Personality.

Got to fuel those bridesmaids!

My favorites.

You will remember my dear friend from Here and Here

Well home-again-home-again-jiggety-jog, it was another successful and beautiful wedding, and it is another homecoming that makes me so thankful for my own coffee pot and laundry machine.

Ha.
Why these things are so dear to my heart, I may never know, they just are.
And I know that.
And now you do too.
: )

Besides the fact that I so look forward to getting back to my routines and daily life (coffee pots, washing machines, etc.), I am also sometimes a little disheartened.
Not because I have to come home, but because of how I responded to life when I was NOT home.

Have you ever done one of those Myers-Briggs personality tests? Yeah yeah, I know they are not all-inclusive, but I do think they are an interesting place to start your analysis of yourself.

INTJ.

Those are my letters. Introversion (which is maybe up for discussion. I think I border this fence pretty tightly), Intuition, Thinking, Judgment.

Apparently I am like 1% of the female population. Definitely more of a male set of letters.
No surprise there, what with all this killer instinct I talk about all the time.

While in reading through these characteristics I can say "Yes, yes, that's me," I found one aspect of it interesting. It said that my personality type is the least likely to believe in a "higher power."
How intriguing. Because, clearly, my belief in a "Higher Power" as they would call it is pretty much the overarching characteristic of my life.

How could this be possible, I wondered for a while?

But then I went and did that catering thing I told you about this Fall.
And then I went to Colorado and planned a wedding.

And then I understood.

Far from being OK with it, I am appalled:
It is easy for us to not believe in "Someone" out there because, well, we don't pay attention enough to notice if there is One.
We don't pay attention to anything, for that matter. Nothing outside of the task.

Listen, I have a fantastic family and I have beautiful, wonderful friends. I have a sweet little job I love, I lead a Bible study of the most precious girlies, the kiddos at youth group have weaseled their way into my heart, I love writing to all of you on this blog, and I have a ravenous love of house projects and cooking shows.
Yet, if there is a task at hand that takes me away from these daily life things I love (like those did), it's as if I go completely bats and forget entirely that any of it exists.

And...dare I say it... sometimes I forget He exists, too.

For whatever reason, my brain goes into task-mode and while I am in it, there is nothing else. As far as Jesus is concerned, it's not like I start hating him or not believing in him or choose to disobey him, I simply forget about him. I wake up each morning in a home not my own, outside of my routine, and I immediately start planning what needs to be done for the day. I write lists over breakfast and lunch and afternoon coffee about what I still need to do. I make time tables and game plans in restaurants at dinner. And I lay in bed at night figuring out what I need to get up and plan the next morning.
This is the new normal during project-week.

Until...all of the sudden....the wedding day comes and then the wedding day goes.

Just as quickly as I entered into this project, it is done.

And I lay in bed that night and there isn't a list to think about anymore and my brain isn't racing and I don't have to check my alarm six times to make sure I actually did set it for way-before-I-want. Once again, it's just me, the pillow, and a quiet mind.
Like how it is in my daily life.
The daily life I am used to.

And I start praying. Like how I do in my daily life. Only at this moment I realize I haven't prayed at night in like...6 days.
Or maybe I should say my attempts to pray are always thwarted by the onslaught of some laundry lists that keep ticking through my overactive mind. The thoughts of lists I give into thinking about.

As I lay there, praying with focus for the first time in 6 days, I suddenly understand how it's possible for people like me to not believe in the One who made that overactive mind.
Because we don't see him. We don't pay attention to him. Because we don't see anyone, we pay attention to no one. Not when there is a task at hand.
It's not like we mean to. We just forget to remember.

Blah. Blah blah blah.
It's so dumb and I hate it.

But at least now I know about it, right?
Praise the Lord, I have been made aware of one of my downfalls.

Now I need an action plan for those times that seem to come all too frequently when I am taken out of routine and put into project mode.

Because I don't want to forget him.

I miss him terribly when I do.
The weeks never go as great as I know they could have.
As I have said before, he is my good ideas; I don't do well without him.
So how about you?

Sometimes I fear we look at these aspects of our personality and just go, "Well, that's how I am," and walk away as if we can write-off all the sin and disconnectedness from Jesus that our personality produces.

But I don't think so.

Your personality is not a good enough excuse to try to live your life apart from Christ.
I wish so. It would be easier. But, all the other aspects of my INTJ-ness will tell me that there is not truth in that statement. And things that are void of truth should be thrown away.

Are there things inherent in your personality that go against the best prescribed order for your relationship with Christ?

Are you willing to figure out what those things are, study the patterns of how you respond to life, and are you willing to look at them and say, "INTJ or not, this is a barrier to my relationship with Christ; it will not exert dominion over me and enslave me any longer"?

I pray so, Wolfies. I pray we are a people who don’t use excuses. Not when it comes to him.