I am an idealist:   The positive is that I want to make things better and often can. The negative is that since nothing and no one is perfect in this life, I have to fight the tendency to always be unhappy with what is.

I’m a people person:  Relationships are important to me. The positive is that I reach out to people and notice and can respond to their obvious needs. The negative is that many people are not about relationship and either don’t notice my needs or find them overwhelming.

I respond to life emotionally first.  The positive is that I care about people and want to help them.  The downside is that I am not logical about limits to what I or others can do and am susceptible to giving up on using my gifts and sometimes on relationships.

I am intuitive which helps me be open to new ideas and possibilities and see connections that others may not see between cause and effect. The downside is that sometimes I connect things people do, or do not say or do, to motivations that aren’t real. 

I focus on ideas, thoughts, and possibilities which can help me be creative and open to learning new things. But the downside is I often literally don’t SEE the concrete world around me that is important to others.

We are born with different tendencies to personal focus and values, so we have strengths and weaknesses in different areas, but our birth families and lives may challenge us to develop coping skills different, but less effective, than our natural gifts. So the degree of focus and competence will vary some, but generally not completely. We literally see and hear differently in the same situation. We did not get to chose this. And it affects everything.

The differences for all of us are loosely:                                                                                    Focus outward vs focus inward.                                                                                         Focus on the concrete and known vs seeking new ideas and possibilities.                                                          Responding to people and the world from logic vs emotions.                    The need to move quickly to closure/decisions vs wanting to stay open to other possibilities.

Our upbringing and early influences and survival needs can affect the strength and thus the balance of these tendencies, but will not wipe them out. So we can end up being a square peg in a round hole in our lifestyles, professions, relationships, and even religions.

I stress type differences because it was what I studied and actively worked with for twenty years and understanding it made a huge difference in my marriage of sixty years, since Julian and I were extreme opposites in every area of differences. 

This does make marriage more challenging, but once understood it can not only help stay together, it can help us grow and change and become more balanced and understanding of those different from ourselves and free us to love across differences.

What I am working on understanding is if those of us who are : focused outward, open to possibilities, and inclined to stay open to possibilities may be called to lead in attempts to understand one another, so we can allow and maybe even benefit from a balance in these personality traits. Understanding frees us from hating and judging.

But it really has to begin by understanding and accepting the reality of our own strengths and weaknesses. For me understanding these differences helped me value my strengths and understand why some things are so hard for me and that I had to often learn by failing. This eventually not only helped me forgive myself for my failures, but to forgive those I love for their undeveloped sides. We’ve all got them, because we are unfinished human beings.

Now, something I began to recognize in my sixties was that I was becoming more capable in my weak areas, but at the temporary cost of my strengths even in my ways of being open to grace. Since women tend to share both their ups and downs, friends around my age began to struggle with the same thing.  It began to occur to me that the second half of life is a series of dying to strengths (self) so we can develop our weak side.  This is a journey to wholeness, perhaps holiness.

It’s nothing short of miraculous.  When Julian was dying those two years, he needed caregiving in ways that used to would have been impossible for me. I’m sure since he knew me so well, that it was terrifying when I had to do things to/for him that required focus on small physical details and using physical skills that he knew I didn’t have!  God bless him!  And yes, it was scary and challenging for me and at the end I was grateful that he could have professional medical care in the nursing home though I stayed with him there for five months.  But what a blessing for me. I was able to love him in ways I never could have before.  And if we are open to these challenges of change, we will not only be able to love in ways we have never loved before, but to also better understand and love those very different from us. No one dies perfect, but we can die like Jesus did, understanding even our enemies.