Team Haven loves the enneagram. If we had a team dating profile, that might be the first thing in the “About Me” section. The enneagram is a personality type test that knows your soul. It’s freaky weird. There are nine different personality types according to this test, and each type is associated with specific behaviors, desires, fears, and patterns. The enneagram works by connecting all the numbers amongst themselves in order to establish directions of growth in health and directions of disintegration in unhealth.
Based on the enneagram, I am a type 1. My unofficially official label is “The Perfectionist.” I laugh internally when I read about my type because it is so painfully accurate. I thrive on clearly communicated expectations, I am OCD when it comes to detail, and I tend to micromanage people when I become highly stressed. Although the official description goes into much further detail, even the abbreviated version fits me. I mean come on. I was the kid who asked teachers to do group projects alone, taking on the work of 6 people, because I couldn’t stand the way other people did things.
In times of health, 1s take on the characteristics of a healthy 7. 7s are the party people. They are called “The Adventurer” and love spontaneity, childlike wonder, and anything involving adrenaline. 7s LOVE to have fun. They are the life of the party and put smiles on every face adjacent to their own. Everyone loves 7s.
You can imagine my delight when I found out that my aspirations to be “more fun” were reasonably attainable and somewhat tangible. In my 1 mind, I began to plan, and then I took my planning to paper. I did what 1s do best and made a list. “How to become a 7”
-Sing more songs
-Cut all the snowflakes and make all the paper chains (thanks, Mom)
-Speak with a foreign accent for one full conversation per day
-Try to pick up modern dance moves to stay “down with the youths”
-Begin to speak with hashtags in normal conversation
-Say the weird, quirky things that pop into your head
-Start a cover band that does 80s, 90s, and 2K (ok so this one actually happened…shout out Rebanda)
And the list went on. Even as I was writing it, I could sense the ridiculousness of it all, but that led me into deeper questioning. As I thought about being more like a 7, I could physically feel my spirit leaping around within me. It was bouncing around my heart like a game of pinball in fast forward. It was the most excitement I’ve felt in a long time.
I decided to sit with the Lord and ask why something that some find so trivial such as the enneagram made me feel this way. Why did I get so excited about 1s being connected with 7? Why did I feel this deep longing? As the Lord opened my heart up and let me look through His eyes, He took me back to memories over the years when I was filled with joy. I had an exuberance for life, and light was beaming out of me. Not very many of those moments lasted very long, and I fought my way back into the memories to try and understand why I held myself back from being free to feel joy.
Bipolar.
Mental illness runs on both sides of my family. I grew up witnessing many of the adults in my life suffer from depression, manic episodes, apathy, total emotional withdrawal, or emotions that resided on one end of the spectrum or another. I remember hearing people talk about my chances of inheriting something. I remember doctors asking my mom about our family medical history when I went for visits. I remember going to shrinks and counselors and the concerned looks on their faces when I would mention anything about mental illness.
Being anything besides what the world calls “normal” quickly became attached to a negative stigma and associated with fear. When I was 11 or 12, I remember learning more about the symptoms of being bipolar. I was young and naive and skimmed information on the surface, refusing to dive in and try to understand the realities of the disease. The only thing I retained was that extreme emotion equivocated with being bipolar. Fear crept in and paralyzed me. Every time I wanted to react to anything, I stopped myself and quickly analyzed my emotional level to gauge whether or not I was “feeling” at an acceptable level.
I began to suppress any feelings of sadness or grief or pain because I associated those with depression. I also let go of any feelings of joy or excitement or giddiness because I associated them with mania. As a teenager I wasn’t numb, but trying to suppress any vivid emotion led to angry outbursts and self inflicted emotional pain.
To be clear, I don’t have any mental illness. I’ve been to enough counselors and doctors to know that for sure. Somehow though, the fear of eventually acquiring one has continued to permeate my life. Writing it down makes it seem ridiculous, but fear rarely seems reasonable.
For the last several years, I’ve noticed the absence of joy in my life. There is happiness. It isn’t the same. Happiness is conditional. My life isn’t completely void of joy. I just haven’t been walking in the fullness of joy. The Lord has reopened a lot of wounds from my past to show me that they never really healed. He is taking me through the painstaking process of healing, but something beautiful that has come with walking back through pain is walking into freedom. I’ve had to learn to surrender my pain to the Lord. Freedom comes in letting go.
This year, one of my goals is to walk in the fullness of joy. I want to live with childlike faith. I want to dance because its a Tuesday. I want to climb trees. I want to put socks on my hands and perform an improv puppet show. I want to sing Celine Dion as I take a bucket shower. I want to get my hair braided in Africa. I want to skip to the taxi instead of walking. I want to jump into the lake with my shoes still on. I want to have a contest to see who can balance the most yams on a single fork. I want life to be VIVID and filled with WONDER.
I’m reclaiming my 7 that I buried under all my fear years ago. I’m going to relearn what it means to be me and not the mask I created for myself to wear. If I didn’t dislike onions so much, I would say that the Lord is peeling layers off of me like an onion. Instead, I’ll compare myself to Willy Wonka’s Everlasting Gobstoppers. They are constantly changing and evolving into something better than they were before. At their core, they are a delicious SweetTart. That’s what I’m going for. The Lord says He delights in me, and I’m ready to believe that about myself.
