Who Are You?
I am an adventurer, a risk-taker (that’s part of why I am in Oxford—it seemed like a good idea!) I am addicted to experiences. I love people deeply. Am introverted and reserved in some ways, but can access my extroverted part to speak, to reach out, to encourage. Cause driven. Idealisitc. There is more of course. But, who are you? What do you prefer in life? Not only do we come out of the womb with different DNA, individual fingerprints, but God also gave us personality.
We function best when we cooperate with our God-given drives, motivations, actions. Children and adults should not be punished or criticized for being different or for having a different context for living in life. Children may have personalities that are difficult for us, but we should not discipline them for being themselves. We can help them channel their drives in mature ways as they grow. But their unique responses to life come from birth.
Focusing on Relationship
I wrote Ministry of Motherhood after studying the life of Christ in relationship to His disciples, just as I was right in the midst of my children's growing up years. As I pondered Jesus’ way with his disciples I noted He loved them, spoke to them, spent morning, noon, and night in fellowship with them. He served them by feeding them, by healing their relatives; He modeled to them what true Christianity would be by touching children and giving them His time and blessing them; touching lepers; giving women both moral and immoral His time and affirmation--He showed us how to live through His relationships with the people in his life. In reading scripture it's very obvious that He had a love for them, a compassion for them--not a list of rules on how to be sure you are acting righteously. These the Pharisees provided, not Jesus.
I am so grateful for all I have learned about motherhood from my study of Jesus. and so I sought to emulate Christ to our children.
He called Peter the rock--You are the man, Peter! (Even if you deny me—I am calling you into my grace.)
Thomas, a man in whom there was no guile--the just one, perhaps a lawyer personality. (even when you doubted my resurrection)
John, the one Jesus loved. Definitely a feeler on Myers-Briggs!
Each followed Him, but each had a different personal grid through which they learned to hear His voice and messages.
Even as Jesus treated His disciples differently, understanding the unique personalities God gave to my children was a necessary foundation for reaching their hearts with the reality of this One I loved. Their God-given personalities provided the grid through which they would understand truth. To ignore the way they were uniquely made would be to seek to bring light through a lamp that was not plugged in.
Children, beautiful yet unique as snowflakes are always individual--no two alike!
What are some of the personalities and the issues that must be considered? Extroverts need to talk more, have more activities and people in their lives; introverts need more time alone to ponder, create, go into their inner vortex. Some have a larger capacity to work hard, others are more immature and need the grace of time allowed for growth. Some are relational and inspiring and have to talk a lot. Others are ponders and may feel pushed to have to be social.
God has given boys testosterone so that they may defend us--it automatically means they will have a tendency to be louder, more active … well, more boy! A boy should not be disciplined for being "boy".
Some children just really want affirmation and hugs and listening in order to "feel" loved. Others want you to do something with them--to play, to run, to go. Others want sympathy--and to have you understand. Still others, quality time. It differs with each child, just as each of Jesus's disciples were different and related to him differently, according to their values each uniquely held, because of background and personality.
We are to accept and cooperate with our children's God-given personalities because God has a work for them to do in this world according to His design for their lives. As their gifts, so will their calling be. It also means that if we want to be God's instrument to open their hearts, we have to study who they are and reach them according to the personal design of their heart.
And what I have found is that in ministering to my children and learning how to be a great "psychologist," I have also become more astute in ministering to the needs of others, because I have become better at observing needs and personalities.
Children and adults are not cookie-cutter copies of each other who can all be handled the same way--as a matter of fact, if we are handled as robots, we will rebel at impersonal ways of being treated. Human beings are complex and cannot be generalized into formulaic solutions, but long to be loved and valued as they have been made to be.
Sarah and I were talking once and she said, "Each of us is so different and so complicated in the ways we are motivated in our lives, and yet, somehow, you made us feel that who we were was exactly the person God made us to be to live out our calling and story in this world. Personal affirmation is so very important to one's ability to believe that God will use them to change the world."
Because I felt that I was “too much” for my parents at times, I wanted my children to feel that who they were, within the integrity of their authentic personality was acceptable and delightful to me their mama. Of course to carry this out required patience, required me to grow in understanding their motivations in life. But God gave us personality to accomplish His work uniquely within the designs of our lives.
Each child (and most adults, for that matter!) long for a mentor who "gets" them--knows and understands them and can reach their heart's passions and dreams. This is part of why the reality of our relationship with God as a real Person who can be known and interacted with, Who has feelings and plans and is so much more than words on a page, is so wonderful.
It does require faith to live in intimacy with the living God. He is wild and wise and loving, and deeply desirous of our personal, passionate love--not our robotic keeping of rules. And so, we must live in the tension of loving the unique design that our Artist creator crafted into the DNA of our children and learning how to build a bridge of our love to their heart, so that we can open up their ability to listen to the messages we live and speak. We are invited into a relationship with the living God, which is a pattern for how we live with our children.
And in reaching out to them as friends and real people with dreams, values, desires, insecurities and passions, we truly open them up to the very God who crafted them that way for His glory.
