neat little boxes Psychologists have come up with the try and explain who I am and why I do what I do. While I desire to know myself and walk in the fullness of who God created me to be, I know that the source of that information and freedom can only come from one place - God Himself.