“i want to break it into pieces small enough to understand, and put it all back together again in the quiet of my private collection. it feels like an out of body experience – but something gets lost from a safe distance and now i can’t put my mind to rest, and i can’t help but second guess living behind this one-way mirror. i’m hypnotized by this anomaly. such strange uncharted territory – a white flag waves in the dark between my head and my heart. my armor falls apart, as if i could let myself be seen, even deeply known.” – atlas: five by sleeping at last
Five.
That’s my enneagram number. Coincidentally that’s the number of weeks left when I started writing this until I get on a plane for the first time to go where God has called me.
In the meantime, God has been teaching me new things about myself & about Him. Especially how the way my brain works affects the way I understand the Father and His word, how I approach Him, and how I play a role in a community of believers/the Church. He definitely revealed a lot to me during training camp and the days that followed it.
Training camp was rough on me physically, emotionally, and spiritually. Experiencing things for the first time and experiencing old things in a new way was overwhelming, especially since training camp was fast paced with not a lot of time to process.
The five on the enneagram is known as the investigator. Common characteristics of a five is that they are observant & analytical, detached, good listeners, and insightful. Often times we get tired when we have to be with people for too long, so we have to be careful with our time and energy. Due to thinking our thoughts are more reliable than feelings, processing an experience or knowing how we feel about something takes us time. That’s why it has taken me over a week and a half to process all of training camp.
As long as I can remember, I’ve been an internal processor. I am not one who likes to talk through experiences or my emotions with other people. Honestly, I don’t even like to deal with my emotions at all. However when I do process, it sometimes can take several days to a week to work through all of my thoughts and feelings. Most of the time, this has been healthy for me. However, at training camp it started to become an issue. I held all of my questions and emotions in and it started to become overwhelming. New people and new situations equals a lot of discomfort, especially for an introvert who doesn’t like to bother other people.
There I was in the middle of training camp trying to break what I had been experiencing down into smaller pieces to where I could understand what God was doing, but I ended up with more questions and thoughts. My mind was restless and I would stay up in my tent trying to make sense of the Creator.
Some of the questions I had were answered by my leadership team after training camp, but some still remain unanswered. There’s questions that will likely remain unanswered on this side of Heaven, but it keeps me digging deeper for answers.
Training camp made it clear to me that it’s okay not to have answers and that it’s okay to have doubts. However, it’s important for me to invite others into the processing and have their insight. My intentions of questioning the Father are known by Him and He’s not hurt by my doubt, but He understands and meets me with grace & shows me His heart. My heart knows the truth of the gospel and goodness of the Father, but my mind seeks to make understanding of it. Seemingly impossible because of a love unfathomable.
