The following two paragraphs are taken from personalitypage.com, a website on Myers Briggs Type Indicator, a personality test. In the follow text, I replaced my personality type–”the ESFP,” with “Jesse.” It’s remarkably accurate:
“If Jesse does not learn how to deal with the tension that arises between, what to her, is the most obvious and satisfying way to deal with the world, and those deeper intricacies which lie behind its facade, Jesse will begin to shut out any incoming information which produces this tension.
It is not an uncommon tendency for Jesse to look to her inner world only for feelings that justify her desires and perceptions. However, if this tendency is given free reign, Jesse is too self-centered to be happy or successful.”
How ironic. I find it interesting that the very thing I am pursuing, gratification, is the very thing stopping me from feeling good.
As an ESFP, my dominant function, or primary way of relating to the world, is through Extraverted-Sensing. People who share this dominant personality function have an affinity for aesthetic things. They enjoy life, they invite others to enjoy life, they love new experiences, and they love anything that activates their senses.
While these things aren't bad, the experts told me I will have problems if I use the way I feel to rationalize what I perceive is reality. My perception is not always reality, even though I think it is.
The ESFP will often use their auxiliary function, Introverted-Feeling, to rationalize why their perspective or desire is the right one.
Myers-Briggs suggests I learn to use Introverted-Feeling to make decisions that do more than rationalize a worldview that seeks to satisfy my desire for constant activation of my senses (i.e. pleasure) and to consider rational thought in the midst of strong sensation.
In lamen terms: Grow up, have self-control, and realize that what feels good isn’t always what’s best long-term.
This elementary principle has, interestingly, been quite a struggle for me over the past few years. Not to say I lack discipline in all areas of my life (because I can identify plenty of areas of my life where I have succeeded through hard work and discipline), but I can also identify plenty of times when I've walked away from jobs and people who attempted to challenge my worldview.
I recently realized that I consider anyone who interrupts my worldview to be unloving, including God.
What I grew up learning about God taught me that he protected me, filled me up, and gave me joy, but this seemed to be a contradiction in the lives of the clients I encountered who endured suffering, rape, and childhood abuse, and even became a contradiction in my own life as I became an adult and had to pay bills, manage debt, and fail at a job I thought God had called me to.
Not only was I not enjoying life, I was actually failing at it, and I felt crappy, hopeless, and empty.
I blamed Christians for lying to me about God, and not understanding real suffering in the world, But maybe the reason I've been battling this same fight for so long is because it's not the real issue.
The real issue is that I'm mad at God for not loving me.
I feel betrayed. I thought he promised that if I stuck with this life of pursuing him and all the stuff I read in the Bible that it would lead me to some sort of radical love that can't be felt from earthly things like money, status, relationship, or experiences, but I still haven't experienced it.
So yeah. That's why I'm really mad—Because I'm empty, and God isn't filling it. And he never did.
Recently, my only fight has been that God must not be real, and that's why I'm not experiencing the fullness of his love. But intuitively, I don't even believe that. I think I just don't know how to experience his love, which is supposed to be the anecdote to this hopeless and empty life I am trying so desperately to get out of.
I get really mad when I'm asked to do something I don't know how to do, because how can I win if I don't know how? I cried this morning because I was supposed to be gardening, but no one showed me how.
When I cry about things like ordering dessert (which happened last week) or about shoveling dirt in a garden, it's an indicator to me that something deeper is going on.
So, in an effort not to freak out our ministry contacts, I went to my room and engaged in some truly unfiltered journaling for a few minutes, and realized I was actually mad at God for wanting me to experience the fullness of his love but not showing me how to do it.
I was recently told that God is glorified through me as he fills me with his love—I'd like that to be true, but relationally, I don't know how.
While I don't feel like I know God, I keep seeing evidence of Him in my life. He even seems to communicate to me at times. It's distant though. It's not like an actual conversation, rather, it's like a sense I get to do something or not do something.
I think He told me my stuff was going to get stolen, and then I got a sense that I shouldn't purchase a new computer, so I didn't, and then my new ministry contact gave me a computer.
I think that's really cool, and am confident that God is responsible. And maybe that should be enough for life, but what about the emptiness I feel?
I feel like I've been waiting most of my life to actually know God and experience this "fullness of his love." Perhaps I'm missing something. Perhaps I have more to learn about love. Perhaps my worldview has lied to me. I'm not sure, I just know something is missing.
