Your Personality Profile

You are pure, moral, and adaptable. You tend to blend into your surroundings. Shy on the outside, you're outspoken to your friends. You believe that you live a virtuous life... And you tend to judge others with a harsh eye. As a result, people tend to crave your approval.

The World's Shortest Personality Test

In case you haven't noticed, I am fascinated by personality tests. Ever since my sister-in-law made all of us take one while we were at their house for vacation last month, I have gravitated toward finding out what the so-called experts think I am like without having met me. Ok, so some tests are most likely not written by experts...

I'm not so sure about the people craving my approval part, but I think the rest of the synopsis is pretty accurate. The longer I am away from working with the public, the more I find myself reverting back to my "old" pre-teaching ways. In high school, I was the shy girl with the long brown hair and glasses. The one that people defaulted to sign my yearbook with, "you seem like such a nice person", which for a good portion of people really meant ,"I forgot you were there half the time." I had my eclectic small group of friends, but I really only got close to a couple of them.

Then came college. It's awesome how God has a way of putting you exactly where you need to be. My heart was set on a private, evangelical school where I had watched my brother grow from a legalist who (in my teenage opinion) thought he new everything, to a believer who knew who his identity was in Christ, and also knew that there is far more freedom in Christ. Scholarships would have covered books, and my parents had instilled a certain level of pragmatism regarding finances. I did not get to go to my "dream" college, except for a brief summer program. So this shy girl from a sheltered home ended up at a small public university in the middle of nowhere. I was surprised to find a handful of Christian professors teaching some of my classes, and a campus ministry became my "home away from home".

I liked college so well that I stayed 5 years instead of 4. Changing majors does that to many of us. I took pride in the fact that I was "pure and moral" as the intro to this post pegs me. Oh, I would not have admitted it then. I had no idea that my idea of salvation by grace through faith alone had "works" and "thank God I've resisted _fill in the blank_" attached to it. I mostly stayed in my safe little bubble of Christians, keeping people who made what I deemed unwise choices at a distance. Oh, I was friendly enough. In fact, I probably did not qualify as the overwhelmingly shy girl that people knew from High School. Yes,I now admit that I have a tendency to judge with a harsh eye. I've usually been too "shy" to let people know I was judging them , or so I must have thought subconsciously. My judgement came by pushing them away or not letting them get too close, although I wouldn't have admitted it then. You know, that whole "Avoiding the appearance of evil" thing.... I was real with a select few, partially due to a lack of trust in general and partially because of pride. In spite of all that, through the years I've had an overwhelming curiousity about what has happened to acquaintances from my past, and some of my best friends are people I connected with during my freshman year of college. (Interestingly enough, 3 of us, who were once very active in one denomination's campus ministry, are now fellowshipping in churches that are more focused on Jesus and less on the statistics and church politics.)

...Fast forward 10 years. 12, really, from when I started college. God has opened my eyes through experience, His word, and other people. The reality is that just because I may think I look like a white rose on the outside, I am as succeptible to rot as all the other flowers in the garden. He has given me friends from various walks of life who may or may not know Him. He has taught me that the faith I have been given is only by His grace, and while I can share and debate, only He can reveal Himself to them. After a point, my message can become a clanging cymbal and push friendships away if I don't truly love people as He loved them.

In closing for today, in review of the blogthing that got my mind spinning, I certainly hope it's not my approval people have ever craved. As much as I try, my wandering heart is not as virtuous as this silly little one-question survey thinks. Yes, Jesus sees it that way because He has given me faith to trust in Him for forgiveness of ALL my sins, but I daily realize how much more I need Him to make me pure.